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Title: Knights and their Days
Author: Dr. Doran
Release date: November 16, 2023 [eBook #72142]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: Redfield, 1856
Credits: Alan, Susan Skinner and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS ***
WIT AND WISDOM
OF THE
REV. SYDNEY SMITH:
BEING
SELECTIONS FROM HIS WRITINGS,
AND PASSAGES OF HIS
LETTERS AND TABLE TALK.
With Notes, and a Biographical Memoir,
BY EVERT A. DUYCKINCK.
A Portrait, after G. Stewart Newton,
AND AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER.
_In One Volume, 12mo, Cloth_, PRICE $1.25.
Advertisement.
The chief writings of the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH are included in the
original English editions in eight octavo volumes. These are his “Two
Volumes of Sermons,” 1809; the Collection of his “Works,” (embracing
articles from the Edinburgh Review, the Plymley Letters, and other
Papers) 4 vols., 1839-40; a posthumous volume, “Sermons preached at
St. Paul’s,” &c., 1846; “Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy,
delivered at the Royal Institution,” published in 1850. To these are to
be added, “Letters on American Debts,” 1843; “A Fragment on the Irish
Roman Catholic Church,” 1845; Letters on Railway Management and other
topics to the Morning Chronicle; Articles in the Edinburgh Review not
collected in his “Works”; numerous Sketches and Essays printed in the
“Memoirs,” by his daughter, Lady Holland; and the extensive series
of “Letters,” edited by Mrs. Austin. These have mainly furnished the
material of the present volume. In the preparation of the Table Talk,
Memoir, and Notes, many collateral sources have been drawn upon.
The most important of Sydney Smith’s Writings will here be found given
entire; while the selection generally presents the most characteristic
passages of his “Wit and Wisdom” from the whole. Numerous Miscellanies,
of much interest, are included which are not to be met with in any
previous collection of the author’s works.
Contents.
BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR, by the Editor.
ARTICLES FROM THE EDINBURGH REVIEW, (including the Papers on Female
Education, Professional Education, Notices of America, &c., &c.)
SKETCHES OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, (including the Essays on the Conduct of
the Understanding; on Wit and Humor, &c., &c.)
THE PETER PLYMLEY LETTERS.
PASSAGES FROM SERMONS.
SPEECHES ON THE REFORM-BILL. THE BALLOT.
LETTERS ON AMERICAN DEBTS.
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSION.
A FRAGMENT ON THE IRISH ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
LETTERS ON RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.
CHARACTER OF SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH AND OF FRANCIS HORNER.
PRACTICAL ESSAYS, &c.
PASSAGES FROM LETTERS.
TABLE TALK. PERSONAL, &c., &c.
DR. DORAN’S WORKS.
Table Traits, with Something on them. By DR. DORAN, Author of “Habits
and Men,” &c., &c. 12mo., cloth. Price $1 25. Half calf, or mor. ex.,
$2 25.
BILL OF FARE.
The Legend of Amphitryon--A Prologue.
Diet and Digestion.--Water--Breakfast,
Corn, Bread, &c.--Tea--Coffee--Chocolate.
The Old Coffee House.--The French Cafés.
The Ancient Cook and his Art.
The Modern Cook and his Science.
Pen and Ink Sketches of Careme.
Dinner Traits.--The Materials for Dining.
A Light Dinner for Two.--Sauces.
The Parasite.
Table Traits of Utopia and the Golden Age.
Table Traits of England in the Early Times.
Table Traits of the Last Century.
Wine and Water.
The Birth of the Vine, and what has come of it.
The Making and Marring of Wine.
Imperial Drinkers, and Incidents in Germany.--An
Incident of Travel.
A few odd Glasses of Wine. [Egyptian]
The Tables of the Ancient and Modern
The Diet of the Saints of Old.
The Bridal and Banquet of Ferques.
The Support of Modern Saints.
The Cæsars at Table.
Their Majesties at Meat.
English Kings at their Tables.
Strange Banquets--The Castellan Von Coucy.
Authors and their Dietetics.
The Liquor-loving Laureates.
Supper.
Nearly every page contains something amusing, and you may shut the
book in the middle, and open it again after a twelvemonth’s interval,
without at all compromising its power of affording enjoyment.--_The
London Times._
Habits and Men, with Remnants of Record touching the Makers of both.
By DR. DORAN, author of “Table Traits,” &c., &c. 12mo., cloth, $1.
Half calf, or mor. extra, $2 00.
CONTENTS.
Between You and Me.
Man Manners, and a Story with a Moral to it.
Adonis at Home and Abroad--Pt. I.--Pt. II.
Remnants of Stage Dresses.
Three Acts and an Epilogue.
The Tiring-Bowers of Queens “La Mode
in her Birth-place.”
Hats, Wigs and their Wearers.
Beards and their Bearers.--Swords.
Gloves, B--s, and Buttons.--Stockings.
“Masks and Faces.”
Puppets for Grown Gentlemen.
Touching Tailors.
The Tailors Measured by the Poets.
Sir John Hawkwood, the Heroic Tailor.
Why did the Tailors choose St. William for
their Patron?
George Dörfling, the Martial Tailor.
Admiral Hobson, the Naval Tailor.
John Stow, the Antiquarian Tailor.
John Speed, the Antiquarian Tailor.
Samuel Pepys, the Official Tailor.
Richard Ryan, the Theatrical Tailor.
Paul Whitehead, the Poet Tailor.
Mems. of “Merchant Tailors.”
Chapters on Beaux.
The Beaux of the Olden Time.
Beau Fielding--Beau Nash.
The Prince de Ligne--Beau Brummel.
Doctors Ready Dressed--Odd Fashions.
This is one of the most amusing and erudite books of the day, abounding
in anecdote and queer stories of the dress of different ages, of
kings and queens, poets, statesmen, tailors, &c. The sketches of the
“tiring-bowers” of queens, of Paul Whitehead, the poet tailor; of
Beau Nash, and Beau Fielding, are rich in lore, and are produced in
sparkling style.--_Boston Courier._
The Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover. By DR.
DORAN. 2 vols., 12mo., cloth, $2. Half calf, or mor. extra, $4 00.
CONTENTS.
Sophia Dorothea, Wife of George I.
Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea, Wife of George II.
Charlotte, Wife of George III.
Caroline of Brunswick, Wife of George IV.
Dr. Doran has availed himself of the ample material scattered
through personal memoirs, pamphlets, periodicals, and other fugitive
literature of the time, with the thoroughness, quick eye for humor, and
appreciation of the picturesque, which characterize his other amusing
works.
KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS.
KNIGHTS
AND THEIR DAYS
BY DR. DORAN
AUTHOR OF “LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND OF THE HOUSE OF HANOVER,”
“TABLE TRAITS,” “HABITS AND MEN,” ETC.
“Oh, ’tis a brave profession, and rewards
All loss we meet, with double weight of glory.”
SHIRLEY (_The Gentleman of Venice._)
[Illustration]
REDFIELD
34 BEEKMAN STREET, NEW YORK
1856
TO
PHILIPPE WATIER, ESQ.
IN MEMORY OF MERRY NIGHTS AND DAYS NEAR METZ AND THE
MOSELLE,
THIS LITTLE VOLUME
Is inscribed
BY HIS VERY SINCERE FRIEND,
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS.
A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE PAGE 9
THE TRAINING OF PAGES 30
KNIGHTS AT HOME 36
LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE 51
DUELLING, DEATH, AND BURIAL 65
THE KNIGHTS WHO “GREW TIRED OF IT” 78
FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC 104
THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM 113
SIR GUY OF WARWICK, AND WHAT BEFELL HIM 133
GARTERIANA 148
FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER 170
THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR, AND THEIR DOINGS 184
THE KNIGHTS OF THE SAINTE AMPOULE 194
THE ORDER OF THE HOLY GHOST 200
JACQUES DE LELAING 208
THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY 228
THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET 263
SIR JOHN FALSTAFF 276
STAGE KNIGHTS 295
STAGE LADIES, AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY 312
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; FROM THE NORMANS TO THE
STUARTS 329
“THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN” 351
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; THE STUARTS 358
THE SPANISH MATCH 364
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS; FROM STUART TO BRUNSWICK 375
RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD 388
RICHARD CARR, PAGE, AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE 410
ULRICH VON HUTTEN 420
SHAM KNIGHTS 439
PIECES OF ARMOR 455
THE
KNIGHTS AND THEIR DAYS.
A FRAGMENTARY PROLOGUE.
“La bravoure est une qualité innée, on ne se la donne pas.”
NAPOLEON I.
Dr. Lingard, when adverting to the sons of Henry II., and their
knightly practices, remarks that although chivalry was considered the
school of honor and probity, there was not overmuch of those or of any
other virtues to be found among the members of the chivalrous orders.
He names the vices that were more common, as he thinks, and probably
with some justice. Hallam, on the other hand, looks on the institution
of chivalry as the best school of moral discipline in the Middle Ages:
and as the great and influential source of human improvement. “It
preserved,” he says, “an exquisite sense of honor, which in its results
worked as great effects as either of the powerful spirits of liberty
and religion, which have given a predominant impulse to the moral
sentiments and energies of mankind.”
The custom of receiving arms at the age of manhood is supposed, by
the same author, to have been established among the nations that
overthrew the Roman Empire; and he cites the familiar passage from
Tacitus, descriptive of this custom among the Germans. At first, little
but bodily strength seems to have been required on the part of the
candidate. The qualifications and the forms of investiture changed or
improved with the times.
In a general sense, chivalry, according to Hallam, may be referred
to the age of Charlemagne, when the Caballarii, or horsemen, became
the distinctive appellation of those feudal tenants and allodial
proprietors who were bound to serve on horseback. When these were
equipped and formally appointed to their martial duties, they were,
in point of fact, knights, with so far more incentives to distinction
than modern soldiers, that each man depended on himself, and not on the
general body. Except in certain cases, the individual has now but few
chances of distinction; and knighthood, in its solitary aspect, may be
said to have been blown up by gunpowder.
As examples of the true knightly spirit in ancient times, Mr. Hallam
cites Achilles, who had a supreme indifference for the question of
what side he fought upon, had a strong affection for a friend, and
looked at death calmly. I think Mr. Hallam over-rates the bully Greek
considerably. His instance of the Cid Ruy Diaz, as a perfect specimen
of what the modern knight ought to have been, is less to be gainsaid.
In old times, as in later days, there were knights who acquired the
appellation by favor rather than service; or by a compelled rather than
a voluntary service. The old landholders, the Caballarii, or Milites,
as they came to be called, were landholders who followed their lord
to the field, by feudal obligation: paying their rent, or part of it,
by such service. The voluntary knights were those “younger brothers,”
perhaps, who sought to amend their indifferent fortunes by joining the
banner of some lord. These were not legally knights, but they might
win the honor by their prowess; and thus in arms, dress, and title,
the younger brother became the equal of the wealthy landholders. He
became even their superior, in one sense, for as Mr. Hallam adds:--“The
territorial knights became by degrees ashamed of assuming a title which
the others had won by merit, till they themselves could challenge it by
real desert.”
The connection of knighthood with feudal tenure was much loosened, if
it did not altogether disappear, by the Crusades. There the knights
were chiefly volunteers who served for pay: all feudal service there
was out of the question. Its connection with religion was, on the
other hand, much increased, particularly among the Norman knights
who had not hitherto, like the Anglo-Saxons, looked upon chivalric
investiture as necessarily a religious ceremony. The crusaders made
religious professors, at least, of all knights, and never was one
of these present at the reading of the gospel, without holding the
point of his sword toward the book, in testimony of his desire to
uphold what it taught by force of arms. From this time the passage
into knighthood was a solemn ceremony; the candidate was belted,
white-robed, and absolved after due confession, when his sword was
blessed, and Heaven was supposed to be its director. With the love of
God was combined love for the ladies. What was implied was that the
knight should display courtesy, gallantry, and readiness to defend,
wherever those services were required by defenceless women. Where such
was bounden duty--but many knights did not so understand it--there was
an increase of refinement in society; and probably there is nothing
overcharged in the old ballad which tells us of a feast at Perceforest,
where eight hundred knights sat at a feast, each of them with a lady
at his side, eating off the same plate; the then fashionable sign of
a refined friendship, mingled with a spirit of gallantry. That the
husbands occasionally looked with uneasiness upon this arrangement,
is illustrated in the unreasonably jealous husband in the romance of
“Lancelot du Lac;” but, as the lady tells him, he had little right to
cavil at all, for it was an age since any knight had eaten with her off
the same plate.
Among the Romans the word _virtue_ implied both virtue and valor--as if
bravery in a man were the same thing as virtue in a woman. It certainly
did not signify among Roman knights that a brave man was necessarily
virtuous. In more recent times the word gallantry has been made also
to take a double meaning, implying not only courage in man, but his
courtesy toward woman. Both in ancient and modern times, however, the
words, or their meanings, have been much abused. At a more recent
period, perhaps, gallantry was never better illustrated than when in
an encounter by hostile squadrons near Cherbourg, the adverse factions
stood still, on a knight, wearing the colors of his mistress, advancing
from the ranks of one party, and challenging to single combat the
cavalier in the opposite ranks who was the most deeply in love with
his mistress. There was no lack of adversaries, and the amorous knights
fell on one another with a fury little akin to love.
A knight thus slain for his love was duly honored by his lady and
contemporaries. Thus we read in the history of Gyron le Courtois, that
the chivalric king so named, with his royal cousin Melyadus, a knight,
by way of equerry, and a maiden, went together in search of the body
of a chevalier who had fallen _pour les beaux yeux_ of that very lady.
They found the body picturesquely disposed in a pool of blood, the
unconscious hand still grasping the hilt of the sword that had been
drawn in honor of the maiden. “Ah, beauteous friend!” exclaims the
lady, “how dearly hast thou paid for my love! The good and the joy we
have shared have only brought thee death. Beauteous friend, courteous
and wise, valiant, heroic, good knight in every guise, since thou has
lost thy youth for me in this manner, in this strait, and in this
agony, as it clearly appears, what else remains for me to suffer for
thy sake, unless that I should keep you company? Friend, friend, thy
beauty has departed for the love of me, thy flesh lies here bloody.
Friend, friend, we were both nourished together. I knew not what love
was when I gave my heart to love thee,” &c., &c., &c. “Young friend,”
continues the lady, “thou wert my joy and my consolation: for to see
thee and to speak to thee alone were sufficient to inspire joy, &c.,
&c., &c. Friend, what I behold slays me, I feel that death is within my
heart.” The lady then took up the bloody sword, and requested Melyadus
to look after the honorable interment of the knight on that spot, and
that he would see her own body deposited by her “friend’s” side, in the
same grave. Melyadus expressed great astonishment at the latter part
of the request, but as the lady insisted that her hour was at hand, he
promised to fulfil all her wishes. Meanwhile the maiden knelt by the
side of the dead knight, held his sword to her lips, and gently died
upon his breast. Gyron said it was the wofullest sight that eye had
ever beheld; but all courteous as Gyron was, and he was so to such a
remarkable degree that he derived a surname from his courtesy, I say
that in spite of his sympathy and gallantry, he appears to have had a
quick eye toward making such profit as authors could make in those
days, from ready writing upon subjects of interest. Before another word
was said touching the interment of the two lovers, Gyron intimated
that he would write a ballad upon them that should have a universal
circulation, and be sung in all lands where there were gentle hearts
and sweet voices. Gyron performed what he promised, and the ballad
of “Absdlon and Cesala,” serves to show what very rough rhymes the
courteous poet could employ to illustrate a romantic incident. Let it
be added that, however the knights may sometimes have failed in their
truth, this was very rarely the case with the ladies. When Jordano
Bruno was received in his exile by Sir Philip Sidney, he requited the
hospitality by dedicating a poem to the latter. In this dedication, he
says: “With one solitary exception, all misfortunes that flesh is heir
to have been visited on me. I have tasted every kind of calamity but
one, that of finding false a woman’s love.”
It was not every knight that could make such an exception. Certainly
not that pearl of knights, King Arthur himself. What a wife had that
knight in the person of Guinever? Nay, he is said to have had three
wives of that name, and that all of them were as faithless as ladies
well _could_ be. Some assert that the described deeds of these three
are in fact but the evil-doings of one. However this may be, I may
observe summarily here what I have said in reference to Guinever in
another place. With regard to this triple-lady, the very small virtue
of one third of the whole will not salubriously leaven the entire
lump. If romance be true, and there is more about the history of
Guinever than any other lady--she was a delicious, audacious, winning,
seductive, irresistible, and heartless hussy; and a shameless! and
a barefaced! Only read “Sir Lancelot du Lac!” Yes, it can not be
doubted but that in the voluminous romances of the old day, there was
a sprinkling of historical facts. Now, if a thousandth part of what is
recorded of this heart-bewitching Guinever be true, she must have been
such a lady as we can not now conceive of. True daughter of her mother
Venus, when a son of Mars was not at hand, she could stoop to Mulciber.
If the king was not at home, she could listen to a knight. If both
were away, esquire or page might speak boldly without fear of being
unheeded; and if all were absent, in the chase, or at the fray, there
was always a good-looking groom in the saddle-room with whom Guinever
could converse, without holding that so to do was anything derogatory.
I know no more merry reading than that same ton-weight of romance which
goes by the name of “Sir Lancelot du Lac.” But it is not of that sort
which Mrs. Chapone would recommend to young ladies, or that Dr. Cumming
would read aloud in the Duke of Argyll’s drawing-room. It is a book,
however, which a grave man a little tired of his gravity, may look
into between serious studies and solemn pursuits--a book for a lone
winter evening by a library-fire, with wine and walnuts at hand; or for
an old-fashioned summer’s evening, in a bower through whose foliage
the sun pours his _adieu_, as gorgeously red as the Burgundy in your
flask. Of a truth, a man must be “in a concatenation accordingly,” ere
he may venture to address himself to the chronicle which tells of the
“bamboches,” “fredaines,” and “bombances,” of Guinever the Frail, and
of Lancelot du Lac.
We confess to having more regard for Arthur than for his triple-wife
Guinever. As I have had occasion to say in other pages, “I do not like
to give up Arthur!” I love the name, the hero, and his romantic deeds.
I deem lightly of his light o’love bearing. Think of his provocation
both ways! Whatever the privilege of chivalry may have been, it was the
practice of too many knights to be faithless. They vowed fidelity, but
they were a promise-breaking, word-despising crew. On this point I am
more inclined to agree with Dr. Lingard than with Mr. Hallam. Honor was
ever on their lips, but not always in their hearts, and it was little
respected by them, when found in the possession of their neighbor’s
wives. How does Scott consider them in this respect, when in describing
a triad of knights, he says,
“There were two who loved their neighbor’s wives,
And one who loved his own.”
Yet how is it that knights are so invariably mentioned with long-winded
laudation by Romish writers--always excepting Lingard--when they desire
to illustrate the devoted spirit of olden times? Is it that the knights
were truthful, devout, chaste, God-fearing? not a jot! Is it because
the cavaliers cared but for one thing, in the sense of having fear but
for one thing, and _that_ the devil? To escape from being finally
triumphed over by the Father of Evil, they paid largely, reverenced
outwardly, confessed unreservedly, and were absolved plenarily. That
is the reason why chivalry was patted on the back by Rome. At the
same time we must not condemn a system, the principles of which were
calculated to work such extensive ameliorations in society as chivalry.
Christianity itself might be condemned were we to judge of it by the
shortcomings of its followers.
But even Mr. Hallam is compelled at last, reluctantly, to confess
that the morals of chivalry were not pure. After all his praise of
the system, he looks at its literature, and with his eye resting on
the tales and romances written for the delight and instruction of
chivalric ladies and gentlemen, he remarks that the “violation of
marriage vows passes in them for an incontestable privilege of the
brave and the fair; and an accomplished knight seems to have enjoyed
as undoubted prerogatives, by general consent of opinion, as were
claimed by the brilliant courtiers of Louis XV.” There was an especial
reason for this, the courtiers of Louis XV. might be anything they
chose, provided that with gallantry they were loyal, courteous, and
munificent. Now loyalty, courtesy, and that prodigality which goes by
the name of munificence, were exactly the virtues that were deemed most
essential to chivalry. But these were construed by the old knights as
they were by the more modern courtiers. The first took advantages in
combat that would now be deemed disloyal by any but a Muscovite. The
second would cheat at cards in the gaming saloons of Versailles, while
they would run the men through who spoke lightly of their descent. So
with regard to courtesy, the knight was full of honeyed phrases to
his equals and superiors, but was as coarsely arrogant as Menschikoff
to an inferior. In the same way, Louis XIV., who would never pass one
of his own scullery-maids without raising his plumed beaver, could
address terms to the ladies of his court, which, but for the sacred
majesty which was supposed to environ his person, might have purchased
for him a severe castigation. Then consider the case of that “first
gentleman in Europe,” George, Prince of Wales: he really forfeited his
right to the throne by marrying a Catholic lady, Mrs. Fitzherbert, and
he freed himself unscrupulously from the scrape by uttering a lie.
And so again with munificence; the greater part of these knights and
courtiers were entirely thoughtless of the value of money. At the Field
of the Cloth of Gold, for instance, whole estates were mortgaged or
sold, in order that the owners might outshine all competitors in the
brilliancy and quality of their dress. This sort of extravagance makes
one man look glad and all his relatives rueful. The fact is that when
men thus erred, it was for want of observance of a Christian principle;
and if men neglect that observance, it is as little in the power of
chivalry as of masonry to mend him. There was “a perfect idea” of
chivalry, indeed, but if any knight ever realized it in his own person,
he was, simply, nearly a perfect Christian, and would have been still
nearer to perfection in the latter character if he had studied the few
simple rules of the system of religion rather than the stilted and
unsteady ones of romance. The study of the latter, at all events, did
not prevent, but in many instances caused a dissoluteness of manners,
a fondness for war rather than peace, and a wide distinction between
classes, making aristocrats of the few, and villains of the many.
Let me add here, as I have been speaking of the romance of “Lancelot
du Lac,” that I quite agree with Montluc, who after completing his
chronicle of the History of France, observed that it would be found
more profitable reading than either Lancelot or Amadis. La Noue
especially condemns the latter as corrupting the manners of the age.
Southey, again, observes that these chivalric romances acquired their
poison in France or in Italy. The Spanish and Portuguese romances he
describes as free from all taint. In the Amadis the very well-being
of the world is made to rest upon chivalry. “What would become of
the world,” it is asked in the twenty-second book of the Amadis, “if
God did not provide for the defence of the weak and helpless against
unjust usurpers? And how could provision be made, if good knights were
satisfied to do nothing else but sit in chamber with the ladies? What
would then the world become, but a vast community of brigands?”
Lamotte Levayer was of a different opinion. “Les armes,” he says, when
commenting upon chivalry and arms generally; “Les armes detruisent tous
les arts excepté ceux qui favorisent la gloire.” In Germany, too,
where chivalry was often turned to the oppression of the weak rather
than employed for their protection, the popular contempt and dread of
“knightly principles” were early illustrated in the proverb, “Er will
Ritter an mir werden,” He wants to play the knight over me. In which
proverb, knight stands for oppressor or insulter. In our own country
the order came to be little cared for, but on different grounds.
Dr. Nares in his “Heraldic Anomalies,” deplores the fact that mere
knighthood has fallen into contempt. He dates this from the period when
James I. placed baronets above knights. The hereditary title became a
thing to be coveted, but knights who were always held to be knights
bachelors, could not of course bequeath a title to child or children
who were not supposed in heraldry to exist. The Doctor quotes Sir
John Ferne, to show that Olibion, the son of Asteriel, of the line of
Japhet, was the first knight ever created. The personage in question
was sent forth to battle, after his sire had smitten him lightly nine
times with Japhet’s falchion, forged before the flood. There is little
doubt but that originally a knight was simply _Knecht_, servant of the
king. Dr. Nares says that the Thanes were so in the north, and that
these, although of gentle blood, exercised the offices even of cooks
and barbers to the royal person. But may not these offices have been
performed by the “unter Thans,” or deputies? I shall have occasion to
observe, subsequently, on the law which deprived a knight’s descendants
of his arms, if they turned merchants; but in Saxon times it is worthy
of observation, that if a merchant made three voyages in one of his own
ships, he was thenceforward the Thane’s right-worthy, or equal.
Among the Romans a blow on the ear gave the slave freedom. Did the blow
on the shoulder given to a knight make a free-servant of him? Something
of the sort seems to have been intended. The title was doubtless mainly
but not exclusively military. To dub, from the Saxon word _dubban_, was
either to gird or put on, “don,” or was to _strike_, and perhaps both
may be meant, for the knight was girt with spurs, as well as stricken,
or _geschlagen_ as the German term has it.
There was striking, too, at the unmaking of a knight. His heels were
then degraded of their spurs, the latter being beaten or chopped away.
“His heels deserved it,” says Bertram of the cowardly Parolles, “his
heels deserved it for usurping of his spurs so long.” The sword, too,
on such occasions, was broken.
Fuller justly says that “the plainer the coat is, the more ancient
and honorable.” He adds, that “two colors are necessary and most
highly honorable: three are very highly honorable; _four_ commendable;
_five_ excusable; more disgraceful.” He must have been a gastronomic
King-at-Arms, who so loaded a “coat” with fish, flesh, and fowl, that
an observer remarked, “it was well victualled enough to stand a siege.”
_Or_ is the richest coloring, but, as Fuller again says, “Herbs _vert_,
being natural, are better than _Or_.” He describes a “_Bend_ as the
best _ordinary_, being a belt athwart,” but a coat bruised with a bar
sinister is hardly a distinction to be proud of. If the heralds of
George the Second’s time looked upon that monarch as the son of Count
Königsmark, as Jacobite-minded heralds may have been malignant enough
to do, they no doubt mentally drew the degrading bar across the royal
arms, and tacitly denied the knighthood conferred by what they, in such
foolish case, would have deemed an illegitimate hand.
Alluding to reasons for some bearings, Fuller tells us that, “whereas
the Earls of Oxford anciently gave their ‘coats’ plain, quarterly
_gules_ and _or_, they took afterward in the first a _mullet_ or
_star-argent_, because the chief of the house had a falling-star, as it
was said, alighting on his shield as he was fighting in the Holy Land.”
It is to be observed that when treating of precedency, Fuller places
knights, or “soldiers” with seamen, civilians, and physicians, and
after saints, confessors, prelates, statesmen, and judges. Knights and
physicians he seems to have considered as equally terrible to life;
but in his order of placing he was led by no particular principle, for
among the lowest he places “learned writers,” and “benefactors to the
public.” He has, indeed, one principle, as may be seen, wherein he
says, “I place first princes, good manners obliging all other persons
to follow them, as religion obliges me to follow God’s example by a
royal recognition of that original precedency, which he has granted to
his vicegerents.”
The Romans are said to have established the earliest known order of
knighthood; and the members at one time wore rings, as a mark of
distinction, as in later times knights wore spurs. The knights of the
Holy Roman Empire were members of a modern order, whose sovereigns are
not, what they would have themselves considered, descendants of the
Cæsars. If we only knew what our own Round Table was, and where it
stood, we should be enabled to speak more decisively upon the question
of the chevaliers who sat around it. But it is undecided whether the
table was not really a house. At it, or in it, the knights met during
the season of Pentecost, but whether the assembly was collected at
Winchester or Windsor no one seems able to determine; and he would
impart no particularly valuable knowledge even if he could.
Knighthood was a sort of nobility worth having, for it testified to the
merit of the wearer. An inherited title should, indeed, compel him who
succeeds to it, to do nothing to disgrace it: but preserving the lustre
is not half so meritorious as creating it. _Knights bachelors_ were so
called because the distinction was conferred for some act of _personal_
courage, to reward for which the offspring of the knight could make no
claim. He was, in this respect, to them as though he had been never
married. The knight bachelor was a truly proud man. The word _knecht_
simply implied a servant, sworn to continue good service in honor of
the sovereign, and of God and St. George. “I remain your sworn servant”
is a form of epistolary valediction which crept into the letters of
other orders in later times. The manner of making was more theatrical
than at the present time; and we should now smile if we were to see, on
a lofty scaffold in St. Paul’s, a city gentleman seated in a chair of
silver adorned with green silk, undergoing exhortation from the bishop,
and carried up between two lords, to be dubbed under the sovereign’s
hand, a good knight, by the help of Heaven and his patron saint.
In old days belted earls could create knights. In modern times, the
only subject who is legally entitled to confer the honor of chivalry
is the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland; and some of his “subjects” consider
it the most terrible of his privileges. The attempt to dispute the
right arose, perhaps, from those who dreaded the exercise of it on
themselves. However this may be, it is certain that the _vexata
questio_ was finally set at rest in 1823, when the judges declared that
the power in question undoubtedly resided in the Lords Lieutenant,
since the Union, as it did in the viceroys who reigned vicariously
previous to that period. According to the etiquette of heraldry, the
distinctive appellation “Sir” should never be omitted even when the
knight is a noble of the first hereditary rank. “The Right Honorable
Sir Hugh Percy, Duke of Northumberland,” would have been the proper
heraldic defining of his grace when he became Knight of the Garter, for
it is a rule that “the greater dignity doth never drown the lesser, but
both stand together in one person.”
A knight never surrendered his sword but to a knight. “Are you knight
and gentleman?” asked Suffolk, when, four hundred years ago, he yielded
to Regnault: “I am a gentleman,” said Regnault, “but I am not yet a
knight.” Whereupon Suffolk bade him kneel, dubbed him knight, received
the accustomed oaths, and then gave up his old sword to the new
chevalier.
Clark considered that the order was degraded from its exclusively
military character, when membership was conferred upon gownsmen,
physician, burghers, and artists. He considered that civil merit, so
distinguished, was a loss of reputation to military knights. The logic
by which he arrives at such a conclusion is rather of the loosest. It
may be admitted, however, that the matter has been specially abused
in Germany. Monsieur About, that clever gentleman, who wrote “Tolla”
out of somebody else’s book, very pertinently remarks in his review of
the fine-art department of the Paris Exhibition, that the difference
between English and German artists is, that the former are well-paid,
but that very few of them are knights, while the latter are ill-paid
and consequently ill-clothed; but, for lack of clothes, have abundance
of ribands.
Dr. Nares himself is of something of the opinion of Clark, and he
ridicules the idea of a chivalric and martial title being given to
brewers, silversmiths, attorneys, apothecaries, upholsterers, hosiers,
tailors. &c. He asserts that knighthood should belong only to military
members: but of these no inconsiderable number would have to be
unknighted, or would have to wait an indefinite time for the honor were
the old rule strictly observed, whereby no man was entitled to the
rank and degree of knighthood, who had not actually been in battle and
captured a prisoner with his own hands. With respect to the obligation
on knights to defend and maintain all ladies, gentlewomen, widows,
and orphans; the one class of men may be said to be just as likely to
fulfil this obligation, as the other class.
France, Italy, and Germany, long had their forensic knights, certain
titles at the bar giving equal privileges; and the obligations above
alluded to were supposed to be observed by these knights--who found
esquires in their clerks, in the forensic war which they were for ever
waging in defence of right. Unhappily these forensic chevaliers so
often fought in defence of wrong and called it right, that the actual
duty was indiscriminately performed or neglected.
It has often been said of “orders” that they are indelible. However
this may be with the clergy, it is especially the case with knights.
To whatever title a knight might attain, duke, earl, or baron, he
never ceased to be a knight. In proof too that the latter title was
considered one of augmentation, is cited the case of Louis XI., who, at
his coronation, was knighted by Philip, Duke of Burgundy. “If Louis,”
says an eminent writer (thus cited by Dr. Nares), “had been made duke,
marquis, or earl, it would have detracted from him, all those titles
being in himself.”
The crown, when it stood in need of the chivalrous arms of its knights,
called for the required feudal service, not from its earls as such, but
from its barons. To every earldom was annexed a barony, whereby their
feudal service with its several dependent duties was alone ascertained.
“That is,” says Berington, in his Henry II., “the tenure of barony and
not of earldom constituted the legal vassal of the crown. Each earl
was at the same time a baron, as were the bishops and some abbots and
priors of orders.”
Some of these barons were the founders of parish churches, but the
terms on which priest and patron occasionally lived may be seen in
the law, whereby patrons or feudatarii killing the rector, vicar,
or clerk of their church, or mutilating him, were condemned to lose
their rights; and their posterity, to the fourth generation, was made
incapable of benefice or prelacy in religious houses. The knightly
patron was bound to be of the same religious opinions, of course, as
his priest, or his soul had little chance of being prayed for. In later
times we have had instances of patrons determining the opinions of the
minister. Thus as a parallel, or rather in contrast with measures as
they stood between Sir Knight and Sir Priest, may be taken a passage
inserted in the old deeds of the Baptist chapel at Oulney. In this deed
the managers or trustees injoined that “no person shall ever be chosen
pastor of this church, who shall differ in his religious sentiments
from the Rev. John Gibbs of Newcastle.” It is rather a leap to pass
thus from the baronial knights to the Baptist chapels, but the matter
has to do with my subject at both extremities. Before leaving it I will
notice the intimation proudly made on the tombstone in Bunhill Fields
Cemetery, of Dame Mary Page, relict of Sir George Page. The lady died
more than a century and a quarter ago, and although the stone bears
no record of any virtue save that she was patient and fearless under
suffering, it takes care to inform all passers-by, that this knight’s
lady, “in sixty-seven months was tapped sixty-six times, and had taken
away two hundred and forty gallons of water, without ever repining at
her case, or ever fearing its operation.” I prefer the mementoes of
knight’s ladies in olden times which recorded their deeds rather than
their diseases, and which told of them, as White said of Queen Mary,
that their “knees were hard with kneeling.”
I will add one more incident, before changing the topic, having
reference as it has to knights, maladies, and baptism. In 1660, Sir
John Floyer was the most celebrated knight-physician of his day. He
chiefly tilted against the disuse of baptismal immersion. He did not
treat the subject theologically, but in a sanitary point of view. He
prophesied that England would return to the practice as soon as people
were convinced that cold baths were safe and useful. He denounced
the first innovators who departed from immersion, as the destroyers
of the health of their children and of posterity. Degeneracy of
race, he said, had followed, hereditary diseases increased, and men
were mere carpet-knights unable to perform such lusty deeds as their
duly-immersed forefathers.
There are few volumes which so admirably illustrate what knights
_should_ be, and what they sometimes were _not_, as De Joinville’s
Chronicle of the Crusades of St. Louis--that St. Louis, who was himself
the patron-saint of an order, the cross of which was at first conferred
on princes, and at last on perruquiers. The faithful chronicler rather
profanely, indeed, compares the royal knight with God himself. “As
God died for his people, so did St. Louis often peril his life, and
incurred the greatest dangers, for the people of his kingdom.” After
all, this simile is as lame as it is profane. The truth, nevertheless,
as it concerns St. Louis, is creditable to the illustrious king, saint,
and chevalier. “In his conversation he was remarkably chaste, for I
never heard him, at any time, utter an indecent word, nor make use
of the devil’s name; which, however, now is very commonly uttered by
every one, but which I firmly believe, is so far from being agreeable
to God, that it is highly displeasing to him.” The King St. Louis,
mixed water with his wine, and tried to force his knights to follow his
example, adding, that “it was a beastly thing for an honorable man to
make himself drunk.” This was a wise maxim, and one naturally held by
a son, whose mother had often declared to him, that “she would rather
he was in his grave, than that he should commit a mortal sin.” And yet
wise as his mother, and wise as her son was, the one could not give
wise religious instructors to the latter, nor the latter perceive where
their instruction was illogical. That it _was_ so, may be discerned in
the praise given by De Joinville, to the fact, that the knightly king
in his dying moments “called upon God and his saints, and _especially_
upon St. James, and St. Genevieve, _as his intercessors_.”
It is interesting to learn from such good authority as De Joinville,
the manner in which the knights who followed St. Louis prepared
themselves for their crusading mission. “When I was ready to set out,
I sent for the Abbot of Cheminon, who was at that time considered as
the most discreet man of all the White Monks, to reconcile myself
with him. He gave me my scarf, and bound it on me, and likewise put
the pilgrim’s staff in my hand. Instantly after I quitted the castle
of Joinville, without even re-entering it until my return from beyond
sea. I made pilgrimages to all the holy places in the neighborhood,
such as Bliecourt, St. Urban, and others near to Joinville. I dared
never turn my eyes that way, for fear of feeling too great regret,
and lest my courage should fail on leaving my two fine children, and
my fair castle of Joinville, which I loved in my heart.” “One touch
of nature makes the whole world kin,” and here we have the touch the
poet speaks of. Down the Saône and subsequently down the Rhone, the
crusaders flock in ample vessels, but not large enough to contain
their steeds, which were led by grooms along the banks. When all had
re-embarked at Marseilles and were fairly out at sea, “the captain
made the priests and clerks mount to the castle of the ship, and
chant psalms in praise of God, that he might be pleased to grant us a
prosperous voyage.” While they were singing the _Veni Creator_ in full
chorus, the mariners set the sails “in the name of God,” and forthwith
a favorable breeze sprang up in answer to the appeal, and knights and
holy men were speedily careering over the billows of the open sea very
hopeful and exceedingly sick. “I must say here,” says De Joinville, who
was frequently so disturbed by the motion of the vessel, so little of a
knight, and so timid on the water as to require a couple of men to hold
him as he leant over the side in the helpless and unchivalrous attitude
of a cockney landsman on board a Boulogne steamer--“I must say,” he
exclaims--sick at the very reminiscence, “that he is a great fool who
shall put himself in such dangers, having wronged any one, or having
any mortal sins on his conscience; for when he goes to sleep in the
evening, he knows not if in the morning he may not find himself under
the sea.”
This was a pious reflection, and it was such as many a knight,
doubtless, made on board a vessel, on the castle of which priests and
clerks sang _Veni Creator_ and the mariners bent the sail “in the name
of God.” But whether the holy men did not act up to their profession,
or the secular knights cared not to profit by their example, certain it
is that in spite of the saintly services and formalities on board ship,
the chevaliers were no sooner on shore, than they fell into the very
worst of practices. De Joinville, speaking of them at Damietta, remarks
that the barons, knights, and others, who ought to have practised
self-denial and economy, were wasteful of their means, prodigal
of their supplies, and addicted to banquetings, and to the vices
which attend on over-luxuriant living. There was a general waste of
everything, health included. The example set by the knights was adopted
by the men-at-arms, and the debauchery which ensued was terrific.
The men were reduced to the level of beasts, and wo to the women or
girls who fell into their power when out marauding. It is singular to
find De Joinville remarking that the holy king was obliged “to wink
at the greatest liberties of his officers and men.” The picture of a
royal saint winking at lust, rapine, and murder, is not an agreeable
one. “The good king was told,” says the faithful chronicler, “that
at a stone’s throw round his own pavilion, were several tents whose
owners made profit by letting them out for infamous purposes.” These
tents and tabernacles of iniquity were kept by the king’s own personal
attendants, and yet the royal saint winked at them! The licentiousness
was astounding, the more so as it was practised by Christian knights,
who were abroad on a holy purpose, but who went with bloody hands,
unclean thoughts, and spiritual songs to rescue the Sepulchre of Christ
from the unworthy keeping of the infidel. Is it wonderful that the
enterprise was ultimately a failure?
De Joinville himself, albeit purer of life than many of his comrades,
was not above taking unmanly advantage of a foe. The rule of chivalry,
which directed that all should be fair in fight, was never regarded by
those chivalrous gentlemen when victory was to be obtained by violating
the law. Thus, of an affair on the plains before Babylon, we find the
literary swordsman complacently recording that he “perceived a sturdy
Saracen mounting his horse, which was held by one of his esquires by
the bridle, and _while he was putting his hand on his saddle to mount_,
I gave him,” says De Joinville, “such a thrust with my spear, which I
pushed as far as I was able, that he fell down dead.” This was a base
and cowardly action. There was more of the chivalrous in what followed:
“The esquire, seeing his lord dead, abandoned master and horse; but,
watching my motions, on my return struck me with his lance such a blow
between my shoulders as drove me on my horse’s neck, and held me there
so tightly that I could not draw my sword, which was girthed round
me. I was forced to draw another sword which was at the pommel of my
saddle, and it was high time; but when he saw I had my sword in my
hand, he withdrew his lance, which I had seized, and ran from me.”
I have said that this knight who took such unfair advantage of a foe,
was more of a Christian nevertheless than many of his fellows. This
is illustrated by another trait highly illustrative of the principles
which influenced those brave and pious warriors. De Joinville remarks
that on the eve of Shrove-tide, 1249, he saw a thing which he “_must_
relate.” On the vigil of that day, he tells us, there died a very
valiant and prudent knight, Sir Hugh de Landricourt, a follower of
De Joinville’s own banner. The burial service was celebrated; but
half-a-dozen of De Joinville’s knights, who were present as mourners,
talked so irreverently loud that the priest was disturbed as he was
saying mass. Our good chronicler went over to them, reproved them, and
informed them that “it was unbecoming gentlemen thus to talk while
the mass was celebrating.” The ungodly half-dozen, thereupon, burst
into a roar of laughter, and informed De Joinville, in their turn,
that they were discussing as to which of the six should marry the
widow of the defunct Sir Hugh, then lying before them on his bier! De
Joinville, with decency and common sense “rebuked them sharply, and
said such conversation was indecent and improper, for that they had too
soon forgotten their companion.” From this circumstance De Joinville
tries to draw a logical inference, if not conclusion. He makes a sad
confusion of causes and effects, rewards and punishments, practice and
principle, human accidents and especial interferences on the part of
Heaven. For instance, after narrating the mirth of the knights at the
funeral of Sir Hugh, and their disputing as to which of them should
woo the widow, he adds: “Now it happened on the morrow, when the first
grand battle took place, although we may laugh at their follies, that
of all the six not one escaped death, and they remained unburied. The
wives of the whole six re-married! _This_ makes it credible that God
leaves no such conduct unpunished. With regard to myself _I fared
little better_, for I was grievously wounded in the battle of Shrove
Tuesday. I had besides the disorder in my legs and mouth before spoken
of, and such a rheum in my head it ran through my mouth and nostrils.
In addition I had a double fever called a quartan, from which God
defend us! And with these illnesses was I confined to my bed for half
of Lent.” And thus, if the married knights were retributively slain for
talking about the wooing of a comrade’s widow, so De Joinville himself
was somewhat heavily afflicted for having undertaken to reprove them!
I must add one more incident, however, to show how in the battle-field
the human and Christian principle was not altogether lost.
The poor priest, whom the wicked and wedded knights had interrupted
in the service of the mass by follies, at which De Joinville himself
seems to think that men _may_, perhaps, be inclined to laugh, became as
grievously ill as De Joinville himself. “And one day,” says the latter,
“when he was singing mass before me as I lay in my bed, at the moment
of the elevation of the host I saw him so exceedingly weak that he was
near fainting; but when I perceived he was on the point of falling to
the ground, I flung myself out of bed, sick as I was, and taking my
coat, embraced him, and bade him be at his ease, and take courage from
Him whom he held in his hand. He recovered some little; but I never
quitted him till he had finished the mass, which he completed, and this
was the last, for he never celebrated another, but died; God receive
his soul!” This is a pleasanter picture of Christian chivalry than any
other that is given by this picturesque chronicler.
Chivalry, generally, has been more satirized and sneered at by the
philosophers than by any other class of men. The sages stigmatize the
knights as mere boasters of bravery, and in some such terms as those
used by Dussaute, they assert that the boasters of their valor are as
little to be trusted as those who boast of their probity. “Defiez vous
de quiconque parle toujours de sa probité comme de quiconque parle
toujours de bravoure.”
It will not, however, do for the philosophers to sneer at their
martial brethren. Now that Professor Jacobi has turned from grave
studies for the benefit of mankind, to the making of infernal machines
for the destruction of brave and helpless men, at a distance, that
very unsuccessful but would-be homicide has, as far as he himself is
concerned, reduced science to a lower level than that occupied by men
whose trade is arms. But this is not the first time that philosophers
have mingled in martial matters. The very war which has been begun by
the bad ambition of Russia, may be traced to the evil officiousness of
no less a philosopher than Leibnitz. It was this celebrated man who
first instigated a European monarch to seize upon a certain portion of
the Turkish dominion, whereby to secure an all but universal supremacy.
The monarch was Louis XIV., to whom Leibnitz addressed himself, in a
memorial, as to the wisest of sovereigns, most worthy to have imparted
to him a project at once the most holy, the most just, and the most
easy of accomplishment. Success, adds the philosopher, would secure
to France the empire of the seas and of commerce, and make the French
king the supreme arbiter of Christendom. Leibnitz at once names Egypt
as the place to be seized upon; and after hinting what was necessary,
by calling his majesty a “miracle of secresy,” he alludes to further
achievements by stating of the one in question, that it would cover his
name with an immortal glory, for having cleared, whether for himself or
his descendants, “the route for exploits similar to those of Alexander.”
There is no country in the memorialist’s opinion the conquest of which
deserves so much to be attempted. As to any provocation on the part
of the Turkish sovereign of Egypt, he does not pause to advise the
king even to feign having received cause of offence. The philosopher
goes through a _resumé_ of the history of Egypt, and the successive
conquests that had been made of, as well as attempts against it, to
prove that its possession was accounted of importance in all times; and
he adds that its Turkish master was just then in such debility that
France could not desire a more propitious opportunity for invasion.
This argument shows that when the Czar Nicholas touched upon this
nefarious subject, he not only was ready to rob this same “sick
man,” the Turk, but he stole his arguments whereby to illustrate his
opinions, and to prove that his sentiments were well-founded.
“By a single fortunate blow,” says Leibnitz, “empires may be in an
instant overthrown and founded. In such wars are found the elements of
high power and of an exalted glory.” It is unnecessary to repeat all
the seductive terms which Leibnitz employs to induce Louis XIV. to set
his chivalry in motion against the Turkish power. Egypt he calls “the
eye of countries, the mother of grain, the seat of commerce.” He hints
that Muscovy was even then ready to take advantage of any circumstance
that might facilitate her way to the conquest of Turkey. The conquest
of Egypt then was of double importance to France. Possessing _that_,
France would be mistress of the Mediterranean, of a great part of
Africa and Asia, and “the king of France could then, by incontestable
right, and with the consent of the Pope, assume the title of Emperor
of the East.” A further bait held out is, that in such a position he
could “hold the pontiffs much more in his power than if they resided
at Avignon.” He sums up by saying that there would be on the part of
the human race, “an everlasting reverence for the memory of the great
king to whom so many miracles were due!” “With the exception of the
philosopher’s stone,” finally remarks the philosopher, “I know nothing
that can be imagined of more importance than the conquest of Egypt.”
Leibnitz enters largely into the means to be employed, in order to
insure success; among them is a good share of mendacity; and it must
be acknowledged that the spirit of the memorial and its objects,
touching not Egypt alone, but the Turkish empire generally, had been
well pondered over by the Czar before he made that felonious attempt in
which he failed to find a confederate.
The original of the memorial, which is supposed to have been presented
to Louis XIV. just previous to his invasion of Holland--and, as some
say, more with the intention of diverting the king from his attack on
that country, than with any more definite object--was preserved in the
archives of Versailles till the period of the great revolution. A copy
in the handwriting of Leibnitz was, however, preserved in the Library
at Hanover. Its contents were without doubt known to Napoleon when he
was meditating that Egyptian conquest which Leibnitz pronounced to be
so easy of accomplishment; a copy, made at the instance of Marshal
Mortier for the Royal Library in Paris, is now in that collection.
The suggestion of Leibnitz, that the seat, if not of universal
monarchy, at least of the mastership of Christendom, was in the Turkish
dominions, has never been forgotten by Russia; and it is very possible
that some of its seductive argument may have influenced the Czar before
he impelled his troops into that war, which showed that Russia, with
all its boasted power, could neither take Silistria nor keep Sebastopol.
But in this fragmentary prologue, which began with Lingard and ends
with Leibnitz, we have rambled over wide ground. Let us become more
orderly, and look at those who were to be made knights.
THE TRAINING OF PAGES.
“What callest thou Page? What is its humor?
Sir; he is _Nobilis ephebus_, and
_Puer regius_, student of Knighthood,
Breaking hearts and hoping to break lances.”--_Old Play._
I have in another chapter noticed the circumstance of knighthood
conferred on an Irish prince, at so early an age as seven years.
This was the age at which, in less precocious England, noble youths
entered wealthy knights’ families as pages, to learn obedience,
to be instructed in the use of weapons, and to acquire a graceful
habit of tending on ladies. The poor nobility, especially, found
their account in this system, which gave a gratuitous education
to their sons, in return for services which were not considered
humiliating or dishonorable. These boys served seven years as pages,
or varlets--sometimes very impudent varlets--and at fourteen might be
regular esquires, and tend their masters where hard blows were dealt
and taken--for which encounters they “riveted with a sigh the armor
they were forbidden to wear.”
Neither pages, varlets, nor household, could be said to have been
always as roystering as modern romancers have depicted them. There was
at least exceptions to the rule--if there was a rule of roystering.
Occasionally, the lads were not indifferently taught before they left
their own homes. That is, not indifferently taught for the peculiar
life they were about to lead. Even the Borgias, infamous as the name
has become through inexorable historians and popular operas, were at
one time eminently respectable and exemplarily religious. Thus in the
household of the Duke of Gandia, young Francis Borgia, his son, passed
his time “among the domestics in wonderful innocence and piety.” It
was the only season of his life, however, so passed. Marchangy asserts
that the pages of the middle ages were often little saints; but this
could hardly have been the case since “espiègle comme un page,” “hardi
comme un page,” and other illustrative sayings have survived even the
era of pagedom. Indeed, if we may believe the minstrels, and they were
often as truth-telling as the annalist, the pages were now and then
even more knowing and audacious than their masters. When the Count Ory
was in love with the young Abbess of Farmoutier, he had recourse to his
page for counsel.
“Hola! mon page, venez me conseiller,
L’amour me berce, je ne puis sommeiller;
Comment me prendre pour dans ce couvent entrer?”
How ready was the ecstatic young scamp with his reply:--
“Sire il faut prendre quatorze chevaliers,
Et tous en nonnes il vous les faut habiller,
Puis, à nuit close, à la porte il faut heurter.”
What came of this advice, the song tells in very joyous terms, for
which the reader may be referred to that grand collection the “Chants
et Chansons de la France.”
On the other hand, Mr. Kenelm Digby, who is, be it said in passing, a
painter of pages, looking at his object through pink-colored glasses,
thus writes of these young gentlemen, in his “Mores Catholici.”
“Truly beautiful does the fidelity of chivalrous youth appear in the
page of history or romance. Every master of a family in the middle
ages had some young man in his service who would have rejoiced to
shed the last drop of his blood to save him, and who, like Jonathan’s
armor-bearer, would have replied to his summons: ‘Fac omnia quæ placent
animo tuo; perge quo cupis; et ero tecum ubicumque volueris.’ When
Gyron le Courtois resolved to proceed on the adventure of the _Passage
perilleux_, we read that the valet, on hearing the frankness and
courtesy with which his lord spoke to him, began to weep abundantly,
and said, all in tears, ‘Sire, know that my heart tells me that
sooth, if you proceed further, you will never return; that you will
either perish there, or you will remain in prison; but, nevertheless,
nothing shall prevent me going with you. Better die with you, if it be
God’s will, than leave you in such guise to save my own life;’ and so
saying, he stepped forward and said, ‘Sire, since you will not return
according to my advice, I will not leave you this time, come to me what
may.’ Authority in the houses of the middle ages,” adds Mr. Digby,
“was always venerable. The very term _seneschal_ is supposed to have
implied ‘old knight,’ so that, as with the Greeks, the word signifying
‘to honor,’ and to ‘pay respect,’ was derived immediately from that
which denoted old age, _πρεσβευω_ being thus used in the first line
of the Eumenides. Even to those who were merely attached by the bonds
of friendship or hospitality, the same lessons and admonitions were
considered due. John Francis Picus of Mirandola mentions his uncle’s
custom of frequently admonishing his friends, and exhorting them to a
holy life. ‘I knew a man,’ he says, ‘who once spoke with him on the
subject of manners, and who was so much moved by only two words from
him, which alluded to the death of Christ, as the motive for avoiding
sin, that from that hour, he renounced the ways of vice, and reformed
his whole life and manner.’”
We smile to find Mr. Digby mentioning the carving of angels in stone
over the castle-gates, as at Vincennes, as a proof that the pages
who loitered about there were little saints. But we read with more
interest, that “the Sieur de Ligny led Bayard home with him, and in the
evening preached to him as if he had been his own son, recommending him
to have heaven always before his eyes.” This is good, and that it had
its effect on Bayard, we all know; nevertheless that chevalier himself
was far from perfect.
With regard to the derivation of _Seneschal_ as noticed above, we may
observe that it implies “old man of skill.” Another word connected
with arms is “Marshal,” which is derived from _Mar_, “a horse,” and
_Schalk_, “skilful,” one knowing in horses; hence “Maréchal ferrant,”
as assumed by French farriers. _Schalk_, however, I have seen
interpreted as meaning “servant.” Earl Marshal was, originally, the
knight who looked after the royal horses and stables, and all thereto
belonging.
But to return to the subject of education. If all the sons of noblemen,
in former days, were as well off for gentle teachers as old historians
and authors describe them to have been, they undoubtedly had a great
advantage over some of their descendants of the present day. In
illustration of this fact it is only necessary to point to the sermons
recently delivered by a reverend pedagogue to the boys who have the
affliction of possessing him as headmaster. It is impossible to read
some of these whipping sermons, without a feeling of intense disgust.
Flagellation is there hinted at, mentioned, menaced, caressed as it
were, as if in the very idea there was a sort of delight. The worst
passage of all is where the amiable master tells his youthful hearers
that they are noble by birth, that the greatest humiliation to a noble
person is the infliction of a blow, and that nevertheless, he, the
absolute master, may have to flog many of them. How the young people
over whom he rules, must love such an instructor! The circumstance
reminds me of the late Mr. Ducrow, who was once teaching a boy to
go through a difficult act of horsemanship, in the character of a
page. The boy was timid, and his great master applied the whip to him
unmercifully. Mr. Joseph Grimaldi was standing by, and looked very
serious, considering his vocation. “You see,” remarked Ducrow to Joey,
“that it is quite necessary to _make an impression_ on these young
fellows.”--“Very likely,” answered Grimaldi, dryly, “but it can hardly
be necessary to make _the whacks_ so hard!”
The discipline to which pages were subjected in the houses of knights
and noblemen, does not appear to have been at all of a severe
character. Beyond listening to precept from the chaplain, heeding the
behests of their master, and performing pleasant duties about their
mistress, they seem to have been left pretty much to themselves, and
to have had, altogether, a pleasant time of it. The poor scholars had
by far a harder life than your “Sir page.” And this stern discipline
held over the pale student continued down to a very recent, that is, a
comparatively recent period. In Neville’s play of “The Poor Scholar,”
written in 1662, but never acted, the character of student-life at
college is well illustrated. The scene lies at the university, where
Eugenes, jun., albeit he is called “the poor scholar,” is nephew of
Eugenes, sen., who is president of a college. Nephew and uncle are
at feud, and the man in authority imprisons his young kinsman, who
contrives to escape from durance vile, and to marry a maiden called
Morphe. The fun of the marriage is, that the young couple disguise
themselves as country lad and lass, and the reverend Eugenes, sen.,
unconsciously couples a pair whom he would fain have kept apart. There
are two other university marriages as waggishly contrived; and when
the ceremonies are concluded, one of the newly-married students, bold
as any page, impudently remarks to the duped president, “Our names
are out of the butteries, and our persons out of your dominions.” The
phrase shows that, in the olden time, an “ingenuus puer” at Oxford,
if he were desirous of escaping censure, had only to take his name
off the books. But there were worse penalties than mere censure. The
author of “The Poor Scholar” makes frequent allusion to the whipping
of undergraduates, stretched on a barrel, in the buttery. There was
long an accredited tradition that Milton had been thus degraded. In
Neville’s play, one of the young Benedicks, prematurely married,
remarks, “Had I been once in the butteries, they’d have their rods
about me.” To this remark Eugenes, jun., adds another in reference to
his uncle the president, “He would have made thee ride on a barrel, and
made you show your fat cheeks.” But it is clear that even this terrible
penalty could be avoided by young gentlemen, if they had their wits
about them; for the fearless Aphobos makes boast, “My name is cut out
of the college butteries, and I have now no title to the mounting a
barrel.”
Young scions of noble houses, in the present time, have to endure more
harsh discipline than is commonly imagined. They are treated rather
like the buttery undergraduates of former days, than the pages who, in
ancient castles, learned the use of arms, served the Chatellaine, and
invariably fell in love with the daughters. They who doubt this fact
have only to read those Whipping Sermons to which I have referred. Such
discourses, in days of old, to a body of young pages, would probably
have cost the preacher more than he cared to lose. In these days, such
sermons can hardly have won affection for their author. The latter, no
doubt, honestly thought he was in possession of a vigorously salubrious
principle; but there is something ignoble both in the discipline
boasted of, and especially in the laying down the irresistible fact
to young gentlemen that a blow was the worst offence that could be
inflicted on persons of their class, but that _he_ could and would
commit such assault upon them, and that gentle and noble as they were,
they dared not resent it!
The pages of old time occasionally met with dreadful harsh treatment
from their chivalrous master. The most chivalrous of these Christian
knights could often act cowardly and unchristian-like. I may cite, as
an instance, the case of the great and warlike Duke of Burgundy, on
his defeat at Muret. He was hemmed in between ferocious enemies and
the deep lake. As the lesser of two evils, he plunged into the latter,
and his young page leaped upon the crupper as the Duke’s horse took
the water. The stout steed bore his double burden across, a breadth of
two miles, not without difficulty, yet safely. The Duke was, perhaps,
too alarmed himself, at first, to know that the page was hanging
on behind; but when the panting horse reached the opposite shore,
sovereign Burgundy was so wroth at the idea that the boy, by clinging
to his steed, had put the life of the Duke in peril, that he turned
upon him and poignarded the poor lad upon the beach. Lassels, who
tells the story, very aptly concludes it with the scornful yet serious
ejaculation, “Poor Prince! thou mightest have given another offering
of thanksgiving to God for thy escape, than this!” But “Burgundy”
was rarely gracious or humane. “Carolus Pugnax,” says Burton, in his
Anatomy of Melancholy, “made Henry Holland, late Duke of Exeter,
exiled, run after his horse, like a lackey, and would take no notice of
him.” This was the English peer who was reduced to beg his way in the
cities of Flanders.
Of pages generally, we shall have yet to speak incidentally--meanwhile,
let us glance at their masters at home.
KNIGHTS AT HOME.
“Entrez Messìeurs; jouissez-vous de mon coin-de-feu. Me voilà, chez
moi!”--_Arlequin à St. Germains._
Ritter Eric, of Lansfeldt, remarked, that next to a battle he dearly
loved a banquet. We will, therefore, commence the “Knight at Home,” by
showing him at table. Therewith, we may observe, that the Knights of
the Round Table appear generally to have had very solid fare before
them. King Arthur--who is the reputed founder of this society, and who
invented the table in order that when all his knights were seated none
could claim precedency over the others--is traditionally declared to
have been the first man who ever sat down to a whole roasted ox. Mr.
Bickerstaff, in the “Tatler,” says that “this was certainly the best
way to preserve the gravy;” and it is further added, that “he and his
knights set about the ox at his round table, and usually consumed it to
the very bones before they would enter upon any debate of moment.”
They had better fare than the knights-errant, who
“as some think,
Of old, did neither eat nor drink,
Because when thorough deserts vast,
And regions desolate they passed,
Where belly-timber above ground,
Or under, was not to be found,
Unless they grazed, there’s not one word
Of their provision on record:
Which made some confidently write,
They had no stomachs but to fight.”
This, however, is only one poet’s view of the dietary of the errant
gentlemen of old. Pope is much nearer truth when he says, that--
“In days of old our fathers went to war,
Expecting sturdy blows and scanty fare,
Their beef they often in their morion stewed,
And in their basket-hilt their beverage brewed.”
--that basket-hilt of which it is so well said in Hudibras, that--
“it would hold broth,
And serve for fight and dinner both.”
The lords and chivalric gentlemen who fared so well and fought so
stoutly, were not always of the gentlest humor at home. It has been
observed that Piedmontese society long bore traces of the chivalric
age. An exemplification is afforded us in Gallenga’s History of
Piedmont. It will serve to show how absolute a master a powerful
knight and noble was in his own house. Thus, from Gallenga we learn
that Antonio Grimaldi, a nobleman of Chieri, had become convinced of
the faithlessness of his wife. He compelled her to hang up with her
own hand her paramour to the ceiling of her chamber; then he had the
chamber walled up, doors and windows, and only allowed the wretched
woman as much air and light, and administered with his own hand as
much food and drink, as would indefinitely prolong her agony. And so
he watched her, and tended her with all that solicitude which hatred
can suggest as well as love, and left her to grope alone in that blind
solitude, with the mute testimony of her guilt--a ghastly object on
which her aching eyes were riveted, day by day, night after night, till
it had passed through every loathsome stage of decomposition. This man
was surely worse in his vengeance than that Sir Giles de Laval, who has
come down to us under the name of Blue-Beard.
This celebrated personage, famous by his pseudonym, was not less so
in his own proper person. There was not a braver knight in France,
during the reigns of Charles VI. and VII., than this Marquis de Laval,
Marshal of France. The English feared him almost as much as they did
the Pucelle. The household of this brave gentleman was, however, a hell
upon earth; and licentiousness, blasphemy, attempts at sorcery, and,
more than attempts at, very successful realizations of, murder were
the little foibles of this man of many wives. He excelled the most
extravagant monarchs in his boundless profusion, and in the barbaric
splendor of his court or house: the latter was thronged with ladies
of very light manners, players, mountebanks, pretended magicians, and
as many cooks as Julian found in the palace of his predecessor at
Constantinople. There were two hundred saddle-horses in his stable,
and he had a greater variety of dogs than could now be found at any
score of “fanciers” of that article. He employed the magicians for a
double purpose. They undertook to discover treasures for his use, and
pretty handmaids to tend on his illustrious person, or otherwise amuse
him by the display of their accomplishments. Common report said that
these young persons were slain after a while, their blood being of much
profit in making incantations, the object of which was the discovery of
gold. Much exaggeration magnified his misdeeds, which were atrocious
enough in their plain, unvarnished infamy. At length justice overtook
this monster. She did not lay hold of him for his crimes against
society, but for a peccadillo which offended the Duke of Brittany.
Giles de Laval, for this offence, was burnt at Nantes, after being
strangled--such mercy having been vouchsafed to him, because he was a
gallant knight and gentleman, and of course was not to be burnt alive
like any petty villain of peasant degree. He had a moment of weakness
at last, and just previous to the rope being tightened round his neck,
he publicly declared that he should never have come to that pass, nor
have committed so many excesses, had it not been for his wretched
education. Thus are men, shrewd enough to drive bargains, and able to
discern between virtue and vice, ever ready, when retribution falls on
them at the scaffold, to accuse their father, mother, schoolmaster, or
spiritual pastor. Few are like the knight of the road, who, previous to
the cart sliding from under him, at Tyburn, remarked that he had the
satisfaction, at least, of knowing that the position he had attained
in society was owing entirely to himself. “May I be hanged,” said he,
“if that isn’t the fact.” The finisher of the law did not stop to argue
the question with him, but, on cutting him down, remarked, with the
gravity of a cardinal before breakfast, that the gentleman had wronged
the devil and the ladies, in attributing his greatness so exclusively
to his own exertions.
I have said that perhaps Blue-Beard’s little foibles have been
exaggerated; but, on reflection, I am not sure that this pleasant
hypothesis can be sustained. De Laval, of whom more than I have told
may be found in Mezeray, was not worse than the Landvogt Hugenbach,
who makes so terrible a figure in Barante’s “Dukes of Burgundy.” The
Landvogt, we are told by the last-named historian, cared no more for
heaven than he did for anybody on earth. He was accustomed to say that
being perfectly sure of going to the devil, he would take especial care
to deny himself no gratification that he could possibly desire. There
was, accordingly, no sort of wild fancy to which he did not surrender
himself. He was a fiendish corruptor of virtue, employing money,
menaces, or brutal violence, to accomplish his ends. Neither cottage
nor convent, citizen’s hearth nor noble’s château, was secure from his
invasion and atrocity. He was terribly hated, terribly feared--but then
Sir Landvogt Hugenbach gave splendid dinners, and every family round
went to them, while they detested the giver.
He was remarkably facetious on these occasions, sometimes ferociously
so. For instance, Barante records of him, that at one of his pleasant
soirées he sent away the husbands into a room apart, and kept the wives
together in his grand saloon. These, he and his myrmidons despoiled
entirely of their dresses; after which, having flung a covering over
the head of each lady, who dared not, for her life, resist, the amiable
host called in the husbands one by one, and bade each select his own
wife. If the husband made a mistake, he was immediately seized and
flung headlong down the staircase. The Landvogt made no more scruple
about it than Lord Ernest Vane when he served the Windsor manager
after something of the same fashion. The husbands who guessed rightly
were conducted to the sideboard to receive congratulations, and drink
various flasks of wine thereupon. But the amount of wine forced upon
each unhappy wretch was so immense, that in a short time he was as near
death as the mangled husbands, who were lying in a senseless heap at
the foot of the staircase.
They who would like to learn further of this respectable individual,
are referred to the pages of Barante. They will find there that
this knight and servant of the Duke of Burgundy was more like an
incarnation of the devil than aught besides. His career was frightful
for its stupendous cruelty and crime; but it ended on the scaffold,
nevertheless. His behavior there was like that of a saint who felt
a little of the human infirmity of irritability at being treated as
a very wicked personage by the extremely blind justice of men. So
edifying was this chivalrous scoundrel, that the populace fairly took
him for the saint he figured to be; and long after his death, crowds
flocked to his tomb to pray for his mediation between them and God.
The rough jokes of the Landvogt remind me of a much greater man than
he--Gaston de Foix, in whose earlier times there was no lack of rough
jokes, too. The portrait of Gaston, with his page helping to buckle on
his armor, by Giorgione da Castel Franco, is doubtless known to most of
my readers--through the engraving, if not the original. It was formerly
the property of the Duke of Orleans; but came, many years ago, into the
possession, by purchase, of Lord Carlisle. The expression of the page
or young squire who is helping to adjust Gaston’s armor is admirably
rendered. That of the hero gives, perhaps, too old a look to a knight
who is known to have died young.
This Gaston was a nephew of Louis XII. His titles were Duke of Nemours
and Count d’Etampes. He was educated by his mother, the sister of King
Louis. She exulted in Gaston as one who was peculiarly her own work.
“Considering,” she says, “how honor became her son, she was pleased to
let him seek danger where he was likely to find fame.” His career was
splendid, but proportionally brief. He purchased imperishable renown,
and a glorious death, in Italy. He gained the victory of Ravenna, at
the cost of his life; after which event, fortune abandoned the standard
of Louis; and Maximilian Sforza recovered the Milanese territories of
his father, Ludovic. This was early in the sixteenth century.
But it is of another Gaston de Foix that I have to speak. I have given
precedence to one bearer of the name, because he was the worthier
man; but the earlier hero will afford us better illustrations of the
home-life of the noble knights who were sovereigns within their own
districts. Froissart makes honorable mention of him in his “Chronicle.”
He was Count de Foix, and kept court at Ortez, in the south of France.
There assembled belted knights and aspiring ’squires, majestic matrons
and dainty damsels. When the Count was not on a war-path, his house
was a scene of great gayety. The jingle of spurs, clash of swords,
tramp of iron heels, virelays sung by men-at-arms, love-songs hummed
by audacious pages, and romances entoned to the lyre by minstrels who
were masters in the art--these, with courtly feasts and stately dances,
made of the castle at Ortez anything but a dull residence. Hawking and
hunting seem to have been “my very good Erle’s” favorite diversion.
He was not so much master of his passions as he was of his retainers;
and few people thought the worse of him simply because he murdered his
cousin for refusing to betray his trust, and cut the throat of the only
legitimate son of the Earl.
We may form some idea of the practical jests of those days, from an
anecdote told by Froissart. Gaston de Foix had complained, one cold
day, of the scanty fire which his retainers kept up in the great
gallery. Whereupon one of the knights descended to the court-yard,
where stood several asses laden with wood. One of them he seized, wood
and ass together, and staggering up-stairs into the gallery, flung
the whole, the ass heels uppermost, on to the fire. “Whereof,” says
Froissart, “the Earl of Foix had great joy, and so had all they that
were there, and had marvel of his strength, how he alone came up all
the stairs with the ass and the wood on his neck.”
Gaston was but a lazy knight. It was high noon, Froissart tells us,
before he rose from his bed. He supped at midnight; and when he issued
from his chamber to proceed to the hall where supper was laid, twelve
torches were carried before him, and these were held at his table “by
twelve varlets” during the time that supper lasted. The Earl sat alone,
and none of the knights or squires who crowded round the other tables
dared to speak a word to him unless the great man previously addressed
him. The supper then must have been a dull affair.
The treasurer of the Collegiate Church of Chimay relates in a very
delicate manner how Gaston came to murder his little son. Gaston’s wife
was living apart from her husband, at the court of her brother, the
King of Navarre, and the “little son” in question was residing there
on a visit to his mother. As he was on the point of returning, the king
of Navarre gave him a powder, which he directed the boy to administer
to his father, telling him that it was a love-powder, and would bring
back his father’s affection for the mother. The innocent boy took the
powder, which was in fact poison; and a night or two after his return
to Ortez, an illegitimate son of Gaston found it in the boy’s clothes.
The base-born lad informed against his brother, and when Gaston had
given the powder to a dog, which immediately died, he could scarcely
be kept from poniarding his son upon the spot. The poor child was
flung into a dungeon, where, between terror and despair, he refused to
take any food. Upon being told of this, the earl entered the chamber
in which the boy was confined, “he had at the same time a little
knife in his hand, to pare withal his nails.... In great displeasure
he thrust his hand at his son’s throat, and the point of his knife a
little entered into his throat into a certain vein; and the earl said,
‘Ah, traitor, why dost thou not eat thy meat?’ and therewith the earl
departed without any more doing or saying.” Never was brutal murder
more daintily glozed over, but Froissart is so afraid that he may not
have sufficiently impressed you with a conviction of its being a little
accident, that he goes on to say “The child was abashed, and afraid of
the coming of his father, and was also feeble of fasting, and the point
of the knife a little entered into his throat, into a certain vein of
his throat; and so [he] fell down suddenly _and died_!”
The rascally sire was as jolly after the deed as before it; but he
too one day “fell down suddenly and died.” He had overheated himself
with hunting, and in that condition bathed in cold water as soon as he
reached home. The description of the whole of this domestic scene is
one of the most graphic in Froissart, but it is too long for quotation.
It must suffice that the vast possessions of the count fell into the
hands of that villanous illegitimate son, Sir Jenbayne de Foix. The
latter was one of the six knights who, with Charles VI., entered a
ball-room disguised as satyrs, and fast chained together. Some one, who
is supposed to have owed no good-will to the king, flung a torch into
the group. Their inflammable dresses immediately caught fire, and Sir
Jenbayne de Foix was one of those who was burned to death. The king
himself, as is well known, had a very narrow escape.
Perhaps one of the chief home pleasures enjoyed by knights when not
engaged in war, was the pleasure of the chase. Idle country gentlemen
now resemble their chivalrous ancestors in this respect, and for want
of or distaste for other vocations, spend three fourths of their
rural time in the fields. In the old days too, as ever, there were
clerical gentlemen very much addicted to hunting and moreover not
less so to trespassing. These were not reverend rectors on their
own thorough-breds, or curates on borrowed ponies, but dignified
prelates--even archbishops. One of the latter, Edmund, archbishop of
Canterbury, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, presumed to
hunt without permission, on the grounds of a young knight, the Earl
of Arundel, a minor. On the day the Earl came of age, he issued a
prohibition against the archiepiscopal trespasser, and the latter in
return snapped his fingers at the earl, and declared that his way
was as legally open to any chase as it was free into any church.
Accordingly, the right reverend gentleman issued forth as usual, with
hounds and horses, and a “numerous meet” of clerical friends and
other followers, glad to hunt in such company. Their sport, however,
was spoiled by the retainers of the young earl. These, in obedience
to their master’s orders, called off the dogs, unstopped the earths,
warned off the riders, and laughed at the ecclesiastical thunder of the
prelate, flung at them in open field. Edmund, finding it impossible
to overcome the opposition of the men, addressed himself to the
master, summarily devoting him _ad inferos_ for daring to interfere
with the prelatic pastimes. Nothing daunted, the young earl, who
would gladly have permitted the archbishop to hunt in his company,
whenever so disposed, but who would not allow the head of the church
in England to act in the woods of Arundel as if he were also lord of
the land, made appeal to the only competent court--that of the Pope.
The contending parties went over and pleaded their most respective
causes personally; the earl with calmness, as feeling that he had right
on his side; Edmund with easy arrogance, springing from a conviction
that the Pontiff would not give a layman a triumph over a priest. The
archbishop, however, was mistaken. He not only lost his cause, but he
was condemned in the expenses; and if any one thinks that this decree
checked him in trespassing, such an idea would show that the holder
of it knew little of the spirit which moved prelates fond of hunting.
The archbishop became the most confirmed poacher in the country; and
if he did not spoil the knight’s sport by riding in advance of the
hounds with a red herring, he had resort to means as efficacious for
marring the pleasures of others in the chase. He affected, too, to look
down upon the earl as one inferior to him in degree, and when they
encountered at court, the prelate exhibited no more courtesy toward the
gallant knight than was manifested by Lord Cowley in Paris toward the
English Exhibition Commissioners, when the mere men of intellect were
kept at what the peer thought a proper distance by the mere men of rank.
There is, however, no lack of instances of young knights themselves
being brought up in arrogance and wilfulness. This sort of education
lasted longer, perhaps, in France than elsewhere. As late as the last
century this instruction prevailed, particularly where the pupil was
intended for the army. Thus, the rearing of the little Vidame d’Amiens
affords us an illustration. He was awkward and obstinate, but he might
have been cured of both defects, had his mother been permitted to
have some voice in his education. She was the last to be consulted,
or rather, was never consulted at all. The more the little man was
arrogant, the more delighted were his relatives with such manifestation
of his spirit; and one day, when he dealt to his aunt, the Marquise de
Belliere Plessis, a box of the ear which sent the old lady staggering,
her only remark was, “My dear, you should never strike me with the left
hand.” The courteous Vidame mortally hated his tutor, and expressed
such a desire to kill him, that the pedagogue was asked to allow the
little savage to believe that he had accomplished the desired act of
homicide. Accordingly, a light musket was placed in the boy’s hands,
from which the ball had been drawn, unknown to him, and with this,
coming suddenly upon his instructor, who feigned the surprise he did
not feel, the Vidame discharged the piece full at the breast of his
monitor and friend. The servile sage pretended to be mortally wounded,
and acted death upon the polished floor. He was quietly got rid of, and
a pension of four hundred francs, just sixteen pounds a year, rewarded
his stupid servility. The little chevalier was as proud as Fighting
Fitzgerald of having, as he supposed, “killed his man.”
Let us return to earlier times for illustrations of the knight at
home, and also abroad. There is no lack of such illustration in the
adventures of Fulke Fitzwarren. Fulke was one of the outlawed barons
of the reign of King John. In his youth, he was brought up with the
four sons of King Henry; he was much beloved by them all, except John.
“It happened that John and Fulke were sitting all alone in a chamber
playing at chess; and John took the chess-board, and struck Fulke with
a great blow. Fulke felt himself hurt, raised his foot and struck John
in the middle of the stomach; and his head flew against the wall, and
he became all weak, and fainted. Fulke was in consternation; but he was
glad that there was nobody in the chamber but they two, and he rubbed
John’s ears, who recovered from his fainting fit, and went to the king
his father, and made a great complaint. ‘Hold your tongue, wretch,’
said the king, ‘you are always quarrelling. If Fulke did anything but
good to you, it must have been by your own desert;’ and he called his
master, and made him beat him finely and well for complaining. John was
much enraged against Fulke, so that he could never afterward love him
heartily.”
The above, as has been remarked, evinces how little respect there
was in those early times for royal authority and the doctrine of
non-resistance. But it may be observed, that even in these more polite
times, were the heir-apparent to strike a playfellow, his royal
highness would probably meet in return with as ready-handed, if not
quite so rough a correction as was inflicted upon John. The latter
could not forgive a bold companion of his boyhood, as James I. did, in
subsequent times, with regard to “Jamie Slates.” On the contrary, when
John became king, he plotted with as unscrupulous a person as himself,
to deprive Fulke of his estate. The conversation between the king and
his confederate, Moris de Powis, was overheard; and what came of it
is thus told in the history of Fulke Fitzwarren, as edited by Thomas
Wright Esq., for the Warton Club:--
“There was close by a knight who had heard all the conversation between
the king and Moris, and he went in haste to Sir Fulke, and told him
that the king was about to confirm by his charter, to Sir Moris, the
lands to which he had right. Fulke and his four brothers came before
the king, and prayed that they might have the common law and the lands
to which they had claim and right, as the inheritance of Fulke; and
they prayed that the king would receive from them a hundred pounds,
on condition that he should grant them the award of his court of gain
and loss. The king told them that what he had granted to Sir Moris, he
would hold to it whoever might be offended or who not. At length Sir
Moris spoke to Sir Fulke, and said, ‘Sir Knight, you are a great fool
to challenge my lands; if you say that you have a right to White-Town,
you lie; and if we were not in the king’s presence I would have proved
it on your body.’ Sir William, Fulke’s brother, without a word more,
sprang forward and struck Sir Moris with his fist in the middle of
his face, that it became all bloody; knights interfered that no more
hurt was done; then said Sir Fulke to the king: ‘Sir King, you are
my liege-lord, and to you was I bound by fealty, as long as I was in
your service, and as long as I held the lands of you; and you ought
to maintain me in right, and you fail me in right and common law; and
never was he good king who denied his frank tenants law in his court;
wherefore I return you your homages:’ and with this word, he departed
from the court and went to his hostel.”
Fulke was most unjustly exiled, but after a while he returned to
England, wandered about in various disguises, and at length, with a
ripe project, settled down as a collier or charcoal-burner in Windsor
Forest. I will once more draw from Mr. Wright’s edition of this
knightly biography for what ensued.
“At length came the king with three knights, all on foot to Fulke,
where he was arranging his fire. When Fulke saw the king, he knew him
well enough, and he cast the fork from his hand and saluted his lord
and went on his knees before him very humbly. The king and his three
knights had great laughter and game at the breeding and bearing of
the collier. They stood there very long. ‘Sir Vilain,’ said the king,
‘have you seen no stag or doe pass here?’ ‘Yes, my lord, awhile ago.’
‘What beast did you see?’ ‘Sir, my lord, a horned one; and it had long
horns.’ ‘Where is it?’ ‘Sir, my lord, I know very well how to lead you
to where I saw it.’ ‘Onward then, Sir Vilain, and we will follow you.’
‘Sir,’ said the collier, ‘shall I take my fork in my hand? for if it
were taken I should have thereby a great loss.’ ‘Yea, Vilain, if you
will.’ Fulke took the great fork of iron in his hand and led the king
to shoot; for he had a very handsome bow. ‘Sir, my lord,’ said Fulke,
‘will you please to wait, and I will go into the thicket and make the
beast come this way by here?’ ‘Yea,’ said the king. Fulke did hastily
spring into the thick of the forest; and commanded his company hastily
to seize upon King John, for ‘I have brought him there only with three
knights; and all his company is on the other side of the forest.’ Fulke
and his company leaped out of the thicket, and rushed upon the king
and seized him at once. ‘Sir King,’ said Fulke, ‘now I have you in my
power, such judgment I will execute on you as you would on me, if you
had taken me.’ The king trembled with fear for he had great dread of
Fulke.”
There is here, perhaps, something of the romantic history, but with
a substantiality of truth. In the end, Fulke, who we are told was
really one of the barons to whom we owe Magna Charta, and who was
anathematized by the pope, and driven into exile again and again, got
the better of all his enemies, pope and king included. There are two
traditions touching his death. One is, that he survived to the period
of the battle of Lewes, where he was one of a body of Henry the Third’s
friends who were drowned in the adjacent river. The other tells a very
different story, and is probably nearer the truth. We are inclined
to think with Mr. Wright, the editor of the biographical history in
question, that he who was drowned near Lewes, was the son of Fulke.
We add the following account, less because of its detail touching the
death of the old knight than as having reference to how knights lived,
moved, and had their being, in the period referred to:--
“Fulke and Lady Clarice his wife, one night, were sleeping together
in their chamber; and the lady was asleep, and Fulke was awake,
and thought of his youth; and repented much in his heart for his
trespasses. At length, he saw in the chamber so great a light, that it
was wonderful; and he thought what could it be? And he heard a voice,
as it were, of thunder in the air, and it said:--‘Vassal, God has
granted thy penance, which is better here than elsewhere.’ At that
word the lady awoke, and saw the great light, and covered her face for
fear. At length this light vanished. And after this light Fulke could
never see more, but he was blind all his days. Then Fulke was very
hospitable and liberal, and he caused the king’s road to be turned
through his hall at his manor of Alleston, in order no stranger might
pass without having meat or lodging, or other honor or goods of his.
This Fulke remained seven years blind, and suffered well his penance.
Lady Clarice died and was buried at the New Abbey; after whose death
Fulke lived but a year, and died at the White-town; and in great honor
was he interred at the New Abbey--on whose soul may God have mercy.
Near the altar is the body. God have mercy on us all, alive and dead.
Amen!”
The religious sentiment was strong in all Norman knights, but not more
so, perhaps, than in the wild chivalry of North America, when first its
painted heroes heard of the passion and death of Christ. Charlevoix
tells us of an Iroquois, who, on hearing of the crucifixion, exclaimed
with the feeling of a Christian crusader, “Oh, if I had been there!”
Precisely such an exclamation was once made by a Norman knight, as he
listened to a monk narrating the great sacrifice on Mount Calvary. The
more savage warrior, however, has always had the more poetical feeling.
Witness the dying request of a young Indian chief, also noticed by
Charlevoix. The dying victor asked to be buried in a blue robe, because
that was the color of the sky: the fashion, with many Norman knights,
of being interred in a robe and cowl of a monk, had far less of
elevated feeling for its motive.
Having shown something of what the knight did at home, let us
contemplate also what he taught there, by precept, if not by example.
There was a knight who was known by the title of “the White Knight,”
whose name was De la Tour Landay, who was a contemporary of Edward the
Black Prince, and who is supposed to have fought at Poictiers. He, is,
however, best known, or at least equally well known, as the author
of a work entitled “Le Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landay.” This
book was written, or dictated by him, for the especial benefit of his
two daughters, and for the guidance of young ladies generally. It is
extremely indelicate in parts, and in such wise gives no very favorable
idea of the young ladies who could bear such instruction as is here
imparted. The Chevalier performed his authorship after a very free and
easy fashion. He engaged four clerical gentlemen, strictly designated
as “two priests and two clerks,” whose task it was to procure for
him all the necessary illustrative materials, such as anecdotes,
apophthegms, and such like. These were collected from all sources,
sacred and profane--from the Bible down to any volume, legendary or
historical, that would suit his purpose. These he worked mosaically
together, adding such wise saw, moral, counsel, or sentiment, as
he deemed the case most especially required;--with a sprinkling of
stories of his own collecting. A critic in the “Athenæum,” commenting
upon this curious volume, says with great truth, that it affords good
materials for an examination into the morals and manners of the times.
“Nothing,” says the reviewer, “is urged for adoption upon the sensible
grounds of right or wrong, or as being in accordance with any admitted
moral standard, but because it has been sanctified by long usage, been
confirmed by pretended miracle, or been approved by some superstition
which outrages common sense.”
In illustration of these remarks it is shown how the Chevalier
recommends a strict observation of the meagre days, upon the ground
that the dissevered head of a soldier was once enabled to call for a
priest, confess, and listen to the absolution, because the owner of the
head had never transgressed the Wednesday and Friday’s fasts throughout
his lifetime. Avoidance of the seven capital sins is enjoined upon
much the same grounds. Gluttony, for instance, is to be avoided, for
the good reason, that a prattling magpie once betrayed a lady who had
eaten a dish of eels, which her lord had intended for some guests whom
he wished particularly to honor. Charity is enjoined, not because the
practice thereof is placed by the great teacher, not merely above Hope,
but before Faith, but because a lady who, in spite of priestly warning,
gave the broken victuals of her household to her dogs rather than to
the poor, being on her death-bed, was leaped upon by a couple of black
dogs, and that these having approached her lips, the latter became as
black as a coal. The knight the more insists upon the proper exercise
of charity, seeing that he has unquestionable authority in support
of the truth of the story. That is, he knew a lady that had known
the defunct, and who said she had seen the dogs. Implicit obedience
of wives to husbands is insisted on, with a forcibly illustrative
argument. A burgher’s wife had answered her lord sharply, in place of
silently listening to reproof, and meekly obeying his command. The
husband, thereupon, dealt his wife a blow with his clenched fist,
which smashed her nose, and felled her to the ground. “It is reason
and right,” says the mailed Mrs. Ellis of his time, “that the husband
should have the word of command, and it is an honor to the good wife
to hear him, and hold her peace, and leave all high talking to her
lord; and so, on the contrary, it is a great shame to hear a woman
strive with her husband, _whether right or wrong_, and especially
before other people.” Publius Syrus says, that a good wife commands by
obeying, but the Chevalier evidently had no idea of illustrating the
Latin maxim, or recommending the end which it contemplates. The knight
places the husband as absolute lord; and his doing so, in conjunction
with the servility which he demands on the part of the wife, reminds
me of the saying of Toulotte, which is as true as anything enjoined
by the moralizing knight, namely, that “_L’obéissance aux volontés
d’un chef absolu assimile l’homme à la brute_.” This, with a verbal
alteration, may be applied as expressive of the effect of the knight’s
teaching in the matter of feminine obedience. The latter is indeed in
consonance with the old heathen ideas. Euripides asserts, that the most
intolerable wife in the world is a wife who philosophizes, or supports
her own opinion. We are astonished to find a Christian knight thus
agreed with a heathen poet--particularly as it was in Christian times
that the maxim was first published, which says, “_Ce que femme veut,
Dieu le veut!_”
This sentiment reminds me, that it is time to show how the knight was
affected by the tender passion, how it was sometimes his glory and
sometimes his shame. He was sometimes the victim, and at others the
victimizer.
LOVE IN CHEVALIERS, AND CHEVALIERS IN LOVE.
“How pleasing are the steps we lovers make,
When in the paths of our content we pace
To meet our longings!”--_The Hog hath Lost his Purse._
Butler, in his Hudibras (part iii. cant. 1), has amusingly illustrated
the feeling which moved knights-errant, and the particular object they
had in view: “the ancient errant knights,” he says:--
“Won all their ladies’ hearts in fights,
And cuts whole giants into fritters,
To put them into amorous twitters;
Whose stubborn bowels scorned to yield,
Until their gallants were half killed:
But when their bones were drubbed so sore
They durst not win one combat more,
The ladies’ hearts began to melt,
Subdued by blows their lovers felt.
So Spanish heroes with their lances
At once wound bulls and ladies’ fancies.”
However willing a knight may have been to do homage to his lady, the
latter, if she truly regarded the knight, never allowed his homage to
her to be paid at the cost of injury to his country’s honor or his
own. An instance of this is afforded us in the case of Bertrand de
Guesclin. There never was man who struck harder blows when he was a
bachelor; but when he went a wooing, and still more after he had wed
the incomparable Tiphania, he lost all care for honor in the field, and
had no delight but in the society of his spouse. The lady, however, was
resolved that neither his sword nor his reputation should acquire rust
through any fault or beauty of hers. She rallied him soundly on his
home-keeping propensities, set them in contrast with the activity of
his bachelor-days, and the renown acquired by it, and forthwith talked
him out of her bower and into his saddle.
The English did not profit by the lady’s eloquence, for our forefathers
never had a more gallant or more difficult adversary to deal with than
Bertrand. Living, his name was a terror to them; and dying, he had the
sympathy of those who had been his foes. Charles V. made him Constable
of France, and appointed him a grave at the foot of his own royal tomb.
De Guesclin would never have been half the man he was but for the good
sense of his wife Tiphania.
There are many instances in romance which would seem to imply, that so
strained was the sentiment which bound knights to respect ladies, it
compelled them not to depart therefrom even in extreme cases, involving
lightness of conduct and infidelity. The great northern chiefs,
who were a sort of very rough knights in their way, were, however,
completely under the distaff. Their wives could divorce themselves at
will. Thus, in Erysbiggia Saga we read of Borck, an Icelandic chief,
who, bringing home a guest whom his wife not only refused to welcome,
but attempted to stab, administered such correction to his spouse in
return, that the lady called in witnesses and divorced herself on the
spot. Thereupon the household goods were divided among them, and the
affair was rapidly and cheaply managed without the intervention of an
Ecclesiastical Court. More modern chivalry would not have tolerated the
idea of correcting even a faithless, much less a merely angry spouse.
Indeed, the amatory principle was quite as strong as the religious one;
and in illustration thereof, it has been remarked that the knight must
have been more than ordinarily devout who had God on his _right_ hand
(the place of honor), and his lady on his _left_.
To _ride at the ring_ was then the pleasantest pastime for knights; and
ladies looked on and applauded the success, or laughed at the failures.
The riding, without attempting to carry off the ring, is still common
enough at our fairs, for children; but in France and Germany, it is
seriously practised in both its simple and double forms, by persons
of all ages, who glide round to the grinding of an organ, and look as
grave as if they were on desperate business.
It is an undoubted matter of fact, that although a knight was bound to
be tender in his gallantry, there were some to be found whose wooing
was of the very roughest; and there were others who, if not rough, were
rascally.
The old Rue des Lombards, in Paris, was at one time occupied
exclusively by the “professed pourpoint-makers,” as a modern tailor
might say. They carried on a flourishing trade, especially in times
when men, like Bassompierre, thought nothing of paying, or promising to
pay, fourteen thousand crowns for a pourpoint. When I say the street
was thus occupied exclusively, I must notice an exception. There were a
few other residents in it, the Jew money-lenders or usurers; and when
I hear the old French proverb cited “patient as a Lombard,” I do not
know whether it originally applied to the tailors or the money-lenders,
both of whom were extensively cheated by their knightly customers. Here
is an illustration of it, showing that all Jessicas have not been as
lucky as Shylock’s daughter, and that some Jews have been more cruelly
treated than Shylock’s daughter’s father--whom I have always considered
as one of the most ill-used of men.
In the Rue des Lombards there dwelt a wealthy Jew, who put his money
out at interest, and kept his daughter under lock and key at home. But
the paternal Jew did not close his shutters, and the Lombard street
Jessica, sitting all day at the window, attracted the homage of many
passers-by. These were chiefly knights who came that way to be measured
for pourpoints; and no knight was more attracted by the black eyes of
the young lady in question, than the Chevalier Giles de Pontoise. That
name indeed is one of a celebrated hero of a burlesque tragedy, but the
original knight was “_my_ Beverley.”
Giles wore the showiest pourpoint in the world; for which he had
obtained long credit. It struck him that he would call upon the Jew to
borrow a few hundred pistoles, and take the opportunity to also borrow
the daughter. He felt sure of succeeding in both exploits; for, as he
remarked, if he could not pay the money he was about to borrow, he
could borrow it of his more prudent relatives, and so acquit himself of
his debt. With regard to the lady, he had serenaded her, night after
night, till she looked as ready to leap down to him as the Juliets who
played to Barry’s Romeo;--and he had sung “Ecco ridente il sole,” or
what was then equivalent to it, accompanied by his guitar, and looking
as ridiculous the while, without being half so silvery-toned as Rubini
in Almaviva, warbling his delicious nonsense to Rosina. Our Jew, like
old Bartolo, was destined to pay the musician.
Giles succeeded in extracting the money required from the usurer, and
he had like success in inducing the daughter to trust to his promises.
He took the latter to Pontoise, deceived her by a mock-marriage, and
spent all that he had borrowed from the father, in celebrating his
pretended nuptials with the daughter. There never was a more recreant
knight than Giles de Pontoise.
However, bills will become due, if noble or simple put their names to
them, and the Jew claimed at once both his debt and his daughter. He
failed in obtaining his money, but the lady he carried off by violence,
she herself exhibiting considerable reluctance to leave the Château de
Pontoise for the paternal dungeon in the Rue des Lombards.
This step brought Giles to a course of reflection. It was not of that
quality which his confessor would have recommended, but rather of a
satanic aspect. “In the usurer’s house,” thought Giles, “live the
tailor to whom I am indebted for my pourpoint, the Jew who holds my
promise to pay, and the pretty daughter of whom I have been so unjustly
deprived. I will set fire to the house. If I burn tailor, money-lender,
and the proofs of my liabilities, I shall have done a good night’s
work, if I therewith can carry off little Jessica.”
Thereupon, Giles went down to the Rue des Lombards, and with such aid
as was then easily purchasable, he soon wrapped the Jew’s dwelling
in flames. Shylock looked to his papers and money-bags. The knight
groped through the smoke and carried off the daughter. The Jew still
held the promissory note of the Knight of Pontoise, whose incendiary
act, however, had destroyed half of one side of the Rue des Lombards.
Therewith had perished reams of bonds which made slaves of chevaliers
to Jew money-lenders. “_Sic vos non vobis_,” thought Giles, “but at all
events, if he has my bill, I have possession of Jessica.”
The Jew held as much to his daughter as to his ducats. He persecuted
the pretended husband with a pertinacity which eventually overcame
Giles de Pontoise. A compromise was effected. The knight owed the
usurer three thousand golden crowns, and had stolen from him his only
daughter. Giles agreed to surrender his “lady,” on condition that the
money-lender should sign an acquittance of the debt. This done, the Jew
and daughter walked homeward, neither of them well satisfied with the
result of their dealings with a knight.
The burnt-out Lombarder turned round at the threshold of the knight’s
door, with a withering sneer, like Edmund Kean’s in Shylock when he
was told to make haste and go home, and begin to be a Christian. “It
is little but sorrow I get by you, at all events,” said the Jew to the
Chevalier.
“Do you make so light of your grandson?” asked Giles. And with this
Parthian dart he shut his door in the face of the trio who were his
victims.
This knight was a victimizer; but below we have an illustration of
knights victimized through too daring affection.
The great Karloman may be said to have been one of those crowned
knights who really had very little of the spirit of chivalry in him,
with respect to ladies. He married, successfully, two wives, but to
neither did he allow the title of Empress. It is, however, not with his
two wives, but his two daughters and their chevaliers _par amours_,
with whom we have now to do.
In the Rue de la Harpe, in Paris, may be seen the remains, rather than
the ruins, of the old building erected by the Emperor Julian, and which
was long known by the name of the “old palace.” It served as a palace
about a thousand years and half a century ago, when one night there
drew up before it a couple of knights, admirably mounted, and rather
roughly escorted by a mob, who held up their lanterns to examine the
riders, and handled their pikes as if they were more ready to massacre
the knights than to marshal them.
All the civility they received on this February night was of a highly
equivocal nature. They were admitted, indeed, into the first and
largest court of the palace, but the old seneschal locked and barred
the gate behind them. An officer too approached to bid them welcome,
but he had hardly acquitted himself of his civil mission when he
peremptorily demanded of them the surrender of their swords.
“We are the King’s own messengers,” said one of the knights, rather
puzzled at the reception vouchsafed to them;--“and we have, moreover,
a despatch to deliver, written in our gracious master’s own hand,”
remarked the second knight.
“Vive Louis le Debonnaire!” exclaimed the seneschal; “how fares it with
our sovereign?”
“As well as can be,” was the reply, “with a monarch who has been
engaged six whole weeks at Aix, in burying his father and predecessor,
Charlemagne. Here is his missive.” This missive was from Louis the
Frolicsome, or Louis the Good-Natured, or Louis of Fair Aspect. He was
morose, wittily disposed, and ill-featured;--but then the poet-laureate
had given him his fine name; and the king wore it as if it had been
fairly won. He had clipped, shaved, and frocked, all his natural
brothers, and then shut them up in monasteries. He had no more respect
for treaties than he had for Mohammed, and by personal example he
taught perjury and rebellion to those whom he cruelly punished when
they imitated their exalted instructor. The seneschal perused the
letter addressed to him by his royal correspondent, and immediately
requested the two knights to enter the palace itself.
They were ushered into a lofty-arched apartment on the ground floor,
which ordinarily served as an ante-room for the guards on duty; it was
for the moment, however, empty. They who have visited the old Palais de
Thermes, as it is called, have, doubtlessly, remarked and admired this
solid relic of the past.
After entering, the seneschal once more lifted the despatch to the
flambeau, read it through, looked at the seal, then at the knights,
coughed uneasily, and began to wear an air of dislike for some duty
imposed upon him. He repeated, as if he were learning by rote, the
names Raoul de Lys and Robert de Quercy. “Those are our names,”
observed the first; “we have ridden hither by the king’s orders to
announce his coming; and having done so, let us have fire and food,
lest we be famished and frozen before he arrives.”
“Hem!” muttered the seneschal, “I am extremely sorry; but, according to
this letter, you are my prisoners, and till to-morrow you must remain
in this apartment;” and, seeing them about to remonstrate, he added,
“You will be quite at liberty here, except, of course, that you can’t
get out; you will have separate quarters to-morrow.”
It was in vain that they inquired the reason for their detention, the
nature of the charge alleged against them, or what they had further to
expect. The seneschal dryly referred them to the monarch. He himself
knew nothing more than his orders, and by them he was instructed to
keep the two friends in close confinement till the sovereign’s arrival.
“On second thoughts,” said the seneschal, “I must separate you at once.
There is the bell in the tower of St. Jacques ringing midnight, and
to-morrow will be upon us, before its iron tongue has done wagging. I
really must trouble one of you gentlemen to follow me.” The voice was
not so civil as the words, and after much parleying and reluctance, the
two friends parted. Robert bade Raoul be of good cheer; and Raoul, who
was left behind, whispered that it would be hard, indeed, if harm was
to come to them under such a roof.
The roof, however, of this royal palace, looked very much like the
covering of a place in which very much harm might be very quietly
effected. But there were dwelling there two beings who might have been
taken for spirits of good, so winning, so natural, and so loveable were
the two spirits in question. They were no other than the two daughters
of Charlemagne, Gisla and Rotrude. The romancers, who talk such an
infinite deal of nonsense, say of them that their sweet-scented beauty
was protected by the prickles of principle. The most rapid of analysers
may see at once that this was no great compliment to the ladies. It
was meant, however, to be the most refined flattery; and the will was
accepted for the deed.
Now, the two knights loved the two ladies, and if they had _not_,
neither Father Daniel nor Sainte Foix could have alluded to their
amorous history; nor Father Pasquale, of the Convent of the Arminians
in Venice, have touched it up with some of the hues of romance, nor
Roger de Beauvoir have woven the two together, nor unworthy ægomet have
applied it to the illustration of daring lovers.
These two girls were marvellously high-spirited. They had been
wooed by emperors; but feeling no inclination to answer favorably to
the wooing, Charlemagne generously refused to put force upon their
affections, and bade them love only where their hearts directed them.
This “license” gave courage to numberless nobles of various degrees,
but Rotrude and Gisla said nay to all their regular advances. The
Princesses were, in fact, something like Miss Languish, thought love
worth nothing without a little excitement, and would have considered
elopement as the proper preceder of the nuptial ceremony. Their mother,
Hildegarda, was an unexceptional woman, but, like good Queen Charlotte,
who let her daughters read Polly Honeycombe as well as Hannah More,
she was a little confused in the way she taught morals, and the young
Princesses fell in love, at the first opportunity, with gallant
gentlemen of--as compared with princesses--rather low degree. In this
respect, there is a parallel between the house of Karloman and some
other houses of more modern times.
Louis le Debonnaire had, as disagreeable brothers will have, an
impertinent curiosity respecting his sisters’ affairs. He was, here,
the head of his family, and deemed himself as divinely empowered to
dispose of the hearts of these ladies, as of the families and fortunes
of his people. He had learned the love-passages that had been going
on, and he had hinted that when he reached the old palace in Paris,
he would make it as calmly cold as a cloister, and that there were
disturbed hearts there, which should be speedily restored to a lasting
tranquillity. The young ladies did not trouble themselves to read
the riddle of a brother who was for ever affecting much mystery. But
they prepared to welcome his arrival, and seemed more than ordinarily
delighted when they knew that intelligence of his approaching coming
had been brought by the two knights then in the castle.
Meanwhile, Raoul de Lys sat shivering on a stone bench in the great
guard-room. He subsequently addressed himself to a scanty portion of
skinny wild boar, very ill-cooked; drank, with intense disgust, part of
a flask of hydromel of the very worst quality; and then having gazed on
the miniature of Rotrude, which he took from beneath the buff jerkin
under his corslet, he apostrophized it till he grew sleepy, upon which
he blew out his lamp, and threw himself on an execrably hard couch. He
was surprised to find that he was not in the dark. There was very good
reason for the contrary.
As he blew out his lamp, a panel in the stone wall glided noiselessly
open, and Robert de Quercy appeared upon the threshold--one hand
holding a lamp, the other leading a lady. The lady was veiled; and she
and the knight hurriedly approached Raoul, who as hurriedly rushed
forward to meet them. He had laid his armor by; and they who recollect
Mr. Young in Hotspur, and how _he_ looked in tight buff suit, before he
put his armor on, may have some idea of the rather ridiculous guise in
which Raoul appeared to the lady. But she was used to such sights, and
had not time to remark it even had she not been so accustomed.
Raoul observing that Robert was accompanied only by Gisla, made anxious
inquiry for Rotrude. Gisla in a few words told him that her sister
would speedily be with them, that there was certain danger, even death,
threatening the two cavaliers, and probable peril menacing--as Gisla
remarked, with a blush--those who loved them. The King, she added, had
spoken angrily of coming to purify the palace, as she had heard from
Count Volrade, who appears to have been a Polonius, as regards his
office, with all the gossip, but none of the good sense, of the old
chamberlain in Denmark.
“Death to us!” exclaimed Robert. “Accursed be the prince who
transgresses the Gospel admonition, not to forget his own or his
father’s friends.” “We were the favored servants of Charlemagne,” said
Raoul. “We were of his closest intimacy,” exclaimed Robert. “Never,”
interrupted Raoul, “did he ascend his turret to watch the stars,
without summoning us, his nocturnal pages, as he called us, to his
side.” “He dare not commit such a crime; for the body of Charlemagne is
scarcely sealed down in its tomb; and Louis has not a month’s hold of
the sceptre.”
“He holds it firmly enough, however, to punish villany,” exclaimed
Louis himself, as he appeared in the doorway leading to a flight of
stone stairs by which Gisla had indicated the speedy appearance of
Rotrude.
And here I would beseech my readers to believe that if the word
“tableau!” ought to be written at this situation, and if it appears
to them to be too melo-dramatic to be natural, _I_ am not in fault.
I refer them to all the histories and romances in which this episode
in knightly story is told, and in all they will find that Louis makes
his appearance exactly as I have described, and precisely like Signor
Tamburini in the great scene of Lucrezia Borgia.
Louis having given expression to his startling bit of recitative,
dragged forward Rotrude, whom he had held behind him, by the wrist. The
background was occupied by four guards, wearing hoods; and I can not
think of them without being reminded of those same four old guards,
with M. Desmousseaux at their head, who always represented the Greek or
Roman armies upon the stage of the Théâtre Français, when Talma was the
Nero or the Sylla, the Orestes or the Capitolinus of the night.
With some allusion to Rotrude as a sacred dove, and to himself as a
bird-catcher, Louis handed his sister to a stone bench, and then grew
good-natured in his remarks. This sudden benevolence gave a chill to
the entire company. They turned as pale as any Russian nobleman to whom
Nicholas was extraordinarily civil.
“We know the winding passages of the palace of Thermes,” said Louis,
laughingly, “as well as our sisters; and I have not gone through them
to-night for the purpose of terrifying the sister whom I encountered
there, or the other sister whom I see here. I am a kind-hearted
brother, and am marvellously well-disposed. I need only appeal to these
four gentlemen of my guard, who will presently take off their hoods,
and serve as witnesses this night in a little ceremony having reference
to my dear Rotrude.”
“A ceremony! this night!” exclaimed the two princesses.
“Ay, by the nails of the cross! Two ceremonies. You shall both be
married forthwith. I will inaugurate my reign by a double wedding, here
in the old palace of Thermes. You, Gisla, shall espouse Robert, Count
de Quercy, and you, Rotrude, shall wed with Raoul, Baron de Lys. You
might have aimed higher, but they are gallant gentlemen, friends of my
deceased sire; and, by my sooth, the nuptials shall not lack state and
ceremony! Here are our wedding-gifts to the bridegrooms.”
He pointed to two showy suits of armor, the pieces of which were
carried by the four guards. The knights were in a dream of delight.
They vowed eternal gratitude to the most noble of emperors and
unparalleled of brothers.
“We have no great faith in human gratitude,” said Louis, “and shall
not expect from you more than is due. And you, my sisters,” added he,
“retire for awhile; put on what you will; but do not tarry here at the
toilette of men-at-arms, like peasant-girls looking at the equipping of
two pikemen.”
The two princesses withdrew; and there would have been a smile upon
their lips, only that they suspected their brother. Hoping the best,
however, they kissed the tips of their rosy fingers to the knights, and
tripped away, like two pets of the ballet. They were true daughters of
their sire, who reckoned love-passages as even superior to stricken
fields. He was not an exemplary father, nor a faithful husband. His
_entourage_ was not of the most respectable; and in some of his
journeys he was attended by the young wife of one of his own cavaliers,
clad in cavalier costume. It was a villanously reprobate action, not
the less so that Hermengarde was living. The mention of it will disgust
every monarch in Europe who reads my volume; and I am sure that it will
produce no such strong sensation of reproof anywhere as in the bosom of
an admirable personage “over the water.”
The two princesses, then, had not so much trouble from the prickles of
principle as the romances told of them. But, considering the example
set them by their imperial father, they were really very tolerable
princesses, under the circumstances.
“Don your suits, gentlemen!” exclaimed the king.
The four guards advanced with the separate pieces of armor, at which
the two knights gazed curiously for a moment or two, as two foxes might
at a trap in which lay a much-desired felicity. They were greatly
delighted, yet half afraid. The monarch grew impatient, and the knights
addressed themselves at once to their adornment. They put aside their
own armor, and with the assistance of the four mute gentlemen-at-arms
they fitted on the _brassards_ or arm-pieces, which became them as
though the first Milainer who ever dressed knight had taken their
measure. With some little trouble they were accoutred, less as became
bridegrooms than barons going to battle; and this done, they took their
seats, at a sign from the king, who bade the four gentlemen come to an
end with what remained of the toilette.
The knights submitted, not without some misgiving, to the services of
the four mysterious _valets_! and, in a short time, the preparations
were complete, even to the helmet with the closed visor. This done,
the knights took their places, or were led rather to two high-backed
oaken chairs. As soon as they were seated there, the four too-officious
attendants applied their hands to the closed head-pieces; and in a very
brief space the heads of the cavaliers sunk gently upon their breasts,
as if they were in deep slumber or as deep meditation.
Two o’clock rang out from the belfry of St. Jacques, as the two
brides entered. The king pointed with a smile to the bridegrooms,
and left the apartment with his attendants. The ladies thought that
the lovers exhibited little ardor or anxiety to meet them; for they
remained motionless on their oaken chairs. The daughters of Charlemagne
advanced, half-timidly, half-playfully; and, at length, finding the
knights not disposed to address them, gently called to each by his
name. Raoul and Robert continued motionless and mute. They were in
fact dead. They had been strangled or suffocated in a peculiar sort
of armor, which had been sent to Charlemagne from Ravenna, in return
for a jewelled vase presented by that emperor to the ancient city. “In
1560,” says Monsieur Roger de Beauvoir, himself quoting an Italian
manuscript, there were several researches made in this part of the
palace of Thermes, one result of which was the discovery of a ‘casque
à soufflet,’ all the openings in which could be closed in an instant
by a simple pressure of the finger on a spring. At the same instant
the lower part of the neck-piece tightened round the throat, and the
_patient_ was disposed of. “In this helmet,” adds the author, “was
found the head of a man, well preserved, with beard and teeth admirable
for their beauty.” I think, however, that in this matter M. de Beauvoir
proves a little too much.
Father Daniel, in his history notices the vengeance of Louis le
Debonnaire against two young nobles who were, reputedly, the lovers
of Gisla and Rotrude. The details of the act of vengeance have been
derived from an Italian source; and it is said that an Italian monk,
named Pagnola, had some prominent part in this dreary drama, impelled
thereto by a blow dealt to him at the hands of Raoul, by way of
punishment for some contemptuous phrases which the monk had presumed to
apply to the great Charlemagne.
Love and sword-blades seem to have been as closely connected as
“Trousseaux et Layettes,” which are always named together in the
shop-fronts of a Parisian “Lingere.” There was once an ample field for
the accommodation of both the sentiments of love and bravery in the old
Chaussée d’Antin, when it was merely a _chaussée_ or highway, and not
the magnificent street it now is. It was, down even to comparatively
modern times, the resort of lovers of every degree, from dukes and
duchesses to common dragoons and dairymaids. They were not always,
however, under this strict classification.
But whatever classification or want of it there may have been, there
was a part of the road which was constantly the scene of bloody
encounters. This was at the narrow bridge of Arcans. Here if two
cavaliers met, each with a lady at his side, it was a matter of
honor not to give way. On the contrary, the latter was to be forced
at the point of the sword. While the champions were contending, the
ladies would scarcely affect to faint; they would stand aside, remain
unconcerned on their jennets or mules, till the two simpletons had
pinked one another; or lounge in their cumbrous coaches till the lovers
limped back to them.
It was on this bridge, of which no vestige now remains, not even in
a museum, that the Count de Fiesque one evening escorting Madame
de Lionne, encountered M. de Tallard, who was chaperoning Louison
d’Arquien. Each couple was in a carriage, and neither would make way
for the other to pass. Thereupon the two cavaliers leaped from their
coaches, drew their swords, planted their feet firmly on the ground,
and began slashing at each other like two madmen, to the great delight
of a large crowd who enjoyed nothing so much as the sight of two noble
gentlemen cutting one another’s throats.
The ladies, meanwhile, flourished their handkerchiefs from their
respective carriage-windows, for the encouragement of their champions.
Now and then each laughed aloud when her particular friend had made
a more than ordinary successful thrust; and each was generous enough
to applaud any especial dexterity, even when her own lover thereby
bloodily suffered. The two foolish fellows only poked at each other
with the more intensity. And when they had sufficiently slit their
pourpoints and slashed their sleeves, the ladies, weary of waiting any
longer for a more exciting denouement, rushed between the combatants,
like the Sabine ladies between the contending hosts; each gentleman
gallantly kissed the lady who did not belong to him; and the whole four
gayly supped together, as though they had been the best friends in the
world.
This incident fairly brings us to the questions of duelling and death,
as illustrated by chivalry.
DUELLING, DEATH AND BURIAL.
“Le duel, ma mie, ne vaut pas un duo, de Lully.”
CRISPIN MOURANT.
As an effect of chivalry, duelling deserves some passing notice. Its
modern practice was but an imitation of chivalric encounters, wherein
the issue of battle was left to the judgment of God.
Bassompierre dates the origin of duelling (in France) from the period
of Henri II. Previous to that king’s reign, the quarrels of gentlemen
were determined by the decree of the constable and marshals of France.
These only allowed knightly encounters in the lists, when they could
not of themselves decide upon the relative justice and merits of the
dispute.
“I esteem him no gentleman,” said Henri one day, “who has the lie given
him, and who does not chastise the giver.” It was a remark lightly
dropped, but it did not fall unheeded. The king in fact encouraged
those who resorted, of their own will, to a bloody arbitrament of
their dissensions; and duelling became so “fashionable,” that even
the penalty of death levelled against those who practised it, was
hardly effectual enough to check duellists. At the close of the reign
of Henri IV. and the commencement of that of Louis XIII. the practice
was in least activity; but after the latter period, as the law was not
rigorously applied, the foolish usage was again revived; and sanguinary
simpletons washed out their folly in blood.
But duelling has a more remote origin than that ascribed to it
by Bassompierre. Sabine, in his “Dictionary of Duelling,” a
recently-published American work, dates its rise from the challenge
of the Philistine accepted by David! However this may be, it is a
strange anomaly that an advocate for the savage and sinful habit of
duelling has appeared in that France which claims to be the leader
of civilization. Jules Janin has, among his numberless _feuilletons_
published three reasons authorizing men to appeal to single combat. The
above M. Janin divides the world into three parts--a world of cravens;
a world in which opinion is everything; and a world of hypocrites and
calumniators. He considers the man who has not the heart to risk his
life in a duel, as one lost in the world of cravens, because the legion
of cowards by whom he is surrounded will assume courage at his expense.
Further, according to our gay neighbor’s reasoning, the man is lost in
this world, in which opinion is everything, who will not seek to obtain
a good opinion at the sword’s point.
Again, says M. Janin, the man is lost in this world of hypocrites and
calumniators who will not demand reparation, sword in hand, for the
calumnies and malicious reports to which he has been exposed. It would
be insulting to the common sense of my readers to affect to point out
to them the rottenness of reasons like these. They could only convince
such men as Buckingham and Alfieri, and others in circumstances like
theirs; Buckingham after killing Lord Shrewsbury at Barnes, and
pressing the head of Lady Shrewsbury on his bloody shirt; and Alfieri,
who, after a vile seduction, and very nearly a terrible murder in
defence of it, went home and slept more peacefully than he had ever
slept before: “dopo tanto e si stranie peripizie d’un sol giorno, non
ho dormito mai d’un sonno piu tenace e piu dolce.” Alfieri would have
agreed with M. Janin, that in duelling lay the safeguard of all that
remains to us of civilization. But how comes it then that civilization
is thus a wreck, since duelling has been so long exercising a
protective influence over it?
However few, though dazzling, were the virtues possessed by the
chivalrous heroes of ancient history, it must be conceded to them, that
they possessed that of valor, or a disregard of life, in an eminent
degree. The instances of cowardice are so rare that they prove the
general rule of courage; yet these men, with no guides but a spurious
divinity and a false philosophy, never dreamed of having recourse to
the duel, as a means of avenging a private wrong. Marius, indeed,
was once challenged, but it was by a semi-barbarous Teutonic chief,
whom the haughty Roman recommended, if he were weary of his life to
go and hang himself. Themistocles, too, whose wisdom and courage the
most successful of our modern gladiators may admire and envy, when
Eurybiades threatened to give him a blow, exclaimed, “Strike, but
hear me!” Themistocles, it must be remembered, was a man of undaunted
courage, while his jealous provoker was notorious for little else but
his extreme cowardice.
But, in truth, there have been brave men in all countries, who have
discouraged this barbarous practice. A Turkish pacha reminded a man
who had challenged a fellow Spahi, that they had no right to slay one
another while there were foes to subdue. The Dauphin of Viennois told
the Count of Savoy, who had challenged him, that he would send the
count one of his fiercest bulls, and that if the count were so minded,
his lordship of Savoy might test his prowess against an antagonist
difficult to overcome. The great Frederick would not tolerate the
practice of duelling in his army; and he thoroughly despised the
arguments used for its justification. A greater man than Frederick,
Turenne, would never allow himself to be what was called “concerned in
an affair of honor.” Once, when the hero of Sintzheim and the Rhine
had half drawn his sword to punish a disgusting insult, to which he
had been subjected by a rash young officer, he thrust it back into the
sheath, with the words: “Young man, could I wipe your blood from my
conscience with as much ease as I can this filthy proof of your folly
from my face, I would take your life upon the spot.”
Even the chivalrous knights who thought duelling a worthy occupation
for men of valor, reduced opportunities for its practice to a very
small extent. Uniting with the church, they instituted the _Savior’s
Truce_, by which duels were prohibited from Wednesday to the following
Monday, because, it was said, those days had been consecrated by our
Savior’s Passion. This, in fact, left only Tuesday as a clear day for
settling quarrels by force of arms.
There probably never existed a mortal who was opposed by more powerful
or more malignant adversaries than St. Augustin was. His great enemies
the Donatists never, it is true, challenged him to any more dangerous
affray than a war of literary controversy. But it was in answer to one
of their missiles hurled against him, in the form of an assertion, that
the majority of authors was on their side, he aptly told them that
it was the sign of a cause destitute of truth when only the erring
authority of many men could be relied on.
The Norman knights or chiefs introduced the single combat among us.
It is said they were principally men who had disgraced themselves in
the face of the enemy, and who sought to wipe out the disgrace in the
blood of single individuals. It is worthy of remark too, that when
king and sovereign princes had forbidden duelling, under the heaviest
penalties, the popes absolved the monarchs from their vows when the
observance of them would have put in peril the lives of offending
nobles who had turned to Rome in their perplexity, and who had gained
there a reputation for piety, as Hector did, who was esteemed so highly
religious, for no other reason than that he had covered with rich gifts
the altar of the father of Olympus.
Supported by the appearance that impunity was to be purchased at
Rome, and encouraged by the example of fighting-cardinals themselves,
duelling and assassination stalked hand in hand abroad. In France
alone, in the brief space of eighteen years, four thousand gentlemen
were killed in _rencontres_, upon quarrels of the most trivial nature.
In the same space of time, not less than fourteen thousand pardons for
duelling were granted. In one province alone, of France, in Limousin,
one hundred and twenty gentlemen were slain in six months--a greater
number than had honorably fallen in the same period, which was one of
war, in defence of the sovereign, their country, and their homes. The
term _rencontre_ was used in France to elude the law. If gentlemen
“met” by accident and fought, lawyers pleaded that this was not a
_duel_, which required preliminaries between the two parties. How
frequent the _rencontres_ were, in spite of the penalty of death, is
thus illustrated by Victor Hugo, in his _Marion Delorme_:--
“Toujours nombre de duels, le trois c’était d’Angennes
Contre d’Arquien, pour avoir porté du point de Gènes.
Lavarde avec Pons s’est rencontré le dix,
Pour avoir pris à Pons la femme de Sourdis.
Sourdis avec Dailly pour une du théâtre
De Mondorf. Le neuf, Nogent avec Lachâtre,
Pour avoir mal écrit trois vers de Colletet.
Gorde avec Margaillan, pour l’heure qu’il était.
D’Himière avec Gondi, pour le pas à l’église.
Et puis tous les Brissac avec tous les Soubise,
A propos d’un pari d’un cheval contre un chien.
Enfin, Caussade avec Latournelle, pour rien.
Pour le plaisir, Caussade a tué Latournelle.
Jeremy Taylor denounced this practice with great earnestness, and with
due balancing of the claims of honor and of Christianity. “Yea; but
flesh and blood can not endure a blow or a disgrace. Grant that too;
but take this into the account: flesh and blood shall not inherit the
kingdom of God.”
What man could endure for honor’s sake, however, is shown in the
Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis, who, in the seventeenth century, was
asked to be second to a friend, when duels were punishable by death to
all parties concerned in them. The friend of De Pontis pressed it on
him, as a custom always practised among friends; and his captain and
lieutenant-colonel did not merely permit, but ordered him to do what
his friend desired.
Boldly as many knights met death, there were not a few who did their
best, and that very wisely, to avoid “the inevitable.”
Valorously as some chevaliers encountered deadly peril, the German
knights, especially took means to avoid the grisly adversary when they
could. For this purpose, they put on the _Noth-hemd_ or shirt of need.
It was supposed to cover the wearer with invulnerability. The making
of the garment was a difficult and solemn matter. Several maidens of
known integrity assembled together on the eve of the Nativity, and wove
and sewed together this linen garment, in the name of the devil! On
the bosom of the shirt were worked two heads; one was long-bearded and
covered with the knightly helmet, the other was savage of aspect, and
crowned like the king of demons. A cross was worked on either side. How
this could save a warrior from a mortal stroke, it would be difficult
to say. If it was worn over the armor, perhaps the helmeted effigy was
supposed to protect the warrior, and the demoniacal one to affright
his adversary. But then, this shirt similarly made and adorned, was
woven by ladies when about to become mothers of knights or of common
men. What use it could be in such case, I leave to the “_commères_” to
settle. My own vocation of “gossip” will not help me to the solution.
But if chivalry had its shirts of need in Germany, to save from death,
in England and France it had its “mercy-knives” to swiftly inflict it.
Why they were so called I do not know, for after all they were only
employed in order to kill knights in full armor, by plunging the knife
through the bars of the visor into the eye. After the battle of Pavia,
many of the French were killed with pickaxes by the peasantry, hacking
and hewing through the joints of the armor.
How anxious were the sires of those times to train their children how
best to destroy life! This was more especially the case among what were
called the “half-christened Irish” of Connaught. In this province,
the people left the right arms of their male infants unchristened.
They excepted that part coming under the divine influences of baptism,
in order that the children, when grown to the stature of fighting
men, might deal more merciless and deadly blows. There was some such
superstitious observance as this, I think, in ancient Germany. It can
not be said, in reference to the suppressing of this observance, as was
remarked by Stow after the city authorities had put down the martial
amusement of the London apprentices--contending against one another of
an evening with cudgels and bucklers, while a host of admiring maids as
well as men stood by to applaud or censure--that the open pastime being
suppressed, worse practice within doors probably followed.
Stout fellows were some of the knights of the romantic period, if we
may believe half that is recorded of them. There is one, Branor le
Brun, who is famous for having been a living Quintain. The game so
called consists of riding at a heavy sack suspended on a balanced beam,
and getting out of its way, if possible, before the revolving beam
brought it round violently against the back of the assailant’s head.
When Palamedes challenged old Branor, the aged knight rather scornfully
put him aside as an unworthy yet valiant knight. Branor, however,
offered to sit in his saddle motionless, while Palamedes rode at him,
and got unhorsed by Branor’s mere inert resistance. I forget how many
knights Branor le Brun knocked over their horses’ cruppers, after this
quiet fashion.
It was not all courtesy in battle or in duel. Even Gyron, who was
called the “courteous,” was a very “rough customer” indeed, when he
had his hand on the throat of an antagonist. We hear of him jumping
with all his force upon a fallen and helpless foe, tearing his helmet
from its fastenings by main force, battering the knight’s face with it
till he was senseless, and then beating on his head with the pommel
of his sword, till the wretched fellow was dead. At this sort of
pommelling there was never knight so expert as the great Bayard. The
courtesy of the most savage in fight, was however undeniable when a
lady was in the case. Thus we hear of a damsel coming to a fountain at
which four knights were sitting, and one of them wishes to take her.
The other three object, observing that the damsel is without a knight
to protect her, and that she is, therefore, according to the law of
chivalry, exempt from being attacked. And again, if a knight slew an
adversary of equal degree, he did not retain his sword if the latter
was a gift from some lady. The damsel, in such case, could claim it,
and no knight worthy of the name would have thought of refusing to
comply with her very natural request. Even ladies were not to be won,
in certain cases, except by valor; as Arthur, that king of knights,
would not win, nor retain, Britain, by any other means. The head of
Bran the Blessed, it may be remembered, was hidden in the White Hill,
near London, where, as long as it remained, Britain was invulnerable.
Arthur, however removed it. He scorned to keep the island by any other
means than his own sword and courage; and he was ready to fight any man
in any quarrel.
Never did knight meet death more nobly than that Captain Douglas, whose
heroism is recorded by Sir William Temple, and who “stood and burnt
in one of our ships at Chatham, when his soldiers left him, because
it never should be said a Douglas quitted his post without orders.”
Except as an example of heroic endurance, this act, however, was in
some degree a mistake, for the state did not profit by it. There was
something more profitable in the act of Von Speyk, in our own time.
When hostilities were raging between Holland and Belgium, in 1831,
the young Dutch captain, just named, happened to be in the Scheldt,
struggling in his gun-boat against a gale which, in spite of all his
endeavors and seamanship, drove him ashore, under the guns of the
Belgians. A crowd of Belgian volunteers leaped aboard, ordered him to
haul down his colors and surrender. Von Speyk hurried below to the
magazine, fell upon his knees in prayer, flung a lighted cigar into an
open barrel of powder, and blew his ship to atoms, with nearly all who
were on board. If he, by this sacrifice, prevented a Dutch vessel from
falling into the enemy’s power, he also deprived Holland of many good
seamen. The latter country, however, only thought of the unselfish act
of heroism, in one who had been gratuitously educated in the orphan
house at Amsterdam, and who acquitted his debt to his country, by
laying down his life when such sacrifice was worth making. His king and
countrymen proved that they could appreciate the noble act. The statue
of Von Speyk was placed by the side of that of De Ruyter, and the
government decreed that as long as a Dutch navy existed there should be
_one_ vessel bearing the name of Von Speyk.
To return to the knights of earlier days, I will observe that
indifferent as many of them were to meeting death, they, and indeed
other men of note, were very far from being so as to the manner in
which they should be disposed of _after_ death. In their stone or
marble coffins, they lay in graves so shallow that the cover of the
coffin formed part of the pavement of the church. Whittingham, the
Puritan Dean of Durham, took up many of their coffins and converted
them into horse or swine troughs. This is the dean who is said to have
turned the finely-wrought holy-water vessels into salting-tubs for his
own use.
Modern knights have had other cares about their graves than that
alluded to above. Sir William Browne, for instance, one of George II.’s
knights, and a medical man of some repute, who died in 1770, ordered by
his will that when his coffin was lowered into the grave, there should
be placed upon it, “in _its_ leathern case or coffin, my pocket Elzevir
Horace, comes viæ vitæque dulcis et utilis, worn out with and by me.”
There was nothing more unreasonable in this than in a warrior-knight
being buried with all his weapons around him. And, with respect to
warrior-knights and what was done with them after death, I know nothing
more curious than what is told us by Stavely on the authority of
Streder. I will give it in the author’s own words.
“Don John of Austria,” says Stavely, “governor of the Netherlands for
Philip II. of Spain, dying at his camp at Buge” (Bouges, a mile from
Namur), “was carried from thence to the great church at Havre, where
his funeral was solemnized and a monument to posterity erected for him
there by Alexander Farnese, the Prince of Parma. Afterward his body was
taken to pieces, and the bones, packed in mails, were privately carried
into Spain, where, being set together with small wires, the body was
rejointed again, which being filled or stuffed with cotton, and richly
habited, Don John was presented to the King, entire, leaning upon his
commander’s staff, and looking as if he were alive and breathing.
Afterward the corpse being carried to the Church of St. Laurence, at
the Escurial, was there buried near his father, Charles V., with a
fitting monument erected for him.”
Considering that there was, and is, a suspicion that Philip II. had
poisoned his kinsman, the interview must have been a startling one.
But Philip II. was not, perhaps, so afraid of dead men as the fourth
Spanish king of that name. Philip IV., by no means an unknightly
monarch, was born on a Good Friday, and as there is a Spanish
superstition that they who are born on that day see ghosts whenever
they pass the place where any one has been killed or buried, who died
a violent death, this king fell into a habit of carrying his head
so high, in order to avoid seeing those spirits, that his nose was
continually _en l’air_, and he appeared to see nobody.
Romance, and perhaps faithful history, are full of details of the
becoming deaths of ancient knights, upon the field. I question,
however, if even Sir Philip Sidney’s was more dignified than that of a
soldier of the 58th infantry, recorded in Nichols’s “Anecdotes of the
Eighteenth Century.” A straggling shot had struck him in the stomach.
As he was too dreadfully wounded to be removed, he desired his comrades
would pray by him, and the whole guard knelt round him in prayer
till he died. Bishop Hurd remarked, when this was told him, that “it
was true religion.” There was more of religion in such sympathy than
there was of taste in the condolence of Alnwick, on the death of Hugh,
Duke of Northumberland--a rather irascible officer, and Knight of the
Garter. “O,” cried the Alnwick poet--
“O rueful sight! Behold, how lost to sense
The millions stand, suspended by suspense!”
But all fruitlessly were the millions so suspended, for as the minstrel
remarked in his Threnodia--
“When Time shall yield to Death, Dukes must obey.”
“Dying in harness,” is a favorite phrase in chivalric annals to
illustrate the bravery of a knight falling in battle, “clothed in
complete steel.” So to die, however, was not always to die in a fray.
Hume says of Seward, Earl of Northumberland, that there are two
circumstances related of him, “which discover his high sense of honor
and martial disposition. When intelligence was brought to him of his
son Osborne’s death, he was inconsolable till he heard the wound was
received on his breast, and that he had behaved with great gallantry
in the action. When he found his own death approaching, he ordered his
servants to dress him in a complete suit of armor, and sitting erect on
the couch, with a spear in his hand, declared that in that position,
the only one worthy of a warrior, he would patiently await the fatal
moment.”
See how the chief of many a field
Prepares to give his latest breath;
And, like a well-trimmed warrior, yield
Becomingly t’impending death--
That one, stern conqueror of all,
Of chieftain in embattled tower,
Of lord within his ancient hall,
And maiden in her trellised bower.
To meet that surest of all foes,
From off his soft and pillowed bed,
With dignity old Seward rose,
And to a couch of state was led.
Fainting, yet firm of purpose there,
Stately as monarch on his throne,
Upright he sat, with kingly air,
To meet the coming foe, alone.
“Take from these limbs,” he weakly cried,
“This soft and womanish attire;
Let cloak and cap be laid aside--
Seward will die as died his sire:
Not clad in silken vest and shirt,
Like princes in a fairy tale;
With iron be these old limbs girt--
My vest of steel, my shirt of mail.
“Close let my sheaf of arrows stand;
My mighty battle-axe now bring;
My ashen spear place in my hand;
Around my neck my buckler sling.
Let my white locks once more be pressed
By the old cap of Milan steel;
Such soldier’s gear becomes them best--
They love their old defence to feel.
“’Tis well! Now buckle to my waist
My well-tried gleaming blade of Spain
My old blood leaps in joyful haste
To feel it on my thigh again.
And here this pendent loop upon,
Suspend my father’s dagger bright;
My spurs of gold, too, buckle on--
Or Seward dies not like a knight.”
’Twas done. No tear bedimmed his eyes--
His manly heart had ne’er known fear;
It answered not the deep-fetched sighs
Of friends and comrades standing near.
Death was upon him: that grim foe
Who smites the craven as the brave.
With patience Seward met the blow--
Prepared and willing for the grave.
The manner of the death, or rather of the dying of Seward, Earl of
Northumberland, was in part, unconsciously, imitated by the great
Mansfeldt. When the career of the latter was nearly at its close, his
fragile frame was already worn out by excess of action--his once stout
soul irritated by disappointment, and his former vigorous constitution
shattered by the ravages of a disease which had long preyed on it in
secret. The erst gallant knight lay helpless in the miserable village
of Zara, in Dalmatia. As he found his last moment drawing near, he
put on one of his richest uniforms, and girded his favorite sword to
his side. It was the one he most constantly carried in battle. Thus
accoutred, he summoned his chief officers to attend him. He was held
up by the two whom he most wished to distinguish, because of their
unwavering fidelity. Thus upheld, he exhorted all to go on, unwearied,
in the path of glory; and, living or dying, never to bate a breath of
inveterate hatred for Austria--whose government has been accursed
in all time, since there has been an Austria, for its unmitigated
infamy. “With the indifference of a man preparing for a journey of no
extraordinary importance,” thus speaks Naylor, when describing the
scene, “he continued tranquilly to converse with his friends to the
latest moment of his existence. His body was interred with military
pomp at Spalatio, in Dalmatia, at the expense of the Venetians. Thus
was the emperor delivered from an enemy who, though often defeated,
never ceased to be formidable; and whose transcendent genius was so
fertile in resources, that, without the smallest funds to support
the expenses of war, he maintained an honorable contest during seven
campaigns against the most powerful monarchs in Europe.”
His hour at length is come:
The hero of a hundred fields,
Who never yielded, only yields
To Him who rules the tomb.
He whose loud trumpet’s blast,
Carried upon the trembling gale
The voice of death o’er hill and dale,
Is struck himself at last.
The same who, but of late,
Serenely saw destruction hurled,
And slaughter sweeping through the world,
Serenely meets his fate.
The spirit of the brave,
That led him o’er the embattled plain
’Gainst lines of foes, o’er countless slain,
Waits on him to the grave.
And with his latest breath
The warrior dons his proud array,
Prepared to meet, and to obey,
His last commander--Death!
The mournful tears and sighs
Fall not for him who, like the swan,
Wears his best plumes, sings sweetly on,
Sounds his last song--and dies!
With regard to the burial of knights, we may observe that, down to
a comparatively late period the knights and barons of England were
buried with much solemn splendor. At the obsequies of a baron, there
was an official present who wore the armor of the defunct, mounted a
horse in full trappings, and carried the banner, shield, and helmet, of
the deceased. So, in Henry the Eighth’s time, Lord William Courtney was
buried with the ceremonies observed at the funeral of an earl, to which
rank it had been the king’s intention to elevate him. On this occasion
Sir Edmund Carew, a gallant knight, rode into the church in full armor,
with the point of his battle-axe downward--a token, like a reversed
torch, of death.
The latest instance I have met with of a union of ancient and modern
customs at the burial of a knight, occurred at Treves, in 1781, at
the interment of the Teutonic knight, General Frederick Casimir. This
gallant soldier’s charger was led to the brink of the grave in which
the body had just been deposited; the throat of the steed was swiftly
cut by an official, and the carcass of the horse was flung down upon
the coffin of the knight. Such sacrifices were once common enough. At
the funerals in England of cavalry soldiers, or of mounted officers,
the horse is still processionally conducted to the brink of the grave,
but we are too wisely economical to leave him there, or to fling him
into it.
Where chivalry had great perils and temptations, we need not be
surprised to find that there were many scions of noble houses who
either declined to win spurs by encountering mortal danger, or who
soon grew weary of making the attempt. Let us, then, consider the
unambitious gentlemen who grew “tired of it.”
THE KNIGHTS WHO GREW “TIRED OF IT.”
“How blest are they that waste their weary hours
In solemn groves and solitary bower
Where neither eye nor ear
Can see or hear
The frantic mirth
And false delights of frolic earth;
Where they may sit and pant,
And breathe their pursy souls;
Where neither grief consumes, nor griping want
Afflicts, nor sullen care controls!
Away false joys! Ye murder where ye kiss;
There is no heaven to that, no life to this.”
FRANCIS QUARLES.
As marriage or the cloister was the alternative submitted to most
ladies in the days of old, so young men of noble families had small
choice but between the church and chivalry. Some, indeed, commenced
with arms, won knightly honors, cared nothing for them when they had
obtained the prize, and took up the clerical profession, or entered
monasteries. There are many distinguished examples. There was first St.
Mochua or Cluanus, who, after serving in arms with great distinction,
entered a monastery and took to building churches and establishing
cities. Of the former he built no less than thirty; and he passed as
many years in one church as he had built of churches themselves. He was
the founder of one hundred and twenty cells. He is to be looked upon
with respect. Old warriors in our own days are often moved by the same
impulse which governed Mochua; and when we see retired admirals taking
the chair at meetings where Dr. Cumming is about to exhibit; or infirm
major-generals supporting, with unabated mental energy, their so-called
Puseyite pastors, we only look upon men who, acting conscientiously,
are worthy of respect, and are such Mochuas as modern times and
circumstances will admit of.
We have another example in Adelard, the cousin of Charlemagne. He was a
gay and gallant chevalier at his imperial cousin’s court, and there was
no stouter wielder of a sword in all the army; but Alard, or Adelard,
grew weary of camp and court alike. He fled from some very pretty
temptations in the one, as well as great perils in the other. The young
prince, he was only twenty, took the monastic habit at Corbie, where
he was employed as a gardener, and spoiled cartloads of vegetables
before he got his hand and his thoughts to his new profession. He
was occasionally busy too in the kitchen, but not to the visible
gratification of the monks. Charlemagne often insisted on his appearing
at court, where at last he held one or two high offices; and, when he
left, wrote a book for the guidance of courtiers generally, by which
the latter as little profited, say wicked wits, as other nobility, for
whom a nation has long prayed that grace, wisdom, and understanding
might be their portion. St. Adelard, for the imperial knight was
canonized, lived to be the chief authority in the monastery where he
had commenced as cook and gardener, and St. Gerard composed an office
in his honor, in gratitude for having been cured of a violent headache
through the saint’s interposition. This seems to me one of the oddest
ways of showing gratitude for a small service that I ever heard of.
I believe that St. Cedd, Bishop of London, in very early days, was also
of a family whose profession was military. When or why he entered the
church I do not know; but he has some connection with military matters
in the fact that Tilbury Fort occupies part of the site of a monastery
which St. Cedd had founded, in which he resided, and which was the
pride of all the good people in the then pleasant and prosperous city
of Tillabury.
Touching St. Aldric, Bishop of Mans, there is no doubt whatever. He
was of a noble family, and commenced life at twelve years old, as page
to Louis le Debonnaire, at the court of Charlemagne. He was speedily
sick of the court, and as speedily sick of the camp. At the age of
twenty-one he withdrew to Metz, entered the clerical profession, and
became chaplain and confessor to the sovereign whom he had once served
as page. His military training made him a very sharp disciplinarian
during the quarter of a century that he was bishop; and it is only
to be regretted that he had not some influence over the king whose
conscience he directed, and of whom a legend will be found in another
part of this volume.
There was a second son of Eric, King of Denmark, known by the name of
St. Knudt or Canute. He was Duke of Schleswig, and was much more of a
monk than a duke. He was canonized accordingly for his virtues. He had
a rough way of joking. His knights were nothing better than robbers
and pirates, and he resolved to make them forswear violence and live
peaceably. They represented, in vain, that they had a right to live as
became knights, which Canute did not dispute; he simply dissented from
the construction of the right as set down by the knights themselves.
To prevent all mistakes on the matter, he one day condemned seven of
these gentlemen to be hanged for acts of piracy. One of these exclaimed
that, “fitting as the sentence might be for his fellows, there must
necessarily be exemption for him.” He was like the German corporal in
the “Etoile du Nord,” who can very well understand that it is quite
proper that a man should be hanged, but could _not_ comprehend that
_he_ himself should be the man. The Schleswig knight claimed special
exemption on the ground that he was a kinsman of Canute. The latter
allowed that this entitled him to some distinction, and the saintly
duke hung his cousin six feet higher than any of his accomplices.
We come back more immediately to a knight who grew tired of his
vocation, in the person of Nathalan, a Scottish noble of the fifth
century. He sold arms, horses, and estate, divided the proceeds among
the poor, and devoted himself to preparations for ordination, and the
cultivation of vegetables. He bears a highly respectable reputation on
the roll of Bishops of Aberdeen.
We meet with a man more famous, in Peter of Sebaste, whose pedigree
showed more heroes than could be boasted by any of Peter’s
contemporaries. He is not an example, indeed, of a man quitting the
camp for the cloister; but he and two of his brothers exhibit to us
three individuals who might have achieved great worldly profit, by
adopting arms as a vocation, but who preferred the Church, and became,
all three, bishops.
We have a similar example in the Irish St. Felan. His high birth and
great wealth would have made him the flower of Irish chivalry, but
he selected another profession, and despising chivalry, entered the
Church. He went _a Mundo ad Mundum_, for it was from the hands of
Abbot Mundus that he received the monastic habit. Thus, as it was
wittily said, the world (Mundus) at once drove and drew him into the
Church. It is clear, however, that, like the old war-horse, he pricked
up his ears at the sound of battle, and took an interest in stricken
fields. To such conclusion we must come, if it be true, as is asserted
of him, that the battle of Bannockburn, in 1314, was won by Bruce
through the saint’s especial intercession. The Dukes of Normandy owed
equal obligations to St. Vaneng, who unbuckled the armor from his
aristocratic loins, to cover them with a frock; and built churches for
the Normans, where he offered up continual prayer for the Norman dukes.
Then again, there was William Berringer, of the family of the Counts
of Nevers. No persuasion could induce the handsome William to continue
in the career he had embraced, the career of chivalry and arms. His
uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had considerable influence over him,
and his change of profession was by no means unprofitable, for the once
horse-loving William became Archbishop of Bourges: and he defended the
rights of his Church against kings and councils with as much boldness,
zeal, and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the
stoutest of assailants.
Among our English saints, the one who most nearly resembles him is
St. Egwin, who was of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, and who,
after a short trial of the profession of arms, retired to the cloister,
but was ultimately raised to the see of Worcester. The spirit of the
man may perhaps be seen through the legend which says that on setting
out on a penitential pilgrimage to Rome, he put iron shackles on
his legs, the key of which shackles he flung into the Avon. This is
very possible; but when we are told that on requiring the key at a
subsequent period, he found it inside a fish, we see that the author of
the legend has plagiarized from the original constructor of the story
of Polycrates and his ring.
St. Egwin was far less a benefactor to his fellow-men than St. Benedict
Biscop, a noble knight of the court of Oswi, the pious king of the
Northumbrians. When Benedict, or Bennet, as he is familiarly called,
retired from the profession of arms to follow that of the Church, he
continued quite as active, and twice as useful, as he had been before.
He was a great traveller, spent and gave liberally, and brought over
with him, from the continent, workers in stone to erect that monastery
at Weremouth which, in its ruins, commemorates his name and deeds. He
also brought from France the first glaziers who ever exercised the art
of glass-making in England. Altogether St. Bennet is one of those who
find means to effect good to others, whatever may be the position they
are in themselves.
Aelred of Ridal was a man of similar quality. He was a young
North-of-England noble, when he figured as the handsomest cavalier at
the court of that “sair saint to the Church,” the Scottish king, David.
He was remarkable for his good temper, and was as well-disciplined
a monk as he had been a military man; for when he once happened to
inadvertently break the rule of permanent silence, which prevailed
in the monastery at Ridal, into which he entered at the age of
twenty-five, he became so horror-stricken that he was eager to increase
the penalty put upon him in consequence. He had only dropped a single
word in the garden, to a monk who, like himself, had been a knight, but
who gave him in return so edifying a scowl, that in an instant poor
Aelred felt all the depth of his unutterable iniquity, and accounted
himself as criminal as if he had set fire to the neighboring nunnery.
He never afterward allowed himself the indulgence of reading his
favorite Cicero, but confined his reading to his own work “On Spiritual
Friendship,” and other books of a similar description.
The great St. Hilary was another of the men of noble family following
arms as a vocation, who gave up the profession for that of the Church,
and prospered remarkably in consequence. St. Felix of Nola affords us
an additional illustration of this fact. This noble young soldier found
no happiness in the business of slaughtering, and all the sophistry
in the world could not persuade him that it was honorable. “It is
a disgusting business,” said the Saint, “and as I can not be Felix
[happy] in performing it, I will see if I can not be Felix in the
Church;” and the punning saint found what he sought.
There is something more wonderful in the conversion of St. Maurus.
He was the son of a nobleman, had St. Benedict for a tutor, and was
destined to the career of arms. The tutor, however, having awoke
him one night, and sent him to pick a monk out of the river, whom
Benedict, in a dream, had seen fall in, Maurus, although no swimmer,
obeyed, walked upon the surface of the water, pulled out the struggling
monk, walked back with him, arm-in-arm, to the shore, and immediately
concluded that he was called to another vocation than that of arms. As
for St. John Calybyte, he would not be a soldier, but ran away from
home before his wealthy sire could procure him a commission, and only
returned to stand, disguised as a mendicant, in front of his father’s
house, where he received alms till he died. A curious example of
idiosyncrasy. St. Honoratus was wiser. He was of a consular family;
but, in declining the military profession, he addressed himself with
sincerity to be useful in the Church; and the well-deserved result
was that he became Archbishop of Arles. St. Anthony, the patriarch
of monks, made still greater sacrifices, and chose rather to be a
hermit than a commander of legions. St. Sulpicius, the Debonnair, was
both rich and good-looking, but he cared less for helmet and feathers
than for cord and cowl, and the archbishopric of Bourges rewarded his
self-denial. There was more than one King Canute too, who, though
not surrendering royalty and generalship of armies, seemed really
more inclined, and indeed more fitted, to be studious monks than
chivalrous monarchs. Wulstan of Worcester was far more decided, for
finding himself, one night, most warmly admiring the young lady who
was his _vis-à-vis_ in a dance, the gallant officer was so shocked
at the impropriety, that he made it an excuse for taking to the cowl
forthwith. He did not so ill by the exchange, for the cowl brought him
to the mitre at Worcester.
St. Sebastian was a far bolder man, seeing that although he hated a
military life, he, to the very utmost, did his duty in that state of
life to which it had pleased God to call him; and if half be true of
what is told of him, there never was knight of the actual days of
chivalry who performed such bold and perilous actions as St. Sebastian.
What was a cavalier, pricking against a dragon, to a Roman officer
preaching Christianity to his men, under Diocletian?
In later days we meet with St. Raymund of Pennafort, the wealthy young
lord, who, rather than serve for pay or plunder, went about teaching
philosophy for nothing. St. John, the Patriarch of Alexandria, might
have been known as a conqueror, but he preferred being handed down,
under the title of the Almoner. He was like that St. Cadoc who chose
rather to be abbot _in_, than prince _of_, Wales. St. Poppo of Stavelo
exhibited similar humility. He was rapidly rising in the Flandrian army
when he suddenly sunk into a cell, and became a sort of Flemish John
Wesley. He preached against all tournaments, but only succeeded in
abolishing the very exciting combats between a knight and a bear, which
were greatly patronized by Flemish ladies, and at which parties staked
great sums upon their favorite animal.
St. Francis of Sales, on the other hand, that gentlemanly saint,
was saved from the knightly career which his noble birth seemed to
promise him, by a vow made by his mother, before he was born. She
was resolved that he should be a saint and not a soldier, and as all
things went as the lady desired, she placed her son in a position
direct for the Church, and the world certainly lost nothing by the
matron’s proceeding. I respect St. Francis of Sales all the more that
he had small human failings, and did not scatter damnation over men
whom he saw in a similar concatenation. Sulpicius Severus was, in many
respects, like him, save that he had some experience of a soldier’s
life. But he laid down the sword for the pen, and gave us that
admirable historical romance, in which he details so graphically the
life of another noble warrior, who quitted the command of soldiers, to
take up the teaching of men--St. Martin of Tours.
There was a lady, St. Aldegonde, of the royal blood of France, in the
seventh century, who at least encouraged young knights to abandon
their fancied vocation, and assume that of monks or friars. She was,
most undeservedly, I dare say, assailed by scandalizing tongues
accordingly. Indeed, I never heard of lady more persecuted in this
way, except perhaps this particular lady’s namesake, who once belonged
to the gay _troupe_ of the Varietés, and to whom the most rattling
of _chansonniers_ alluded, in the line of a song, which put the
significant query of
Que fait Aldegonde avec le monde entier?
One of the most remarkable features in the characters of many of these
young nobles who were disinclined to take up arms, or who laid them
down for the religious vocation, is the dread they entertained of
matrimony. In illustration of this fact, I may notice the case of St.
Silvin of Auchy. There was not a gayer or braver knight at the court of
Childeric II., nor a more welcome wooer among the ladies. In due time
he proposed to a noble maiden, who was in a flutter of happiness at the
thought of carrying off such a bachelor from a host of competitors.
The wedding was brilliant, up to the conclusion of the ceremony. That
over, no persuasion could induce the bridegroom to go to the breakfast.
As he had been brought to the altar, there he was resolved to remain.
He denounced all weddings as wicked vanities, and darting out of the
church-door, left bride and bridal party to take what course they
would. There was no end of conjectures as to the cause of the sudden
fright which had seized upon the young bridegroom. The latter set
it down to inspiration, and as he took to the cowl and led a most
exemplary life, no one presumed to doubt it, except the bride and her
relations.
The case of St. Licinius is easier of explanation. He was the most
rollicking knight-bachelor at the court of Clotaire I. It must,
however, be said for him that he sowed his wild oats early, and fought
none the less stoutly for going to mass daily, and confessing once a
quarter. He was rich, and had a maiden neighbor who was richer. The
families of knight and maiden were united in thinking that the estates
of the two, encircled in one ring fence, would be one of the most
desirable of consummations. The maiden was nothing loath, the knight
alone was reluctant. He too, had his doubts about the excellence of
marriage, and it was only with very considerable difficulty he was
brought to woo the lady, who said “Yes” before the plume in his bonnet
had touched the ground when he made his bow to her. The wedding-day was
fixed, and as the old epitaph says, “wedding-clothes provided.” On the
eve of the eventful day, however, Licinius, on paying a visit to the
bride, found her suddenly attacked with leprosy. The doctor protested
that it would be nothing, but Licinius declared that it was a warning
which he dared not neglect. He looked at the leprous lady, muttered the
word “unpleasant,” and at once betook himself, not to active military
life, but to a religious mission. In this occupation he is alleged to
have performed such miracles as to deserve canonization, if only the
half of them were true.
Now, a bride afflicted with leprosy may fairly be said to be an
unpleasant sight. Licinius may even be considered authorized to
hesitate in performing his promise, if not in altogether declaring off.
We can not say as much in extenuation of another knight who broke his
word to a lady, and was clapped into the Roman calendar of deified men.
This gentleman in question had a rather unchristian-sounding name. He
was called Abraham of Chiduna. At tilt and tournament, and in tented
field, there was no cavalier who sat more perfectly in saddle, or
handled his lance and wielded his battle-axe with more terrible effect.
He was of noble birth, of course; was wealthy, somewhat addicted to
light living, in his salad days, but a man who lived soberly enough
when those were over. He then resolved to marry, and he had the “good
taste,” if one may use a term which, we are told, belongs to the
literary milliner’s vocabulary, to offer himself to, and ask the hand
of a very pious maiden with a highly satisfactory dower. The required
conclusion was soon come to, and one fine spring morning saw the
two principals and their respective friends in church. The knight,
it is true, was the last to arrive, and he had been, previously, as
unwilling to get up and be married, as Master Barnardine was to get
up and be hanged. He was finally brought to the altar, and after some
little delay, such as searching for the ring which he had misplaced,
and only recovered after much search, the nuptial knot was tied. When
this had been accomplished, surrounding friends approached to offer
their congratulations; but the icy Abraham coldly waved them back, and
announced his determination, then and there, to end his short-lived
married state. As he immediately rushed into the wood which was in the
vicinity of the church, there was a universal cry that he contemplated
suicide. The bride was conveyed home amid much sympathy, and a general
but an ineffectual search was made for the “groom.” Yet, not altogether
ineffectual, for at the end of seventeen days he was discovered,
offering up his orisons, in the midst of a marsh. There he had been, he
said, for a fortnight, and there he declared he would remain, unless
those who sought him consented to the terms he should propose. These
were, that he should be allowed to retire to a cell which should be
entirely walled up, save a small square aperture for a window. The
agreement was ratified, and Abraham was shut up according to his
desire; and by a long life of seclusion, passed in preaching to all who
approached the window, and taking in all they brought through the same
aperture, Abraham has had “Beatus” attached to his name, and that name
has been recorded upon the roll of saints.
If there be any reader who objects to this story as unnatural, I would
remark to the same, that similar incidents may be met with in our own
time. In proof thereof I will briefly relate an anecdote which was
told me by the reverend father of a legal knight, who was himself the
officiating minister at the ceremony of which I am about to speak.
To the clergyman of a pretty village in Wales, due notice had been
given, and all preliminary legal observances having been fulfilled, he
awaited in his vestry, ready to marry an ex-sergeant and one of the
girls of the village. The canonical hours were fast gliding away, and
yet the priest was not summoned to the altar. By certain sounds he
could tell that several persons had assembled in the church, and he had
two or three times seen a pretty face peeping in at the vestry-door,
with a look upon it of pleasure to see that he was still there, and of
perplexity as if there was something to be told which only waited to be
asked for. At half-past eleven the face again peeped in, whereupon the
clergyman invited the owner of it to approach nearer. The invitation
was obeyed, and the clergyman inquired the reason for the unusual
delay, remarking at the same time, that if the parties were not
speedily prepared it would be too late to perform the ceremony that day.
“Well sir,” said the nymph, “I was about asking your advice. I am the
bride’s sister; and there is a difficulty--”
“What is it?” asked the priest.
“Just this, sir,” said Jenny. “Sergeant Jones has promised to marry
sister Winnifred if father will put down five pounds. Father agrees;
but he says that if he puts down the money before the marriage, the
sergeant will walk off. And the sergeant will not come up to be married
till the money is put down. So, you see, sir, we are in a terrible
difficulty; and we want you to propose a method to get us out of it.”
“There is nothing easier,” said the minister; “let your father put the
money into the hands of a trusty third person, who will promise to
place it in the sergeant’s possession as soon as he has married your
sister.”
Jenny Morgan saw the excellence of the device in a moment, rushed
back to the bridal parties, and they showed their appreciation of
the clergyman’s suggestion, by crowding to the altar as soon as the
preliminary proceeding recommended to them had been accomplished. At
length the clergyman came to the words, “Wilt thou have this woman to
thy wedded wife?”
“Jack,” said the ex-sergeant, looking round at the stake-holder, “have
you got the cash?”
“All right!” nodded Jack.
“Then I will,” said the sergeant; “and now, Jack, hand over the _tin_.”
The agreement was rigidly fulfilled; but had not the minister thought
of the means which solved the difficulty, Sergeant Jones would have
been nearly as ungallant to his lady as Abraham, Silvin, and Licinius,
had been to theirs.
But to return to Abraham. I have said this knight, on assuming his
monkly character, had caused himself to be walled up in his cell. I
have my suspicions, however, that it was a theatrical sort of wall, for
it is very certain that the saint could pass through it. Now, there
resided near him a lady recluse who was his “niece,” and whose name
was Mary. The two were as inseparable as the priest Lacombe and Madame
Guyon; and probably were as little deserving of reproach. This Mary was
the original of “Little Red Riding Hood.” She used to convey boiled
milk and butter, and other necessary matters to her uncle Abraham.
Now it happened that the ex-knight used also to be visited by a monk
whose name was Wolf, or who, at all events, has been so called by
hagiographers, on account of his being quite as much of a beast as the
quadruped so called. The monk was wont to fall in with Mary as she was
on her way to her uncle’s cell with pleasant condiments under a napkin,
in a wicker-basket. He must have been a monk of the Count Ory fashion,
and he was as seductive as Ponchard, when singing “Gentille Annette”
to the “Petit Chaperon Rouge,” in Boieldieu’s Opera. The result was,
that the monk carried off Mary to a neighboring city--Edessa, if I
remember rightly--and if I am wrong, Mr. Mitchell Kemble will, perhaps,
set me right, in his bland and gentleman-like way. The town-life led
by these two was of the most disgraceful nature; and when the monk had
grown tired of it, he left Mary to lead a worse, without him. Mary
became the “Reine Pomare,” the “Mogadore,” the “Rose Pomponne” of
Edessa, and was the terror of all families where there were elder sons
and latch-keys. Her doings and her whereabouts at length reached the
ears of her uncle Abraham, and not a little astonished were those who
knew the recluse to see him one morning, attired in a pourpoint of rich
stuff, with a cloak like Almaviva’s, yellow buskins with a fall of lace
over the tops, a jaunty cap and feather on his head, a rapier on his
thigh, and a steed between his legs, which curveted under his burden as
though the fun of the thing had given it lightness. At Mary’s supper,
this cavalier was present on the night of his arrival in Edessa. He
scattered his gold like a Crœsus, and Mary considered him worth all
the more penniless knights put together. When these had gone, as being
less welcome, Abraham declared his relationship, and acted on the right
it gave him to rate a niece who was not only an ungrateful minx, but
who was as mendacious as an ungrateful niece could well be. The old
gentleman, however, had truth on his side, and finally so overwhelmed
Mary with its terrible application, that she meekly followed him back
to the desert, and passed fifteen years in a walled-up cell close to
that of her uncle. The miracles the two performed are adduced as proofs
of the genuineness of the personages and their story; matters which I
would not dispute even if I had room for it.
The next knight whom I can call to mind as having been frightened
by marriage into monkery, is St. Vandrille, Count of the Palace to
King Dagobert. During the period of his knightship he was a very Don
Juan for gallantry, and railed against matrimony as conclusively as
a Malthusian. His friends pressed him to marry nevertheless; and
introduced him to a lady with a hundred thousand golden qualities, and
prospects as auriferous as those of Miss Kilmansegg. He took the lady’s
hand with a reluctance that might be called aversion, and which he
did not affect to conceal. When the nuptial ceremony was concluded,
Knight Vandrille, as eccentric as the cavaliers whose similar conduct
I have already noticed, mildly intimated that it was not his intention
to proceed further, and that for his part, he had renounced the
vanities of this world for aye. Taking the lady apart, he appears to
have produced upon _her_ a conviction that the determination was one
he could not well avoid; and we are not told that she even reproached
him for a conduct which seems to me to have been a thousand times more
selfish and inexcusable than that of the clever but despicable Abelard.
The church, however, did not disapprove of the course adopted, and St.
Vandrille, despite his worse than breach of promise, has been forgiven
as knight, and canonized as saint.
Far more excusable was that little Count of Arian, Elzear, the
boy-knight at the court of Charles II., King of Sicily, whom that
monarch married at the age of thirteen years, to Delphina of Glandeves,
a young lady of fifteen. When I say far more excusable, I do Elzear
some injustice, for the boy was willing enough to be wed, and looked
forward to making his lady proud of his own distinction as a knight.
Delphina, however, it was who proposed that they should part at the
altar, and never meet again. She despised the boy, and the little
cavalier took it to heart--so much so, that he determined to renounce
the career of arms and enter the church. Thereby chivalry lost a worthy
cavalier, and the calendar gained a very active saint.
Elzear might well feel aggrieved. There have been knights even younger
than he, who have carried spurs before they were thirteen. This reminds
me of a paragraph in an article which I contributed to “Fraser’s
Magazine,” in March, 1844, under the title of “A Walk across Bohemia,”
in which, speaking of the Imperial Zeughaus at Vienna, I noticed “the
suit of armor of that little hero, the second Louis of Hungary, he
who came into this breathing world some months before he was welcome,
and who supported his character for precocity by marrying at twelve,
and becoming the legitimate bearer of all the honors of paternity as
soon as he entered his teens; who moreover maintained his consistency
by turning a gray old man at sixteen, and finally terminated his
ephemeral course on the field of battle before he became of age.”
Elzear then was not, perhaps, so poor a knight as his older lady seemed
disposed to count him.
I must be briefer with noticing the remaining individuals who either
flung up chivalry for the Church, or who preferred the latter to
following a knightly career. First, there was St. Anscharius, who
after he had made the change alluded to, was standing near the easy
Olas, King of Sweden, when the latter cast lots to decide whether
Christianity should be the religion of the state, or not. We are
told that the prayers of St. Anscharius caused the king to throw
double-sixes in favor of the better cause.
St. Andrew Cossini made an admirable saint after being the most riotous
of cavaliers. So St. Amandus of Nantes won his saintship by resigning
his lordship over men-at-arms. Like him was that St. Romuald of the
family of the Dukes of Ravenna, who, whether fighting or hunting, loved
to retire from the fray and the chase, to pray at peace, in shady
places. St. John of Malta and St. Stephen of Grandmont were men of
the like kidney. St. Benedict of Anian was that famous cup-bearer of
Charlemagne, who left serving the Emperor in hall and field, to serve a
greater master with less ostentation. He followed the example of that
St. Auxentius, who threw up his commission in the equestrian guard of
Theodosius the Younger, to take service in a body of monks.
Many of those who renounced arms, or would not assume military service
when opportunity offered itself, profited personally by the adoption of
such a course. Thus St. Porphyrius was a knight till he was twenty-five
years of age, and he died Bishop of Gaza. The knight St. Wulfran became
Bishop of Sens. St. Hugh won the bishopric of Grenoble, by not only
renouncing knighthood himself, but by inducing his father to follow his
example. St. Norbert became Archbishop of Magdeburg, after leading a
jolly life, not only as a knight but as priest. A fall from his horse
brought him to a sense of decency. A prophecy of a young maiden to
St. Ulric gained him his saintship and the bishopric of Augsburg. Had
she not foretold he would die a bishop, he would have been content to
carry a banner. Examples like these are very numerous, but I have cited
enough.
Few in a worldly sense made greater sacrifice than St. Casimir, son
of Casimir III., King of Poland. He so loved his reverend tutor,
Dugloss, that, to be like him, he abandoned even his chance of the
throne, and became a priest. St. Benedict of Umbria took a similar
course, upon a smaller scale; and not all the persuasions of his nurse,
who ran after him when he ran away from home, could induce him to
be anything but a priest. St. Herman Joseph, of Cologne, showed how
completely he had abandoned the knightly character, when, as monk, he
begged the peasants whom he taught, to be good enough to buffet him
well, and cuff him soundly, as it was impossible for him to have a
sufficiency of kicks and contempt. St. Guthlac, the noble hermit of
Croyland, evinced more dignity in his retirement, and the same may
be said of St. Peter Regalati, and St. Ubaldus of Gabio. The latter
was resolute neither to marry nor take arms. He liked no turmoil,
however qualified. St. Vincent of Lerins _did_ bear arms for years,
but he confessed he did not like the attendant dangers--threatening
him spiritually, not bodily, and he took the cowl and gained a place
in the sacred calendar accordingly. St. Aloysius Gonzaga, whose father
was a prince, was another of the young gentlemen for whom arms had
little attraction. The humility of this young gentleman, however, had
a very silly aspect, if it all resembled what is said of him by Father
Caperius. “He never looked on women, kept his eye strictly guarded,
and generally cast down; would never stay with his mother alone in her
chamber, and if she sent in any message to him by some lady in her
company, he received it, and gave his answer in a few words, with his
eyes shut, and his chamber-door only half open; and when bantered on
that score, he ascribed such behavior to his bashfulness. It was owing
to his original modesty that he did not know by their face many ladies
among his own relations, with whom he had frequently conversed; and
that he was afraid and ashamed to let a footman see so much as his foot
uncovered.” Whatever the soft Aloysius may have been fit for, it is
clear that he was _not_ fit for chivalry. Something akin to him was St.
Theobald of Champagne, who probably would never have been a saint, if
his father had not ordered him to lead a body of troops to the succor
of a beleaguered cousin. Theobald declined, and at once went into a
monastery.
St. Walthen, one of the sons of the Earl of Huntingdon, and Maud,
daughter of Judith, which Judith was the niece of the Conqueror, only
narrowly escaped being a gallant knight. As a boy, indeed, he used
to build churches with his box of bricks, while his brothers built
castles; but at least he gave promise of being a true knight, and,
once, not only accepted the gift of a ring from a lady, but wore
the sparkling diamond on his finger. “Ah! ah!” exclaimed the saucy
courtiers, “Knight Walthen is beginning to have a tender heart for the
ladies!” Poor Walthen! he called this a devil’s chorus, tossed the
ring into the fire, broke the lady’s heart, and went into a monastery
for the remainder of his days. He escaped better than St. Clarus, who
had a deaf ear and stone-blind eyes for the allurements of a lady of
quality, and who only barely escaped assassination, at the hands of
two ruffians hired by the termagant to kill the man who was above
allowing her holy face to win from him a grin of admiration. But though
I could fill a formidable volume with names of _ci-devant_ knights who
have turned saints, I will spare my readers, and conclude with the
great name of St. Bernard. He did not, indeed, take up arms, but when
he adopted a religious profession, he enjoyed the great triumph of
inducing his uncle, all his brothers, knights, and simple officers, to
follow his example. The uncle Gualdri, a famous swordsman and seigneur
of Touillon, was the first who was convinced that Bernard was right.
The two younger brothers of the latter, Bartholomew and Andrew, next
knocked off their spurs and took to their breviary. Guy, the eldest
brother, a married man, of wealth, broke up his household, sold his
armor, sent his lady to a convent and his daughters to a nunnery, put
on the cowl, and followed St. Bernard. Others of his family and many
of his friends followed his example, with which I conclude my record
of saints who have had any connection with arms. As for St. Bernard, I
_will_ say of him, that had he assumed the sword and been as merciless
to his enemies as he was, in his character of abbot, without bowels of
compassion for an adversary whom he could crush by wordy argument, he
would have been the most terrible cavalier that ever sat in saddle!
Perhaps the most perfect cavalier who ever changed that dignity for the
cowl, was the Chevalier de Rancé. Of him and his Trappist followers I
will here add a few words.
THE CHEVALIER DE RANCE AND THE TRAPPISTS.
De Rancé was born in 1626. He was of a ducal house, and the great
Cardinal de Richelieu was his godfather. In his youth he was very
sickly and scholastic. He was intended for the Church, held half a
score of livings before he could speak--and when he _could_ express
his will, resolved to live only by his sword. He remained for a while
neither priest nor swordsman, but simply the gayest of libertines. He
projected a plan of knight-errantry, in society with all the young
cavaliers, and abandoned the project to study astrology. For a period
of some duration, he was half-knight, half-priest. He then received
full orders, dressed like the most frivolous of marquises, seduced the
Duchess de Montbazon, and absolved in others the sins which he himself
practised. “Where are you going?” said the Chevalier de Champvallon to
him one day. “I have been preaching all the morning,” said De Rancé,
“like an angel, and I am going this afternoon to hunt like the very
devil.” He may be said to have been like those Mormons who describe
their fervent selves as “Hell-bent on Heaven!”
Nobody could ever tell whether he was soldier or priest, till death
slew the Duchess de Montbazon. De Rancé unexpectedly beheld the corpse
disfigured by the ravages of small-pox or measles, and he was so
shocked, that it drove him from the world to the cloister, where, as
the reconstructor, rather than the founder, of the order of Trappists,
he spent thirty-seven years--exactly as many as he had passed in the
“world.”
The companions and followers of the chivalrous De Rancé claim a few
words for themselves. The account will show in what strong contrasts
the two portions of their lives consisted. They had learned obedience
in their career of arms, but they submitted to a far more oppressive
rule in their career as monks. Some century and a half ago there was
published in Paris a dreadfully dreary series of volumes, entitled
“Relations de la Vie et de la Mort de quelques Religieux de l’Abbaye
de la Trappe.” They consist chiefly of tracts, partly biographical
and partly theological, uninteresting in the main, but of interest as
showing what noble soldiers or terrible freebooters asked for shelter
in, and endured the austerities of, La Trappe. I have alluded to the
unreserved submission required at the hands of the brothers. The
latter, according to the volumes which I have just named, were sworn
to impart even their _thoughts_ to the Abbot. They who thus delivered
themselves with least reserve appear to have been commanded in very bad
Latin; but their act of obedience was so dear to Heaven, that their
persons became surrounded with a glory, which their less communicative
brethren, says the author naïvely, could not possibly gaze at for any
length of time:--the which I implicitly believe.
The candidates for admission included, without doubt, many very pious
persons, but with them were degraded priests, with whom we have little
to do, and ex-officers, fugitive men-at-arms, robbers who had lived by
the sword, and murderers, of knightly degree, who had used their swords
to the unrighteous slaying of others, and who sought safety within the
cloisters of La Trappe. All that was asked of them was obedience. Where
this failed it was compelled. Where it abounded it was praised. Next
to it was humility. One brother, an ex-soldier reeking with blood, is
lauded because he lived on baked apples, when his throat was too sore
to admit of his swallowing more substantial food. Another brother, who
had changed arms for the gown, is most gravely compared with Moses,
because he was never bold enough to enter the pantry with sandals on
his feet. Still, obedience was the first virtue eulogized--so eulogized
that I almost suspect it to have been rare. It was made of so much
importance, that the community were informed that all their faith, and
all their works, without blind obedience to the superior, would fail in
securing their salvation. Practical blindness was as strongly enjoined.
He who used his eyes to least purpose, was accounted the better man.
One ex-military brother did this in so praiseworthy a way, that in
eight years he had never seen a fault in any of his brethren.
It was not, however, this sort of blindness that De Rancé required,
for he encouraged the brethren to bring accusations against each
other. Much praise is awarded to a brother who never looked at the
roof of his own cell. Laudation more unmeasured is poured upon another
faithful knight of the new order of self-negation, who was so entirely
unaccustomed to raise his eyes from the ground, that he was not aware
of the erection of a new chapel in the garden, until he broke his head
against the wall.
On one occasion the Duchess de Guiche and an eminent prelate visited
the monastery together. After they had left, a monk entered the Abbot’s
apartment, threw himself at the feet of his superior, and begged
permission to confess a great crime. He was told to proceed.
“When the lady and the bishop were here just now,” said he, “I dared to
raise my eyes, and they rested upon the face--”
“Not of the lady, thou reprobate!” exclaimed the Abbot.
“Oh no,” calmly rejoined the monk, “but of the old bishop!” A course of
bread and water was needed to work expiation for the crime.
Some of the brethren illustrated what they meant by obedience and
humility, after a strange fashion. For example, there was one who
having expressed an inclination to return to the world, was detained
against his will. His place was in the kitchen, and the devastation he
committed among the crockery was something stupendous--and probably
not altogether unintentional. He was not only continually fracturing
the delf earthenware dishes, but was incessantly running from the
kitchen to the Abbot, from the Abbot to the Prior, from the Prior to
the Sub-Prior, and from the Sub-Prior to the Master of the Novices to
confess his fault. Thence he returned to the kitchen again, once more
to smash whole crates of plates, following up the act with abundant
confessions, and deriving evident enjoyment, alike in destroying the
property, and assailing with noisy apologies the governing powers whom
he was resolved to inspire with a desire of getting rid of him.
In spite of forced detention there was a mock appearance of liberty at
monthly assemblies. The brethren were asked if there was anything in
the arrangement of the institution and its rules which they desired
to see changed. As an affirmative reply, however, would have brought
“penance” and “discipline” on him who made it, the encouraging phrase
that “They had only to speak,” by no means rendered them loquacious,
and every brother, by his silence, expressed his content.
If death was the suicidal object of many, the end appears to have been
generally attained with a speedy certainty. The superiors and a few
monks reached an advanced age; only a few of the brethren died old
men. Consumption, inflammation of the lungs, and abscess (at memory of
the minute description of which the very heart turns sick), carried
off the victims with terrible rapidity. Men entered, voluntarily or
otherwise, in good health. If they did so, determined to achieve
suicide, or were driven in by the government with a view of putting
them to death, the end soon came, and was, if we may believe what we
read, welcomed with alacrity. After rapid, painful, and unresisted
decay, the sufferer saw as his last hour approached, the cinders strewn
on the ground in the shape of a cross; a thin scattering of straw was
made upon the cinders, and that was the death-bed upon which every
Trappist expired. The body was buried in the habit of the order, as
some knights have been in panoply, without coffin or shroud, and was
borne to the grave in a cloth upheld by a few brothers. If it fell into
its last receptacle with huddled-up limbs, De Rancé would leap into the
grave and dispose the unconscious members, so as to make them assume an
attitude of repose.
A good deal of confusion appears to have distinguished the rules of
nomenclature. In many instances, where the original names had impure
or ridiculous significations, the change was advisable. But I can not
see how a brother became more cognisable as a Christian, by assuming
the names of Palemon, Achilles, Moses, or even Dorothy. Theodore, I can
understand; but Dorothy, though it bears the same meaning, seems to me
but an indifferent name for a monk, even in a century when the male
Montmorencies delighted in the name of “Anne.”
None of the monks were distinguished by superfluous flesh. Some of
these ex-soldiers were so thin-skinned, that when sitting on hard
chairs, their bones fairly rubbed through their very slight epidermis.
They who so suffered, and joyfully, were held up as bright examples of
godliness.
There is matter for many a sigh in these saffron-leaved and worm-eaten
tomes, whose opened pages are now before me. I find a monk who has
passed a sleepless night through excess of pain. To test his obedience,
he is ordered to confess that he has slept well and suffered nothing.
The submissive soldier obeys his general’s command. Another confesses
his readiness, as Dr. Newman has done, to surrender any of his own
deliberately-made convictions at the bidding of his superior. “I am
wax,” he says, “for you to mould me as you will and his unreserved
surrender of himself is commended with much windiness of phrase. A
third, inadvertently remarking that his scalding broth is over-salted,
bursts into tears at the enormity of the crime he has committed by thus
complaining; whereupon praise falls upon him more thickly than the salt
did into his broth: “Yes,” says the once knight, now abbot, “it is not
praying, nor watching, nor repentance, that is alone asked of you by
God, but humility and obedience therewith; and _first_ obedience.”
To test the fidelity of those professing to have this humility and
obedience, the most outrageous insults were inflicted on such as in
the world had been reckoned the most high-spirited. It is averred
that these never failed. The once testy soldier, now passionless
monk, kissed the sandal raised to kick, and blessed the hand lifted
to smite him. A proud young officer of mousquetaires, of whom I have
strong suspicions that he had embezzled a good deal of his majesty’s
money, acknowledged that he was the greatest criminal that ever
lived; but he stoutly denied the same when the officers of the law
visited the monastery and accused him of fraudulent practices. This
erst young warrior had no greater delight than in being permitted
to clean the spittoons in the chapel, and provide them with fresh
sawdust. Another, a young marquis and chevalier, performed with ecstacy
servile offices of a more disgusting character. This monk was the
flower of the fraternity. He was for ever accusing himself of the most
heinous crimes, not one of which he had committed, or was capable of
committing. “He represented matters so ingeniously,” says De Rancé,
who on this occasion is the biographer, “that without lying, he made
himself pass for the vile wretch which in truth he was not.” He must
have been like that other clever individual who “lied like truth.”
When I say that he was the flower of the fraternity, I probably do
some wrong to the Chevalier de Santin, who under the name of Brother
Palemon, was undoubtedly the chief pride of La Trappe. He had been an
officer in the army; without love for God, regard for man, respect for
woman, or reverence for law. In consequence of a rupture between Savoy
and France, he lost an annuity on which he had hitherto lived. As his
constitution was considerably shattered, he at the same time took to
reading. He was partially converted by perusing the history of Joseph;
and he was finally perfected by seeing the dead body of a very old and
very ugly monk, assume the guise and beauty of that of a young man.
This was good ground for conversion; but the count--for the chevalier
of various orders was of that degree by birth--the count had been so
thorough a miscreant in the world, that they who lived in the latter
declined to believe in the godliness of Brother Palemon. Thereupon he
was exhibited to all comers, and he gave ready replies to all queries
put to him by his numerous visiters. All France, grave and gay, noble
and simple, flocked to the spectacle. At the head of them was that
once sovereign head of the Order of the Garter, James II., with his
illegitimate son, from whom is descended the French ducal family of
Fitz-James. The answers of Palemon to his questioners edified countless
crowds. He shared admiration with another ex-military brother, who
guilelessly told the laughing ladies who flocked to behold him, that
he had sought refuge in the monastery because his sire had wished him
to marry a certain lady; but that his soul revolted at the idea of
touching even the finger-tips of one of a sex by the first of whom the
world was lost. The consequent laughter was immense.
From this it is clear that there were occasionally gay doings at
the monastery, and that those at least who had borne arms, were not
addicted to close their eyes in the presence of ladies. Among the most
remarkable of the knightly members of the brotherhood, was a certain
Robert Graham, whose father, Colonel Graham, was first cousin to
Montrose. Robert was born, we are told, in the “Chateau de Rostourne,”
a short league (it is added by way of help, I suppose, to perplexed
travellers), from Edinburgh. By his mother’s side he was related to the
Earl of Perth, of whom the Trappist biographer says, that he was even
more illustrious for his piety, and for what he suffered for the sake
of religion, than by his knighthood, his viceroyship, or his offices
of High Chancellor of England, and “Governor of the Prince of Wales,
now (1716) rightful king of Great Britain.” The mother of Robert, a
zealous protestant, is spoken of as having “as much piety as one _can_
have in a false religion.” In spite of her teaching, however, the young
Robert early exhibited an inclination for the Romish religion; and at
ten years of age, the precocious boy attended mass in the chapel of
Holyrood, to the great displeasure of his mother. On his repeating
his visit, she had him soundly whipped by his tutor; but the young
gentleman declared that the process could not persuade him to embrace
Presbyterianism. He accordingly rushed to the house of Lord Perth,
“himself a recent convert from the Anglican Church,” and claimed his
protection. After some family arrangements had been concluded, the
youthful protégé was formally surrendered to the keeping of Lord Perth,
by his mother, and not without reluctance. His father gave him up with
the unconcern of those Gallios who care little about questions of
religion.
Circumstances compelled the earl to leave Scotland, when Robert
sojourned with his mother at the house of her brother, a godly
protestant minister. Here he showed the value of the instructions he
had received at the hands of Lord Perth and his Romish chaplain, by a
conduct which disgusted every honest man, and terrified every honest
maiden, in all the country round. His worthy biographer is candid
enough to say that Robert, in falling off from Popery, did not become
a protestant, but an atheist. The uncle turned him out of his house.
The prodigal repaired to London, where he rioted prodigally; thence
he betook himself to France, and he startled even Paris with the bad
renown of his evil doings. On his way thither through Flanders, he had
had a moment or two of misgiving as to the wisdom of his career, and
he hesitated while one might count twenty, between the counsel of some
good priests, and the bad example of some Jacobite soldiers, with whom
he took service. The latter prevailed, and when the chevalier Robert
appeared at the court of St Germains, Lord Perth presented to the
fugitive king and queen there, as accomplished a scoundrel as any in
Christendom.
There was a show of decency at the exiled court, and respect for
religion. Young Graham adapted himself to the consequent influences. He
studied French, read the lives of the saints, entered the seminary at
Meaux, and finally reprofessed the Romish religion. He was now seized
with a desire to turn hermit, but accident having taken him to La
Trappe, the blasé libertine felt himself reproved by the stern virtue
exhibited there, and, in a moment of enthusiasm, he enrolled himself a
postulant, bade farewell to the world, and devoted himself to silence,
obedience, humility, and austerity, with a perfectness that surprised
alike those who saw and those who heard of it. Lord Perth opposed the
reception of Robert in the monastery. Thereon arose serious difficulty,
and therewith the postulant relapsed into sin. He blasphemed, reviled
his kinsmen, swore oaths that set the whole brotherhood in speechless
terror, and finally wrote a letter to his old guardian, so crammed with
fierce and unclean epithets, that the abbot refused permission to have
it forwarded. The excitement which followed brought on illness; with
the latter, came reflection and sorrow. At length all difficulties
vanished, and ultimately, on the eve of All Saints, 1699, Robert Graham
became a monk, and changed his name for that of Brother Alexis. King
James visited him, and was much edified by the spiritual instruction
vouchsafed him by the second cousin of the gallant Montrose. The new
monk was so perfect in obedience that he would not in winter throw
a crumb to a half-starved sparrow, without first applying for leave
from his spiritual superior. “Indeed,” says his biographer, “I could
tell you a thousand veritable stories about him; but they are so
extraordinary that I do not suppose the world would believe one of
them.” The biographer adds, that Alexis, after digging and cutting wood
all day; eating little, drinking less, praying incessantly, and neither
washing nor unclothing himself, lay down; but to pass the night without
closing his eyes in sleep! He was truly a brother Vigilantius.
The renown of his conversion had many influences. The father of Alexis,
Colonel Graham, embraced Romanism, and the colonel and an elder son,
who was already a Capuchin friar, betook themselves to La Trappe,
where the reception of the former into the church was marked by a
double solemnity--De Rancé dying as the service was proceeding. The
wife of Colonel Graham is said to have left Scotland on the receipt of
the above intelligence, to have repaired to France, and there embrace
the form of faith followed by her somewhat facile husband. There is,
however, great doubt on this point.
The fate of young Robert Graham was similar to that of most of the
Trappists. The deadly air, the hard work, the watchings, the scanty
food, and the uncleanliness which prevailed, soon slew a man who was
as useless to his fellow-men in a convent, as he had ever been in the
world. His confinement was, in fact, a swift suicide. Consumption
seized on the poor boy, for he was still but a boy, and his rigid
adherence to the severe discipline of the place, only aided to develop
what a little care might have easily checked. His serge gown clove
to the carious bones which pierced through his diseased skin. The
portions of his body on which he immovably lay, became gangrened, and
nothing appears to have been done by way of remedy. He endured all with
patience, and looked forward to death with a not unaccountable longing.
The “infirmier” bade him be less eager in pressing forward to the
grave.--“I will now pray God,” said the nursing brother, “that he will
be pleased to save you.”--“And I,” said Alexis, “will ask him not to
heed you.” Further detail is hardly necessary: suffice it to say that
Robert Graham died on the 21st May, 1701, little more than six months
after he had entered the monastery, and at the early age of twenty-two
years. The father and brother also died in France, and so ended the
chivalrous cousins of the chivalrous Montrose.
The great virtue inculcated at La Trappe, was one of the cherished
virtues of old chivalry, obedience to certain rules. But there was no
excitement in carrying it out. Bodily suffering was encountered by a
knight, for mere glory’s sake. At La Trappe it was accounted as the
only means whereby to escape Satan. The knight of the cross purchased
salvation by the sacrifice of his life; the monk of La Trappe, by an
unprofitable suicide. With both there was doubtless the one great
hope common to all Christians; but that great hope, so fortifying to
the knight, seemed not to relieve the Trappist of the fear that Satan
was more powerful than the Redeemer. When once treating this subject
at greater length, I remarked that there was a good moral touching
Satan in Cuvier’s dream, and the application of which might have been
profitable to men like these monks. The great philosopher just named,
once saw, in his sleep, the popular representative of the great enemy
of man. The fiend approached with a loudly-expressed determination to
“eat him.” “Eat me!” exclaimed Cuvier, examining him the while with the
eye of a naturalist. “Eat me! Horns! Hoofs!” he added, scanning him
over. “Horns? Hoofs? _Graminivorous!_ needn’t be afraid of you!”
And now let us get back from the religious orders of men to chivalrous
orders of ladies. It is quite time to exclaim, _Place aux Dames!_
FEMALE KNIGHTS AND JEANNE DARC.
Mein ist der Helm, und mir gehört er zu.--SCHILLER.
“Orders for ladies” have been favorite matters with both Kings and
Queens, Emperors and Empresses. The Austrian Empress, Eleanora de
Gonzague, founded two orders, which admitted only ladies as members.
The first was in commemoration of the miraculous preservation of a
particle of the true cross, which escaped the ravages of a fire which
nearly destroyed the imperial residence, in 1668. Besides this Order
of the Cross, the same Empress instituted the Order of the Slaves of
Virtue. This was hardly a complimentary title, for a slave necessarily
implies a compulsory and unwilling servant. The number of members were
limited to thirty, and these were required to be noble, and of the
Romish religion. The motto was, _Sole ubique triumphat_; which may have
implied that she only who best served virtue, was likely to profit by
it. This was not making a very exalted principle of virtue itself. It
was rather placing it in the point of view wherein it was considered by
Pamela, who was by far too calculating a young lady to deserve all the
eulogy that has been showered upon her.
Another Empress of Germany, Elizabeth Christiana, founded, in the early
part of the last century, at Vienna, an Order of Neighborly Love. It
consisted of persons of both sexes; but nobody was accounted a neighbor
who was not noble. With regard to numbers, it was unlimited. The motto
of the order was _Amor Proximi_; a motto which exactly characterized
the feelings of Queen Guinever for any handsome knight who happened
to be her neighbor for the nonce. “Proximus” at the meetings of the
order was, of course, of that convenient gender whereby all the members
of the order could profit by its application. They might have had a
particularly applicable song, if they had only possessed a Béranger to
sing as the French lyrist has done.
There was also in Germany an order for ladies only, that was of a very
sombre character. It was the Order of Death’s Head; and was founded
just two centuries ago, by a Duke of Wirtemburg, who decreed that a
princess of that house should always be at the head of it. The rules
bound ladies to an observance of conduct which they were not likely
to observe, if the rule of Christianity was not strong enough to bind
them; and probably many fair ladies who wore the double cross, with
the death’s head pending from the lower one, looked on the motto of
“Memento Mori,” as a reminder to daring lovers who dared to look on
_them_.
France had given us, in ladies’ orders, first, the Order of the
Cordelière, founded by that Anne of Brittany who brought her
independent duchy as a dower to Charles VIII. of France, and who did
for the French court what Queen Charlotte effected for that of England,
at a much later period. Another Anne, of Austria, wife of Louis XIII.,
and some say of Cardinal Mazarin also, founded, for ladies, the Order
of the Celestial Collar of the Holy Rosary. The members consisted of
fifty young ladies of the first families in France; and they all wore,
appended to other and very charming insignia hanging from the neck,
a portrait of St. Dominic, who found himself in the best possible
position for instilling all sorts of good principles into a maiden’s
bosom.
The Order of the Bee was founded a century and a half ago by Louisa de
Bourbon, Duchess of Maine. The ensign was a medal, with the portrait of
the duchess on one side, and the figure of a bee, with the motto, _Je
suis petite, mais mes piqueures sont profondes_, on the other.
In Russia, Peter the Great founded the Order of St. Catherine, in honor
of his wife, and gave as its device, _Pour l’amour et la fidélité
envers la patrie_. It was at first intended for men, but was ultimately
made a female order exclusively. A similar change was found necessary
in the Spanish Order of the Lady of Mercy, founded in the thirteenth
century by James, King of Aragon. There were other female orders in
Spain, and the whole of them had for their object the furtherance of
religion, order, and virtue. In some cases, membership was conferred
in acknowledgment of merit. Who forgets Miss Jane Porter in her
costume and insignia of a lady of one of the orders of Polish female
chivalry--and who is ignorant that Mrs. Otway has been recently
decorated by the Queen of Spain with the Order of Maria Louisa?
The Order of St. Ulrica, in Sweden, was founded in 1734, in honor
of a lady, the reigning Queen, and to commemorate the liberty which
Sweden had acquired and enjoyed from the period of her accession. Two
especial qualities were necessary in the candidates for knighthood in
this order. It was necessary that a public tribunal should declare
that they were men of pure public spirit; and it was further required
of them to prove that in serving the country, they had never been
swayed by motives of private interest. When the order was about to
be founded, not less than five hundred candidates appeared to claim
chivalric honor. Of these, only fifty were chosen, and decree was
made that the number of knights should never exceed that amount. It
was an unnecessary decree, if the qualifications required were to be
stringently demanded. But, in the conferring of honors generally, there
has often been little connection between cause and effect; as, for
instance, after Major-General Simpson had failed to secure the victory
which the gallantry of our troops had put in his power at the Redan,
the home government was so delighted, that they made field-marshals of
two very old gentlemen. The example was not lost on the King of the
Belgians. He, too, commemorated the fall of Sebastopol by enlarging the
number of his knights. He could not well scatter decorations among his
army, for that has been merely a military police, but he made selection
of an equally destructive body, and named eighteen doctors--Knights of
St. Leopold.
These orders of later institution appear to have forgotten one of the
leading principles of knighthood--love for the ladies--but perhaps this
is quite as well. When Louis II., Duke of Bourbon, instituted the Order
of the Golden Shield, he was by no means so forgetful. He enjoined his
knights to honor the ladies above all, and never permit any one to
slander them with impunity; “because,” said the good duke, “after God,
we owe everything to the labors of the ladies, and all the honor that
man can acquire.” One portion of which assertion may certainly defy
contradiction.
The most illustrious of female knights, however, is, without dispute,
the Maid of Orleans. Poor Jeanne Darc seems to me to have been an
illustrious dupe and an innocent victim. Like Charlotte Corday, the
calamities of her country weighed heavily upon her spirits, and her
consequent eager desire to relieve them, caused her to be marked
as a fitting instrument for a desired end. Poor Charlotte Corday
commissioned herself for the execution of the heroic deed which
embellishes her name--Jeanne Darc was evidently commissioned by others.
The first step taken by Jeanne to obtain access to the Dauphin, was to
solicit the assistance of the proud De Baudricourt, who resided not far
from the maid’s native place, Domremy. However pious the young girl
may have been, De Baudricourt was not the man to give her a public
reception, had not some foregone conclusion accompanied it. She needed
his help to enable her to proceed to Chinon. The answer of the great
chief was that she should not be permitted to go there. The reply of
the maid, who was always uncommonly “smart” in her answers, was that
she _would_ go to Chinon, although she were forced to crawl the whole
way on her knees. She _did_ go, and the circumstances of a mere young
girl, who was in the habit of holding intercourse with angels and
archangels, thus overcoming, as it were, the most powerful personage
in the district, was proof enough to the common mind, as to whence
she derived her strength and authority. The corps of priests by whom
she was followed, as soon as her divine mission was acknowledged or
invented by the court, lent her additional influence, and sanctified in
her own mind, her doubtless honest enthusiasm. The young girl did all
to which she pledged herself, and in return, was barbarously treated
by both friend and foe, and was most hellishly betrayed by the Church,
under whose benediction she had raised her banner. She engaged to
relieve Orleans from the terrible English army which held it in close
siege, and she nobly kept her engagement. It may be noticed that the
first person slain in this siege, was a young lady named Belle, and
the fair sex thus furnished the first victim, as well as the great
conqueror, in this remarkable conflict.
I pass over general details, in order to have the more space to notice
particular illustrative circumstances touching our female warrior.
Jeanne, it must be allowed, was extremely bold of assertion as well
as smart in reply. She would have delighted a Swedenborgian by the
alacrity with which she protested that she held intercourse with
spirits from Heaven and prophets of old. Nothing was so easy as to make
her believe so; and she was quite as ready to deny the alleged fact
when her clerical accusers, in the day of her adversity, declared that
such belief was a suggestion of the devil. I think there was some humor
and a little reproach in the reply by Jeanne, that she would maintain
or deny nothing but as she was directed by the Church.
Meanwhile, during her short but glorious career, she manifested true
chivalrous spirit. She feared no man, not even the brave Dunois.
“Bastard, bastard!” said she to him on one occasion, “in the name of
God, hear me; I command you to let me know of the arrival of Fastolf
as soon as it takes place; for, hark ye, if he passes without my
knowledge, I give you my word, you shall lose your head.” And thereon
she turned to her dinner of dry bread and wine-and-water--half a pint
of the first to two pints of the last, with the quiet air of a person
able and determined to realize every menace.
It is very clear that her brother knights, while they profited by her
services, and obeyed (with some reluctance) her orders, neither thought
nor spoke over-well of her. Their comments were not complimentary to
a virgin reputation, which a jury of princesses, with a queen for a
forewoman, had pronounced unblemished. She even risked her _prestige_
over the common rank and file, but generally by measures which resulted
in strengthening it. Thus, on taking the Fort of the Augustins from
the English, she destroyed all the rich things and lusty wine she
found there, lest the men should be corrupted by indulgence therein.
It may be remembered that Gustavus Vasa highly disgusted his valiant
Dalecarlians by a similar exhibition of healthy discipline.
The Maid undoubtedly placed the work of fighting before the pleasure of
feasting. When she was about to issue from her lodgings, to head the
attack against the bastion of the Tourelles, where she prophesied she
would be wounded, her host politely begged of her to remain and partake
of a dish of freshly-caught shad. It was the 7th of May, and shad was
just in season; the Germans call it distinctively “the May-fish.”
Jeanne resisted the temptation for the moment. “Keep the fish till
to-night,” said she, “till I have come back from the fray; for I shall
bring a Goden [a ‘God d--n,’ or Englishman] with me to partake of my
supper.”
She was not more ready of tongue than she was quick of eye. An instance
of the latter may be found in an incident before Jargeau. She was
reconnoitring the place at a considerable distance. The period was
more than a century and a half before Hans Lippershey, the Middleburg
spectacle-maker, had invented, and still more before Galileo had
improved, the telescope. The Duke d’Alençon was with Jeanne, and she
bade him step aside, as the enemy were pointing a gun at him. The Duke
obeyed, for he knew her acuteness of vision; the gun was fired, and
De Lude, a gentleman of Anjou, standing in a line with the spot which
had been occupied by the Duke, was slain--which must have been very
satisfactory to the Duke!
I have said that some of the knights had but a scanty respect for the
gallant Maid. A few, no doubt, objected to the assumption of heavenly
inspiration on her part. One, at least, was not so particular. I
allude to the Baron De Richemond, who had been exiled from court for
the little misdemeanor of having assassinated Cannes de Beaulieu. The
Baron had recovered his good name by an actively religious exercise,
manifested by his hunting after wizards and witches, and burning
them alive, to the delight and edification of dull villagers. This
pious personage paid a visit to Jeanne, hoping to obtain, by her
intercession, the royal permission to have a share in the war. The
disgraced knight, who brought with him a couple of thousand men, when
these were most wanted, was not likely to meet with a refusal of
service, and the permission sought for was speedily granted. Jeanne
playfully alluded to her own supernatural inspiration and the Baron’s
vocation as “witch-finder.” “Ah well,” said De Richemond, “with regard
to yourself, I have only this to say, that it is difficult to say
anything; but if you are from Heaven, it is not I who shall be afraid
of you; and if you come from the devil, I do not fear even him, who, in
such case, sends you.” Thereupon, they laughed merrily, and began to
talk of the next day’s battle.
That battle was fought upon the field of Patay, where the gallant
Talbot was made prisoner by the equally gallant Saintrailles. When the
great English commander was brought into the presence of Jeanne, he was
good-humoredly asked if he had expected such a result the day before.
“It is the fortune of war,” philosophically exclaimed the inimitable
John; and thereby he made a soldier’s comment, which has often since
been in the mouths of the valiant descendants of the French knights who
heard it uttered, and which is frequently quoted as being of Gallic
origin. But, again, I think that “fortuna belli” was not an uncommon
phrase, perhaps, in old days before the French language was yet spoken.
And here, talking of origin, let me notice a circumstance of some
interest. Jeanne Darc is commonly described as Jeanne D’Arc, as though
she had been ennobled. This, indeed, she was, by the King, but not
by that name. To the old family name was added that of _du Lys_, in
allusion to the Lily of France, which that family had served so well.
The brothers of Jeanne, now Darc du Lys, entered the army. When Guise
sent a French force into Scotland, some gallant gentlemen of this name
of Lys were among them. They probably settled in Caledonia, for the
name is not an uncommon one there; and there is a gallant major in
the 48th who bears it, and who, perhaps, may owe his descent to the
ennobled brothers of “The Maid of Orleans.”
Jeanne was not so affected as to believe that nobility was above the
desert of her deeds. When her relatives, including her brothers,
Peter and John, congratulated her and themselves on all that she
had accomplished, her remark was: “My deeds are in truth those of a
ministry; but in as great truth never were greater read of by cleric,
however profound he may be in all clerical learning.” The degree of
nobility allowed to the deserving girl was that of a countess. Her
household consisted of a steward, almoner, squire, pages, “hand, foot,
and chamber men,” independently of the noble maidens who tended her,
and who seem to have been equally served by three “valets de main, de
pied, et de chambre.”
But short-lived was the glory; no, I will not say _that_, let me rather
remark that short-lived was the worldly splendor of the chivalrous
my-lady countess. She had rendered all the service she could, when she
fell wounded before Paris, and was basely abandoned for a while by her
own party. She was rescued, ultimately, by D’Alençon, but only to be
more disgracefully abandoned on the one side, and evilly treated on
the other. When as a bleeding captive she was rudely dragged from the
field at Compiègne; church, court, and chivalry, ignobly abandoned the
poor and brave girl who had served all three in turn. By all three she
was now as fiercely persecuted; and it may safely be said, that if the
English were glad to burn her as a witch, to account for the defeat of
the English and their allies, the French were equally eager to furnish
testimony against her.
Her indecision and vacillation after falling into the hands of her
enemies, would seem to show that apart from the promptings of those
who had guided her, she was but an ordinary personage. She, however,
never lost heart, and her natural wit did not abandon her. “Was St.
Michael naked when he appeared to you?” was a question asked by one of
the examining commissioners. To which Jeanne replied, “Do you think
heaven has not wherewith to dress him?” “Had he any hair on his head?”
was the next sensible question. Jeanne answered it by another query,
“Have the goodness to tell me,” said she, “why Michael’s head should
have been shaved?” It was easy, of course, to convict a prejudged and
predoomed person, of desertion of her parents, of leading a vagabond
and disreputable life, of sorcery, and finally, of heresy. She was
entrapped into answers which tended to prove her culpability; but
disregarding at last the complicated web woven tightly around her, and
aware that nothing could save her, the heart of the knightly maiden
beat firmly again, and as a summary reply to all questions, she briefly
and emphatically declared: “All that I have done, all that I do, I
have done well, and do well to do it.” In her own words, “Tout ce que
j’ai fait, tout ce que je fais, j’ai bien fait, et fais bien de le
faire;” and it was a simply-dignified _resume_ in presence of high-born
ecclesiastics, who did not scruple to give the lie to each other like
common ploughmen.
She was sentenced to death, and suffered the penalty, as being guilty
of infamy, socially, morally, religiously, and politically. Not a
finger was stretched to save her who had saved so many. Her murder is
an indelible stain on two nations and one church; not the less so that
the two nations unite in honoring her memory, and that the church has
pronounced her innocent. Never did gallant champion meet with such
base ingratitude from the party raised by her means from abject slavery
to triumph; never was noble enemy so ignobly treated by a foe with
whom, to acknowledge and admire valor, is next to the practice of it;
and never was staff selected by the church for its support, so readily
broken and thrown into the fire when it had served its purpose. All the
sorrow in the world can not wash out these terrible facts, but it is
fitting that this sorrow should always accompany our admiration. And
so, honored be the memory of the young girl of Orleans!
After all, it is a question whether our sympathies be not thrown away
when we affect to feel for Jeanne Darc. M. Delepierre, the Belgian
Secretary of Legation, has printed, for private circulation, his “Doute
Historique.” This work consists chiefly of official documents, showing
that the “Maid” never suffered at all, but that some criminal having
been executed in her place, she survived to be a pensioner of the
government, a married lady, and the mother of a family! The work in
which these documents are produced, is not to be easily procured, but
they who have any curiosity in the matter will find the subject largely
treated in the _Athenæum_. This “Historical Doubt” brings us so closely
in connection with romance, that we, perhaps, can not do better in
illustrating our subject, than turn to a purely romantic subject, and
see of what metal the champions of Christendom were made, with respect
to chivalry.
THE CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM GENERALLY AND HE OF ENGLAND IN PARTICULAR.
“Are these things true?
Thousands are getting at them in the streets.”
_Sejanus His Fall._
I can hardly express the delight I feel as a biographer in the present
instance, in the very welcome fact that no one knows anything about the
parentage of St. George. If there had been a genealogical tree of the
great champion’s race, the odds, are that I should have got bewildered
among the branches. As there is only much conjecture with a liberal
allowance of assertion, the task is doubly easy, particularly as the
matter itself is of the very smallest importance.
The first proof that our national patron ever existed at all, according
to Mr. Alban Butler, is that the Greeks reverenced him by the name of
“the Great Martyr.” Further proof of a somewhat similar quality, is
adduced in the circumstance that in Greece and in various parts of the
Levant, there are or were dozens of churches erected in honor of the
chivalrous saint; that Georgia took the holy knight for its especial
patron; and that St. George, in full panoply, won innumerable battles
for the Christians, by leading forward the reserves when the vanguard
had been repulsed by the infidels, and the Christian generals were of
themselves too indolent, sick, or incompetent, to do what they expected
St. George to do for them.
From the East, veneration for this name, and some imaginary person who
once bore it, extended itself throughout the West. It is a curious
fact, that long before England placed herself under the shield of this
religious soldier, France had made selection of him, at least as a
useful adjutant or aide-de-camp to St. Denis. Indeed, our saint was
at one time nearly monopolized by France. St. Clotilde, the wife of
the first Christian king of France, raised many altars in his honor--a
fact which has not been forgotten in the decorations and illustrative
adornments of that splendid church which has just been completed in
the Faubourg St. Germain, and which is at once the pride and glory of
Paris. That city once possessed relics which were said to be those
of St. George; but of their whereabouts, no man now knows anything.
We do, however, know that the Normans brought over the name of the
saint with them, as that of one in whose arm of power they trusted,
whether in the lists or in battle. In this respect _we_, as Saxons,
if we choose to consider ourselves as such, have no particular reason
to be grateful to the saint, for his presence among us is a symbol of
national defeat if not of national humiliation. Not above six centuries
have, however, elapsed since the great council of Oxford appointed his
feast to be kept as a holyday of lesser rank throughout England; and
it is about five hundred years since Edward III. established the Order
of the Garter, under the patronage of this saint. This order is far
more ancient than that of St. Michael, instituted by Louis XI.; of the
Golden Fleece, invented by that ‘good’ Duke Philip of Burgundy, who
fleeced all who were luckless enough to come within reach of his ducal
shears; and of the Scottish Order of St. Andrew, which is nearly two
centuries younger than that of St. George. Venice, Genoa, and Germany,
have also instituted orders of chivalry in honor of this unknown
cavalier.
These honors, however, and a very general devotion prove nothing
touching his birth, parentage, and education. Indeed, it is probably
because nothing is known of either, that his more serious biographers
begin with his decease, and write his history, which, like one of
Zschokke’s tales, might be inscribed “Alles Verkerht.” They tell us
that he suffered under Diocletian, in Nicomedia, and on the 23d of
April. We are further informed that he was a Cappadocian--a descendant
of those savagely servile people, who once told the Romans that they
would neither accept liberty at the hands of Rome, nor tolerate it
of their own accord. He was, it is said, of noble birth, and after
the death of his father, resided with his mother in Palestine, on an
estate which finally became his own. The young squire was a handsome
and stalwart youth, and, like many of _that_ profession, fond of a
military life. His promotion must have been pretty rapid, for we find
him, according to tradition, a tribune or colonel in the army at a
very early age, and a man of much higher rank before he prematurely
died. His ideas of discipline were good, for when the pagan emperor
persecuted the Christians, George of Cappadocia resigned his commission
and appointments, and not till then, when he was a private man,
did he stoutly remonstrate with his imperial ex-commander-in-chief
against that sovereign’s bloody edicts and fiercer cruelty against the
Christians. This righteous boldness was barbarously avenged; and on
the day after the remonstrance the gallant soldier lost his head. Some
authors add to this account that he was the “illustrious young man”
who tore down the anti-Christian edicts, when they were first posted
up in Nicomedia, a conjecture which, by the hagiographers is called
“plausible,” but which has no shadow of proof to give warrant for its
substantiality.
The reason why all knights and soldiers generally have had confidence
in St. George, is founded, we are told, on the _facts_ of his
reappearance on earth at various periods, and particularly at the great
siege of Antioch, in the times of the crusades. The Christians had
been well nigh as thoroughly beaten as the Russians at Silistria. They
were at the utmost extremity, when a squadron was seen rushing down
from a mountain defile, with three knights at its head, in brilliant
panoply and snow-white scarfs. “Behold,” cried Bishop Adhemar, “the
heavenly succor which was promised to you! Heaven declares for the
Christians. The holy martyrs, George, Demetrius, and Theodore, come to
fight for you.” The effect was electrical. The Christian army rushed
to victory, with the shout, “It is the will of God!” and the effect of
the opportune appearance of the three chiefs and their squadron, who
laid right lustily on the Saracens, was decisive of one of the most
glorious, yet only temporarily productive of triumphs.
When Richard I. was on his expedition against enemies of the same race,
he too was relieved from great straits by a vision of St. George. The
army, indeed, did not see the glorious and inspiring sight, but the
king affirmed that _he_ did, which, in those credulous times was quite
as well. In these later days men are less credulous, or saints are
more cautious. Thus the Muscovites assaulted Kars under the idea that
St. Sergius was with them; at all events, Pacha Williams, a good cause,
and sinewy arms, were stronger than the Muscovite idea and St. Sergius
to boot.
Such, then, is the hagiography of our martial saint. Gibbon has
sketched his life in another point of view--business-like, if not
matter-of-fact. The terrible historian sets down our great patron as
having been born in a fuller’s shop in Cilicia, educated (perhaps) in
Cappadocia, and as having so won promotion, when a young man, from his
patrons, by the skilful exercise of his profession as a parasite, as to
procure, through their influence, “a lucrative commission or contract
to supply the army with bacon!” In this commissariat employment he is
said to have exercised fraud and corruption, by which may be meant
that he sent to the army bacon as rusty as an old cuirass, and charged
a high price for a worthless article. In these times, when the name
and character of St. George are established, it is to be hoped that
Christian purveyors for Christian armies do not, in reverencing George
the Saint, imitate the practices alleged against him as George the
Contractor. It would be hard, indeed, if a modern contractor who sent
foul hay to the cavalry, uneatable food to the army generally, or
poisonous potted-meat to the navy, could shield himself under the name
and example of St. George. Charges as heavy _are_ alleged against him
by Gibbon, who adds that the malversations of the pious rogue “were
so notorious, that George was compelled to escape from the pursuit of
justice.” If he saved his fortune, it is allowed that he made shipwreck
of his honor; and he certainly did not improve his reputation if,
as is alleged, he turned Arian. The career of our patron saint, as
described by Gibbon, is startling. That writer speaks of the splendid
library subsequently collected by George, but he hints that the volumes
on history, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology, were perhaps as much
proof of ostentation as of love for learning. That George was raised
by the intrigues of a faction to the pastoral throne of Athanasius, in
Alexandria, does not surprise us. Bishops were very irregularly elected
in those early days, when men were sometimes summarily made teachers
who needed instruction themselves; as is the case in some enlightened
districts at present. George displayed an imperial pomp in his
archiepiscopal character, “but he still betrayed those vices of his
base and servile extraction,” yet was so impartial that he oppressed
and plundered all parties alike. “The merchants of Alexandria,” says
the historian of the “Decline and Fall,” “were impoverished by the
unjust and almost universal monopoly which he acquired of nitre, salt,
paper, funerals, &c., and the spiritual father of a great people
condescended to practise the vile and pernicious arts of an informer.
He seems to have had as sharp an eye after the profit to be derived
from burials, as a certain archdeacon, who thinks intramural burial
of the dead a very sanitary measure for the living, and particularly
profitable to the clergy. Thus the example of St. George would seem
to influence very “venerable” as well as very “martial” gentlemen.
The Cappadocian most especially disgusted the Alexandrians by levying
a house tax, of his own motion, and as he pillaged the pagan temples
as well, all parties rose at length against the common oppressor and
“under the reign of Constantine he was expelled by the fury and justice
of the people.” He was restored only again to fall. The accession of
Julian brought destruction upon the archbishop and many of his friends,
who, after an imprisonment of three weeks, were dragged from their
dungeons by a wild and cruel populace, and murdered in the streets.
The bodies were paraded in triumph upon camels (as that of Condé was
by his Catholic opponents, after the battle of Jarnac, on an ass), and
they were ultimately cast into the sea. This last measure was adopted
in order that, if the sufferers were to be accounted as martyrs, there
should at least be no relics of them for men to worship. Gibbon thus
concludes: “The fears of the Pagans were just, and their precautions
ineffectual. The meritorious death of the archbishop obliterated the
memory of his life. The rival of Athanasius was dear and sacred to the
Arians, and the seeming conversion of those sectaries introduced his
worship into the bosom of the Catholic church. The odious stranger,
disguising every circumstance of time and place, assumed the rank of
a martyr, a saint, and a Christian hero; and the infamous George of
Cappadocia has been transformed into the famous St. George of England,
the patron of arms, of chivalry, and of the garter.”
The romancers have treated St. George and his knightly confraternity
after their own manner. As a sample of what reading our ancestors
were delighted with, especially those who loved chivalric themes, I
know nothing better than “The Famous History of the Seven Champions
of Christendom, St. George of England, St. Denis of France, St. James
of Spain, St. Anthony of Italy, St. Andrew of Scotland, St. Patrick
of Ireland, and St. David of Wales. Shewing their honourable battles
by sea and land. Their tilts, justs, tournaments for ladies; their
combats with gyants, monsters, and dragons; their adventures in foreign
nations; their enchantments in the Holy Land; their knighthoods,
prowess, and chivalry, in Europe, Africa, and Asia; with their
victories against the enemies of Christ; also the true manner and
places of their deaths, being seven tragedies, and how they came to
be called the Seven Saints of Christendom.” The courteous author or
publisher of the veracious details, prefaces them with a brief address
“to all courteous readers,” to whom “Richard Johnson wisheth increase
of virtuous knowledge.” “Be not,” he says, “like the chattering cranes,
nor Momus’s mates that carp at everything. What the simple say, I
care not. What the spiteful say, I pass not; only the censure of the
conceited,” by which good Richard means the learned, “I stand unto;
that is the mark I aim at,”--an address, it may be observed, which
smacks of the Malaprop school; but which seemed more natural to our
ancestors than it does to us.
For these readers Richard Johnson presents a very highly-spiced fare.
He brings our patron saint into the world by a Cæsarean operation
performed by a witch, who stole him from his unconscious mother,
and reared him up in a cave, whence the young knight ultimately
escaped with the other champions whom the witch, now slain, had kept
imprisoned. The champions, it may be observed, travel with a celerity
that mocks the “Express,” and rivals the despatch of the Electric
Telegraph. They are scarcely departed from the seven paths which led
from the brazen pillar, each in search of adventures, when they are
all “in the thick of it,” almost at the antipodes. A breath takes St.
George from Coventry, his recovered home, after leaving the witch,
to Egypt. At the latter place he slays that terrible dragon, which
some think to imply the Arian overcoming the Athanasian, and rescues
the Princess Sabra, in whose very liberal love we can hardly trace a
symbol of the Church, although her antipathies are sufficiently strong
to remind one of the _odium theologicum_. George goes on performing
stupendous feats, and getting no thanks, until he undertakes to slay a
couple of lions for the Soldan of Persia, and gets clapped into prison,
during seven years, for his pains. The biographer I suspect, shut the
knight up so long, in order to have an excuse to begin episodically
with the life of St. Denis.
The mystic number seven enters into all the principal divisions of
the story. Thus, St. Denis having wandered into Thessaly was reduced
to such straits as to live upon mulberries; and these so disagreed
with him that he became suddenly transformed into a hart; a very
illogical sequence indeed. But the mulberry tree was, in fact,
Eglantius the King’s daughter, metamorphosed for her pride. Seven
years he thus remained; at the end of which time, his horse, wise as
any regularly-ordained physician, administered to him a decoction of
roses which brought about the transformation of both his master and his
master’s mistress into their “humane shapes.” That they went to court
sworn lovers may be taken as a matter of course. There they are left,
in order to afford the author an opportunity of showing how St. James,
having most unorthodoxically fallen in love with a Jewish maiden, was
seven years dumb, in consequence. St. James, however, is a patient and
persevering lover. If I had an ill-will against any one I would counsel
him to read this very long-winded history, but being at peace with
all mankind, I advise my readers to be content with learning that the
apostolic champion and the young Jewess are ultimately united, and fly
to Seville, where they reside in furnished lodgings, and lead a happy
life;--while the author tells of what befell to the doughty St. Anthony.
This notable Italian is a great hand at subduing giants and ladies.
We have a surfeit of combats and destruction, and love-making and
speechifying, in this champion’s life; and when we are compelled to
leave him travelling about with a Thracian lady, who accompanies him,
in a theatrical male dress, and looks in it like the Duchess--at least,
like Miss Farebrother, in the dashing white sergeant of the Forty
Thieves--we shake our head at St. Anthony and think how very unlike
he is to his namesake in the etching by Callot, where the fairest of
sirens could not squeeze a sigh from the anchorite’s wrinkled heart.
While they are travelling about in the rather disreputable fashion
above alluded to, we come across St. Andrew of Scotland, who has
greater variety of adventure than any other of the champions. With
every hour there is a fresh incident. Now he is battling with spirits,
now struggling with human foes, and anon mixed up, unfavorably, with
beasts. At the end of all the frays, there is--we need hardly say it--a
lady. The bonny Scot was not likely to be behind his fellow-champions
in this respect. Nay, St. Andrew has six of them, who had been swans,
and are now natural singing lasses. What sort of a blade St. Andrew
was may be guessed by the “fact,” that when he departed from the royal
court, to which he had conducted the half dozen ladies, they all eloped
in a body, after him. There never was so dashing a hero dreamed of by
romance--though a rhymer _has_ dashed off his equal in wooing, and
Burns’s “Finlay” is the only one that may stand the parallel.
When the six Thracian ladies fall into the power of “thirty
bloody-minded satyrs,” who so likely, or so happy to rescue them as
jolly St. Patrick. How he flies to the rescue, slays one satyr, puts
the rest to flight, and true as steel, in love or friendship, takes
the half dozen damsels under his arm, and swings singingly along with
them in search of the roving Scot! As for St. David, all this while,
he had not been quite so triumphant, or so tried, as his fellows. He
had fallen into bad company, and “four beautiful damsels wrapped the
drousie champion in a sheet of fine Arabian silk, and conveyed him into
a cave, placed in the middle of a garden, where they laid him on a
bed, more softer than the down of Culvers.” In this agreeable company
the Welsh champion wiled away _his_ seven years. It was pleasant but
not proper. But if the author had not thus disposed of him, how do you
think he would ever have got back to St. George of England? The author
indeed exhibits considerable skill, for he brings St. George and St.
David together, and the first rescues the second from ignoble thraldom,
and what is worse, from the most prosy enchanter I ever met with in
history, and who is really not enchanting at all. This done, George is
off to Tripoli.
There, near there, or somewhere else, for the romances are dreadfully
careless in their topography, he falls in with his old love Sabra,
married to a Moorish King. If George is perplexed at this, seeing that
the lady had engaged to remain an unmarried maiden till he came to wed
her, he is still more so when she informs him that she has, in all
essentials, kept her word, “through the secret virtue of a golden chain
steeped in tiger’s blood, the which she wore seven times double about
her ivory neck.” St. George does not know what to make of it, but as on
subsequently encountering two lions, Sabra, while he was despatching
one, kept the other quietly with its head resting on her lap, the
knight declared himself perfectly satisfied, and they set out upon
their travels, lovingly together.
By the luckiest chance, all the wandering knights and their ladies met
at the court of a King of Greece, who is not, certainly, to be heard of
in Gillies’ or Goldsmith’s history. The scenery is now on a magnificent
scale, for there is a regal wedding on foot, and tournaments, and the
real war of Heathenism against all Christendom. As the Champions of
Christendom have as yet done little to warrant them in assuming the
appellation, one would suppose that the time had now arrived when they
were to give the world a taste of their quality in that respect. But
nothing of the sort occurs. The seven worthies separate, each to his
own country, in order to prepare for great deeds; but none are done for
the benefit of Christianity, unless indeed we are to conclude that when
George and Sabra travelled together, and he overcame all antagonists,
and she inspired with love all beholders;--he subdued nature itself and
she ran continually into danger, from which he rescued her:--and that
when, after being condemned to the stake, the young wife gave birth
to three babes in the wood, and was at last crowned Queen of Egypt,
something is meant by way of allegory, in reference to old church
questions, and in not very clear elucidation as to how these questions
were beneficially affected by the Champions of Christendom!
I may add that when Sabra was crowned Queen of Egypt, every one was
ordered to be merry, on pain of death! It is further to be observed
there is now much confusion, and that the confusion by no means grows
less as the story thunders on. The Champions and the three sons of St.
George are, by turns, East, West, North, and South, either pursuing
each other, or suddenly and unexpectedly encountering, like the
principal personages in a pantomime. Battles, love-making, and shutting
up cruel and reprobate magicians from the “humane eye,” are the chief
events, but to every event there are dozens of episodes, and each
episode is as confusing, dazzling, and bewildering as the trunk from
which it hangs.
St. George, however, is like a greater champion than himself; and when
he is idle and in Italy, he does precisely what Nelson did in the
same place--fall in love with a lady, and cause endless mischief in
consequence. By this time, however, Johnson begins to think, rightly,
that his readers have had enough of it, and that it is time to dispose
of his principal characters. These too, are so well disposed to help
him, that when the author kills St. Patrick, the saint burys himself!
In memory of his deeds, of which we have heard little or nothing,
some are accustomed to honor him, says Mr. Johnson--“wearing upon
their hats, each of them, a cross of red silk, in token of his many
adventures under the Christian Cross.” So that the shamrock appears to
have been a device only of later times.
St. David is as quickly despatched. This champion enters Wales to crush
the pagans there. He wears a leek in his helmet, and his followers
adopt the same fashion, in order that friend may be distinguished
from foe. The doughty saint, of course, comes conqueror out of the
battle, but he is in a heated state, gets a chill and dies after all
of a common cold. Bruce, returning safe from exploring the Nile, to
break his neck by falling down his own stairs, hardly presents a more
practical bathos than this. Why the leek became the badge of Welshmen
need not be further explained.
It is singular that in recounting the manner of the death of the
next champion, St. Denis, the romancer is less romantic than common
tradition. He tells us how the knight repaired to then pagan France;
how he was accused of being a Christian, by another knight of what we
should fancy a Christian order, St. Michael, and how the pagan king
orders St. Denis to be beheaded, in consequence. There are wonders in
the heavens, at this execution, which convert the heathen sovereign to
Christianity; but no mention is made of St. Denis having walked to a
monastery, after his head was off, and _with_ his head under his arm.
Of this prodigy Voltaire remarked, “Ce n’est que le premier pas qui
coute,” but of that the romancer makes no mention. St. James suffers by
being shut up in his chapel in Spain, and starved to death, by order
of the Atheist king. Anthony dies quietly in a good old age, in Italy;
St. Andrew is beheaded by the cruel pagan Scots whom, in his old age,
he had visited, in order to bring them to conversion: and St. George,
who goes on, riding down wild monsters and rescuing timid maidens,
to the last--and his inclination, was always in the direction of the
maidens--ultimately meets his death by the sting of a venomous dragon.
And now it would seem that two or three hundred years ago, authors were
very much like the actors in the _Critic_, who when they _did_ get hold
of a good thing, could never give the public enough of it. Accordingly,
the biography of the Seven Champions was followed by that of their
sons. I will spare my readers the turbulent details: they will probably
be satisfied with learning that the three sons of St. George became
kings, “according as the fairy queen had prophesied to them,” and that
Sir Turpin, son of David, Sir Pedro, son of James, Sir Orlando, son of
Anthony, Sir Ewen, son of Andrew, Sir Phelim, son of Patrick, and Sir
Owen, son of David, like their sires, combated with giants, monsters,
and dragons; tilted and tournamented in honor of the ladies, did battle
in defence of Christianity, relieved the distressed, annihilated
necromancers and table-turners, in short, accomplished all that could
be expected from knights of such prowess and chivalry.
When Richard Johnson had reached this part of his history, he gave it
to the world, awaiting the judgment of the critics, before he published
his second portion: that portion wherein he was to unfold what nobody
yet could guess at, namely, wherefore the Seven Champions were called
_par excellence_, the Champions of Christendom. I am afraid that
meanwhile those terrible, god-like, and inexorable critics, had not
dealt altogether gently with him. The _Punch_ they offered him was not
made exclusively of sweets. His St. George had been attacked, and very
small reverence been expressed for his ladies. But see how calmly and
courteously--all the more admirable that there must have been some
affectation in the matter--he turns from the censuring judges to that
benevolent personage, the gentle reader. “Thy courtesy,” he says,
“must be my buckler against the carping malice of mocking jesters,
that being worse able to do well, scoff commonly at that they can not
mend; censuring all things, doing nothing, but (monkey-like) make apish
jests at anything they do in print, and nothing pleaseth them, except
it savor of a scoffing and invective spirit. Well, what they say of me
I do not care; thy delight is my sole desire.” Well said, bold Richard
Johnson. He thought he had put down criticism as St. George had the
dragon.
I can not say, however, that good Richard Johnson treats his gentle
reader fairly. This second part of his Champions is to a reader worse
than what all the labors of Hercules were to the lusty son of Alcmena.
An historical drama at Astley’s is not half so bewildering, and is
almost as credible, and Mr. Ducrow himself when he was rehearsing his
celebrated “spectacle drama” of “St. George and the Dragon” at old
Drury--and who that ever saw him on those occasions can possibly forget
him?--achieved greater feats, or was more utterly unlike any sane
individual than St. George is, as put upon the literary stage by Master
Johnson.
One comfort in tracing the tortuosities of this chivalric romance
is that the action is rapid; but then there is so much of it, and
it is so astounding! We are first introduced to the three sons of
St. George, who are famous hunters in England, and whose mother, the
lady Sabra, “catches her death,” by going out attired like Diana, to
witness their achievements. The chivalric widower thereupon sets out
for Jerusalem, his fellow-champions accompany, and George’s three
sons, Guy, Alexander, and David, upon insinuation from their mother’s
spirit, start too in pursuit. The lads were knighted by the king of
England before they commenced their journey, which they perform with
the golden spur of chivalry attached to their heels. They meet with the
usual adventures by the way: destroying giants, and rescuing virgins,
who in these troublesome times seem to have been allowed to travel
about too much by themselves. Meanwhile, their sire is enacting greater
prodigies still, and is continually delivering his fellow-champions
from difficulties, from which they are unable to extricate themselves.
Indeed, in all circumstances, his figure is the most prominent; and
although the other half-dozen _must_ have rendered some service on
each occasion, St. George makes no more mention of the same than
Marshal St. Arnaud, in his letters on the victory at the Alma, does of
the presence and services of the English.
It is said that Mrs. Radcliffe, whose horrors used to delight and
distress our mothers and aunts, in their younger days, became herself
affected by the terrors which she only paints to explain away natural
circumstances. What then must have been the end of Richard Johnson?
His scene of the enchantments of the Black Castle is quite enough to
have killed the author with bewilderment. There is a flooring in the
old palace of the Prince of Orange in Brussels, which is so inlaid with
small pieces of wood, of a thousand varieties of patterns, as to be a
triumph of its kind. I was not at all surprised, when standing on that
floor, to hear that when the artist had completed his inconceivable
labor, he gave one wild gaze over the _parquet_ of the palace, and
dropped dead of a fit of giddiness. I am sure that Richard Johnson
must have met with some such calamity after revising this portion
of his history. It is a portion in which it is impossible for the
Champions or for the readers to go to sleep. The noise is terrific,
the incidents fall like thunderbolts, the changes roll over each other
in a succession made with electric rapidity, and when the end comes we
are all the more rejoiced, because we have comprehended nothing; but
we are especially glad to find that the knight of the Black Castle,
who is the cause of all the mischief, is overcome, flies in a state of
destitution to a neighboring wood, and being irretrievably “hard up,”
stabs himself with the first thing at hand, as ruthlessly as the lover
of the “Ratcatcher’s Daughter.”
Time, place, propriety, and a respect for contemporary history, are
amusingly violated throughout the veracious details. Nothing can equal
the confusion, nothing can be more absurd than the errors. But great
men have committed errors as grave. Shakespeare opened a seaport
in Bohemia, and Mr. Macaulay wrote of one Penn what was only to be
attributed to another. And now, have the dramatists treated St. George
better than the romancers?
The national saint was, doubtless, often introduced in the Mysteries;
but the first occasion of which I have any knowledge of his having
been introduced on the stage, was by an author named John Kirke. John
was so satisfied with his attempt that he never wrote a second play.
He allowed his fame to rest on the one in question, which is thus
described on his title-page: “The Seven Champions of Christendome.
Acted at the _Cocke Pit_, and at the _Red Bull_ in St. John’s Streete,
with a general liking, And never printed till this _yeare_ 1638.
Written by J. K.--London, printed by J. Okes, and are (_sic_) to be
sold by James Becket, at his Shop in the Inner Temple Gate, 1638.”
John Kirke treats his subject melodramatically. In the first scene,
Calib the Witch, in a speech prefacing her declarations of a love for
foul weather and deeds, tells the audience by way of prologue, how she
had stolen the young St. George from his now defunct parent, with the
intention of making a bath for her old bones out of his young warm
blood. Love, however, had touched her, and she had brought up “the
red-lipped boy,” with some indefinite idea of making something of him
when a man.
With this disposition the old lady has some fears as to the possible
approaching term of her life; but, as she is assured by “Tarfax the
Devill” that she can not die unless she love blindly, the witch, like
a mere mortal, accounting that she loves wisely, reckons herself a
daughter of immortality, and rejoices hugely. The colloquy of this
couple is interrupted by their son Suckabud, who, out of a head just
broken by St. George, makes complaint with that comic lack of fun,
which was wont to make roar the entire inside of the Red Bull. The
young clown retires with his sire, and then enters the great St.
George, a lusty lad, with a world of inquiries touching his parentage.
Calib explains that his lady mother was anything but an honest woman,
and that his sire was just the partner to match. “Base or noble, pray?”
asks St. George. To which the witch replies:--
“Base and noble too;
Both base by thee, but noble by descent;
And thou born base, yet mayst thou write true gent:”
and it may be said, parenthetically, that many a “true gent” is by
birth equal to St. George himself.
Overcome by her affection, the witch makes a present to St. George
of the half-dozen champions of England whom she holds in chains
within her dwelling. One of them is described as “the lively, brisk,
cross-cap’ring Frenchman, Denis.” With these for slaves, Calib yields
her wand of power, and the giver is no sooner out of sight when George
invokes the shades of his parents, who not only appear and furnish him
with a corrected edition of his biography, but inform him that he is
legitimate Earl of Coventry, with all the appurtenances that a young
earl can desire.
Thereupon ensues a hubbub that must have shaken all the lamps in the
cockpit. George turns the Witch’s power against herself, and she
descends to the infernal regions, where she is punningly declared to
have gained the title of Duchess of Helvetia. The six champions are
released, and the illustrious seven companions go forth in search of
adventures, with Suckabus for a “Squire.” The father of the latter
gives him some counsel at parting, which is a parody on the advice of
Polonius to Laertes. “Lie,” says Torpax:--
“Lie to great profit, borrow, pay no debts,
Cheat and purloin, they are gaming dicers’ bets.”
“If Cottington outdo me,” says the son, “he be-whipt.” And so, after
the election of St. George as the seventh champion of Christendom, ends
one of the longest acts that Bull or Cockpit was ever asked to witness
and applaud.
The next act is briefer but far more bustling. We are in that
convenient empire of Trebizond, where everything happened which never
took place, according to the romances. The whole city is in a state of
consternation at the devastations of a detestable dragon, and a lion,
his friend and co-partner. The nobles bewail the fact in hexameters,
or at least in lines meant to do duty for them; and the common people
bewail the fact epigrammatically, and describe the deaths of all who
have attempted to slay the monsters, with a broadness of effect that
doubtless was acknowledged by roars of laughter. Things grow worse
daily, the fiends look down, and general gloom is settling thick upon
the empire, when Andrew of Scotland and Anthony of Italy arrive, send
in their cards, and announce their determination to slay both these
monsters.
Such visitors are received with more than ordinary welcome. The emperor
is regardless of expense in his liberality, and his daughter Violetta
whispers to her maid Carinthia that she is already in love with one
of them, but will not say which; a remark which is answered by the
pert maid, that she is in love with both, and would willingly take
either. All goes on joyously until in the course of conversation, and
it is by no means remarkable for brilliancy, the two knights let fall
that they are Christians. Now, you must know, that the established
Church at Trebizond at this time, which is at any period, was heathen.
The court appeared to principally affect Apollo and Diana, while the
poorer people put up with Pan, and abused him for denouncing may-poles!
Well, the Christians had never been emancipated; nay, they had never
been tolerated in Trebizond, and it was contrary to law that the
country should be saved, even in its dire extremity, by Christian
help. The knights are doomed to die, unless they will turn heathens.
This, of course, they decline with a dignified scorn; whereupon, in
consideration of their nobility, they are permitted to choose their
own executioners. They make choice of the ladies, but Violetta and
Carinthia protest that they can not think of such a thing. Their
high-church sire is disgusted with their want of orthodoxy, and he
finally yields to the knights their swords, that they may do justice on
themselves as the law requires. But Andrew and Anthony are no sooner
armed again than they clear their way to liberty, and the drop scene
falls upon the rout of the whole empire of Trebizond.
The third act is of gigantic length, and deals with giants. There is
mourning in Tartary. David has killed the king’s son in a tournament,
and the king remarks, like a retired apothecary, that “Time’s plaster
must draw the sore before he can feel peace again.” To punish David, he
is compelled to undertake the destruction of the enchanter Ormandine,
who lived in a cavern fortress with “some selected friends.” The prize
of success is the reversion of the kingdom of Tartary to the Welsh
knight. The latter goes upon his mission, but he is so long about it
that our old friend Chorus enters, to explain what he affirms they
have not time to act--namely, the great deeds of St. George, who, as
we learn, had slain the never-to-be-forgotten dragon, rescued Sabrina,
been cheated of his reward, and held in prison seven years upon bread
and water. His squire, Suckabus, alludes to giants whom he and his
master had previously slain, and whose graves were as large as Tothill
Fields. He also notices “Ploydon’s law,” and other matters, that could
hardly have been contemporaneous with the palmy days of the kingdom of
Tartary. Meanwhile, David boldly assaults Ormandine, but the enchanter
surrounds him with some delicious-looking nymphs, all thinly clad and
excessively seductive; and we are sorry to say that the Welsh champion,
not being cavalierly mounted on proper principles, yields to seduction,
and after various falls under various temptations, is carried to bed by
the rollicking nymph Drunkenness.
But never did good, though fallen, men want for a friend at a pinch.
St. George is in the neighborhood; and seedy as he is after seven
years in the dark, with nothing more substantial by way of food than
bread, and nothing more exhilarating for beverage than _aqua pura_, the
champion of England does David’s work, and with more generosity than
justice, makes him a present of the enchanter’s head. David presents
the same to the King of Tartary, that, according to promise pledged in
case of such a present being made, he may be proclaimed heir-apparent
to the Tartarian throne. With this bit of cheating, the long third act
comes to an end.
The fourth act is taken up with an only partially successful attack by
James, David, and Patrick, on a cruel enchanter, Argalio, who at least
is put to flight, and _that_, at all events, as the knights remark, is
something to be thankful for. The fifth and grand act reveals to us
the powerful magician, Brandron, in his castle. He holds in thrall the
King of Macedon--a little circumstance not noted in history; and he has
in his possession the seven daughters of his majesty transformed into
swans. The swans contrive to make captives of six of the knights as
they were taking a “gentle walk” upon his ramparts. They are impounded
as trespassers, and Brandron, who has some low comedy business with
Suckubus, will not release them but upon condition that they fight
honestly in his defence against St. George. The six duels take place,
and of course the champion of England overcomes all his friendly
antagonists; whereupon Brandron, with his club, beats out his own
brains, in presence of the audience.
At this crisis, the King of Macedon appears, restored to power, and
inquires after his daughters. St. George and the rest, with a use of
the double negatives that would have shocked Lindley Murray, declare
“We never knew, nor saw no ladies here.”
The swans, however, soon take their pristine form, and the three
daughters appear fresh from their plumes and their long bath upon the
lake. Upon this follows the smart dialogue which we extract as a sample
of how sharply the King of Macedon looked to his family interests, and
how these champion knights were “taken in” before they well knew how
the fact was accomplished.
_Mac._ Reverend knights, may we desire to know which of you are
unmarried?
_Ant., Den., and Pat._ We are.
_Geo._ Then here’s these ladies, take ’em to your beds.
_Mac._ George highly honors aged Macedon.
_The three Knights._ But can the ladies’ love accord with us?
_The three Ladies._ Most willingly!
_The three Knights._ We thus then seal our contract.
_Geo._ Which thus we ratifie.
Sit with the brides, most noble Macedon;
And since kind fortune sent such happy chance,
We’ll grace your nuptials with a soldier’s dance.
And, fore George, as our fathers used to say, they make a night of it.
The piece ends with a double military reel, and the audiences at the
Bull and the Cockpit probably whistled the tune as they wended their
way homeward to crab-apple ale and spiced gingerbread.
Next to the Champions of Christendom, the King’s Knight Champion of
England is perhaps the most important personage--in the point of view
of chivalry. I think it is some French author who has said, that
revolutions resemble the game of chess, where the pawns or pieces (_les
pions_) may cause the ruin of the king, save him, or take his place.
Now the _champ pion_, as this French remark reminds me, is nothing more
than the field _pion_, pawn, or piece, put forward to fight in the
king’s quarrel.
The family of the Champion of England bears, it may be observed,
exactly the name which suits a calling so derived. The appellation
“Dymoke” is derived from _De Umbrosâ Quercu_; I should rather say it
is the translation of it; and Harry De Umbrosâ Quercu is only Harry of
the Shady or Dim Oak, a very apt dwelling-place and name for one whose
chief profession was that of field-pawn to the king.
This derivation or adaptation of names from original Latin surnames is
common enough, and some amusing pages might be written on the matter,
in addition to what has been so cleverly put together by Mr. Mark
Anthony Lower, in his volume devoted especially to an elucidation of
English surnames.
The royal champions came in with the Conquest. The Norman dukes had
theirs in the family of Marmion--ancestors of that Marmion of Sir
Walter Scott’s, who commits forgery, like a common knave of more
degenerate times. The Conqueror conferred sundry broad lands in
England on his champions; among others, the lands adjacent to, as
well as the castle of Tamworth. Near this place was the first nunnery
established in this country. The occupants were the nuns of St. Edith,
at Polesworth. Robert de Marmion used the ladies very “cavalierly,”
ejected them from their house, and deprived them of their property. But
such victims had a wonderfully clever way of recovering their own.
My readers may possibly remember how a certain Eastern potentate
injured the church, disgusted the Christians generally, and irritated
especially that Simeon Stylites who sat on the summit of a pillar,
night and day, and never moved from his abiding-place. The offender
had a vision, in which he not only saw the indignant Simeon, but was
cudgelled almost into pulp by the _simulacre_ of that saint. I very
much doubt if Simeon himself was in his airy dwelling-place at that
particular hour of the night. I was reminded of this by what happened
to the duke’s champion, Robert de Marmion. He was roused from a
deep sleep by the vision of a stout lady, who announced herself as
the wronged St. Edith, and who proceeded to show her opinion of De
Marmion’s conduct toward her nuns, by pommelling his ribs with her
crosier, until she had covered his side with bruises, and himself with
repentance. What strong-armed young monk played St. Edith that night,
it is impossible to say; but that he enacted the part successfully, is
seen from the fact that Robert brought back the ladies to Polesworth,
and made ample restitution of all of which they had been deprived. The
nuns, in return, engaged with alacrity to inter all defunct Marmions
within the chapter-house of their abbey, for nothing.
With the manor of Tamworth in Warwickshire, Marmion held that of
Scrivelsby in Lincolnshire. The latter was held of the King by
grand sergeantry, “to perform the office of champion at the King’s
coronation.” At his death he was succeeded by a son of the same
Christian name, who served the monks of Chester precisely as his sire
had treated the nuns at Polesworth. This second Robert fortified his
ill-acquired prize--the priory; but happening to fall into one of the
newly-made ditches, when inspecting the fortifications, a soldier of
the Earl of Chester killed him, without difficulty, as he lay with
broken hip and thigh, at the bottom of the fosse. The next successor,
a third Robert, was something of a judge, with a dash of the warrior,
too, and he divided his estates between two sons, both Roberts, by
different mothers. The eldest son and chief possessor, after a bustling
and emphatically “battling” life, was succeeded by his son Philip, who
fell into some trouble in the reign of Henry III. for presuming to act
as a judge or justice of the peace, without being duly commissioned.
This Philip was, nevertheless, one of the most faithful servants to
a king who found so many faithless; and if honors were heaped upon
him in consequence, he fairly merited them all. He was happy, too,
in marriage, for he espoused a lady sole heiress to a large estate,
and who brought him four daughters, co-heiresses to the paternal and
maternal lands of the Marmions and the Kilpecs.
This, however, is wandering. Let us once more return to orderly
illustration. In St. George I have shown how pure romance deals with
a hero. In the next chapter I will endeavor to show in what spirit
the lives and actions of real English heroes have been treated by
native historians. In so doing, I will recount the story of Sir Guy of
Warwick, after their fashion, with original illustrations and “modern
instances.”
SIR GUY OF WARWICK,
AND WHAT BEFELL HIM.
“His desires
Are higher than his state, and his deserts
Not much short of the most he can desire.”
_Chapman’s Byron’s Conspiracy._
The Christian name of Guy was once an exceedingly popular name in the
county of York. I have never heard a reason assigned for this, but I
think it may have originated in admiration of the deeds and the man
whose appellation and reputation have survived to our times. I do not
allude to Guy Faux; _that_ young gentleman was the Father of Perverts,
but by no means the first of the Guys.
The “Master Guy” of whom I am treating here, or, rather, about to
treat, was a youth whose family originally came from Northumberland.
That family was, in one sense, more noble than the imperial family of
Muscovy, for its members boasted not only of good principles, but of
sound teeth.
The teeth and principles of the Romanoffs are known to be in a
distressing state of dilapidation.
Well; these Northumbrian Guys having lived extremely fast, and being
compelled to compound with their creditors, by plundering the latter,
and paying them zero in the pound, migrated southward, and finally
settled in Warwickshire. Now, the head of the house had a considerable
share of common sense about him, and after much suffering in a state of
shabby gentility, he not only sent his daughters out to earn their own
livelihood, but, to the intense disgust of his spouse, hired himself
as steward to that noble gentleman the Earl of Warwick. “My blood is
as good as ever it was,” said he to the fine lady his wife. “It is the
blood of an upper servant,” cried she, “and my father’s daughter is
the spouse of a flunkey.”
The husband was not discouraged; and he not only opened his office in
his patron’s castle but he took his only son with him, and made him
his first clerk. This son’s name was Guy; and he was rather given to
bird-catching, hare-snaring, and “gentism” generally. He had been a
precocious youth from some months previous to his birth, and had given
his lady-mother such horrid annoyance, that she was always dreaming of
battles, fiery-cars, strong-smelling dragons, and the wrathful Mars.
“Well,” she used to remark to her female friends, while the gentlemen
were over their wine, “I expect that this boy” (she had made up her
mind to that) “will make a noise in the world, draw bills upon his
father, and be the terror of maid-servants. Why, do you know----” and
here she became confidential, and I do not feel authorized to repeat
what she then communicated.
But Master Guy, the “little stranger” alluded to, proved better than
was expected. He might have been considerably worse, and yet would not
have been so bad as maternal prophecy had depicted him. At eight years
... but I hear you say, “When did all this occur?” Well, it was in a
November’s “Morning Post,” that announcement was made of the birth; and
as to the year, Master Guy has given it himself in the old metrical
romance,
“Two hundred and twenty years and odd,
After our Savior Christ his birth,
When King Athelstan wore the crown,
I livéd here upon the earth.”
At eight years old, I was about to remark, young Guy was the most
insufferable puppy of his district. He won all the prizes for athletic
sports; and by the time he was sixteen there was not a man in all
England who dared accept his challenge to wrestle with both arms,
against _him_ using only one.
It was at this time that he kept his father’s books and a leash of
hounds, with the latter of which he performed such extraordinary feats,
that the Earl of Warwick invited him from the steward’s room to his own
table; where Guy’s father changed his plate, and Master Guy twitched
him by the beard as he did it.
At the head of the earl’s table sat his daughter “Phillis the Fair,”
a lady who, like her namesake in the song, was “sometimes forward,
sometimes coy,” and altogether so sweetly smiling and so beguiling,
that when the earl asked Guy if he would not come and hunt (the dinner
was at 10 A. M.), Guy answered, as the Frenchman did who could not bear
the sport, with a _Merci, j’ai été!_ and affecting an iliac seizure,
hinted at the necessity of staying at home.
The youth forthwith was carried to bed. Phillis sent him a posset, the
earl sent him his own physician; and this learned gentleman, after much
perplexity veiled beneath the most affable and confident humbug, wrote
a prescription which, if it could do the patient no good would do him
no harm. He was a most skilful man, and his patients almost invariably
recovered under this treatment. He occasionally sacrificed one or two
when a consultation was held, and he was called upon to prescribe
_secundum artem_; but he compensated for this professional slaying by,
in other cases, leaving matters to Nature, who was the active partner
in his firm, and of whose success he was not in the least degree
jealous. So, when he had written the prescription, Master Guy fell a
discoursing of the passion of love, and _that_ with a completeness and
a variety of illustration as though he were the author of the chapter
on that subject in Burton’s “Anatomy of Melancholy.” The doctor heard
him to the end, gently rubbing one side of his nose the while with the
index-finger of his right hand; and when his patient had concluded, the
medical gentleman smiled, hummed “Phillis is my only joy,” and left the
room with his head nodding like a Chinese Mandarin’s.
By this time the four o’clock sun was making green and gold pillars
of the trees in the neighboring wood, and Guy got up, looked at the
falling leaves, and thought of the autumn of his hopes. He whistled
“Down, derry, down,” with a marked emphasis on the _down_; but suddenly
his hopes again sprang up, as he beheld Phillis among her flower-beds,
engaged in the healthful occupation which a sublime poet has given to
the heroine whom he names, and whose action he describes, when he tells
us that
“Miss Dinah was a-walking in her garding one day.”
Guy trussed his points, pulled up his hose, set his bonnet smartly on
his head, clapped a bodkin on his thigh, and then walked into the
garden with the air of the once young D’Egville in a ballet, looking
after a nymph--which indeed was a pursuit he was much given to when he
was _old_ D’Egville, and could no longer bound through his ballets,
because he was stiff in the joints.
Guy, of course, went down on one knee, and at once plunged into the
most fiery style of declaration, but Phillis had not read the Mrs.
Chapone of that day for nothing. She brought him back to prose and
propriety, and then the two started afresh, and they _did_ talk!
Guy felt a little “streaked” at first, but he soon recovered his
self-possession, and it would have been edifying for the young mind
to have heard how these two pretty things spoke to, and answered each
other in moral maxims stolen from the top pages of their copy-books.
They poured them out by the score, and the proverbial philosophy they
enunciated was really the origin of the book so named by Martin Tupper.
He took it all from Phillis and Guy, whose descendants, of the last
name, were so famous for their school-books. This I expect Mr. Tupper
will (not) mention in his next edition.
After much profitable interchange of this sort of article, the lady
gently hinted that Master Guy was not indifferent to her, but that he
was of inferior birth, yet of qualities that made him equal with her;
adding, that hitherto he had done little but kill other people’s game,
whereas there were nobler deeds to be accomplished. And then she bade
him go in search of perilous adventures, winding up with the toast and
sentiment, “Master Guy, eagles do not care to catch flies.”
Reader, if you have ever seen the prince of pantomimists, Mr. Payne,
tear the hair of his theatrical wig in a fit of amorous despair,
you may have some idea as to the intensity with which Master Guy
illustrated his own desperation. He stamped the ground with such
energy that all the hitherto quiet aspens fell a-shaking, and their
descendants have ever since maintained the same fashion. Phillis fell
a-crying at this demonstration, and softened considerably. After a
lapse of five minutes, she had blushingly directed Master Guy to “speak
to papa.”
Now, of all horrible interviews, this perhaps is the most horrible.
Nelson used to say that there was only one thing on earth which he
dreaded, and that was dining with a mayor and corporation. Doubtless
it is dreadful, but _what_ is it compared with looking a grave man in
the face, who has no sentiment into him, and whose first remark is sure
to be, “Well, sir, be good enough to tell me--what can you settle on my
daughter? What can you do to secure her happiness?”
“Well,” said Guy, in reply to this stereotyped remark, “I can kill the
Dun cow on the heath. _She_ has killed many herself who’ve tried the
trick on her; and last night she devoured crops of clover, and twice as
many fields of barley on your lordship’s estate.”
“First kill the cow, and then----,” said the earl with a smile; and
Shakespeare had the echo of this speech in his ear, when he began the
fifth act of his Othello. Now Guy was not easily daunted. If I cared
to make a pun, I might easily have said “cowed,” but in a grave and
edifying narrative this loose method of writing would be extremely
improper. Guy, then, was not a coward--nay, nothing is hidden under the
epithet. He tossed a little in bed that night as he thought the matter
over, and the next morning made sheets of paper as crumpled as the
cow’s horns, as he rejected the plans of assault he had designed upon
them, and sat uncertain as to what he should do in behoof of his own
fortune. He at length determined to go and visit the terrible animal
“incognito.” It is the very word used by one of the biographers of Guy,
an anonymous Northumbrian, who published the life on a broad sheet,
with a picture of Master Guy which might have frightened the cow, and
which is infinitely more ugly. Neither the black-letter poem, the old
play, nor the pamphlets or ballads, use the term _incognito_, but all
declare that Guy proceeded with much caution, and a steel cuirass
over his jerkin. I mention these things, because without correctness
my narrative would be worthless. I am not imaginative, and would not
embroider a plain suit of fact upon any account.
Guy’s carefulness is to be proved. Here was a cow that had been more
destructive than ever Red Riding Hood’s Wolf was--that Count Wolf, who
used to snap up young maidens, and lived as careless of respectability
as was to be expected of a man once attached to a “marching regiment,”
and who turned monk. The cow was twelve feet high, from the hoof to
the shoulder, and eighteen feet long, from the neck to the root of
the tail. All the dragons ever heard of had never been guilty of such
devastation to life and property as this terrible cow. Guy looked at
her and did not like her. The cow detected him and rushed at her prey.
Guy was active, attacked her in front and rear, as the allies did the
forts of Bomarsund; very considerably confused her by burying his
battle-axe in her skull; hung on by her tail as she attempted to fly;
and finally gave her the _coup de grace_ by passing his rapier rapidly
and repeatedly through her especially vulnerable point behind the ear.
In proof of the fact, the scene of the conflict still bears the name of
Dunsmore Heath, and that is a wider basis of proof than many “facts”
stand upon, to which we are required by plodding teachers to give
assent.
Besides, there is a rib of this very cow exhibited at Bristol. To
be sure it is not a rib now of a cow, but out of reverence to the
antiquity of the assertion which allegedly makes it so, I think we are
bound to believe what is thus advanced. Not that I do myself, but that
is of no consequence. I have a strong idea that the cow was not a cow,
but a countess (not a Countess Cowper), who made war in her own right,
lived a disreputable life, was as destructive to wealthy young lords as
a _Lorette_, and won whole estates by cheating at _écarté_. Guy took a
hand, and beat her.
Poor Master Guy, he was as hardly used as ever Jacob was, and much he
meditated thereupon in the fields at eventide. The stern earl would
by no means give his consent to the marriage of his daughter with the
young champion, until the latter had performed some doughtier deeds
than this. The boy (he was still in his teens) took heart of grace,
divided a crooked sixpence with Phillis, and straightway sailed for
Normandy, where he arrived, after meeting as many thieves by the way
as if he had walked about for a month in the streets of Dover. But
Master Guy killed all _he_ met; there is a foolish judicial, not to say
social, prejudice against our doing the same with the bandits of Dover.
I can not conjecture why; perhaps they have a privilege under some of
the city companies, whereby they are constituted the legal skinners of
all sojourners among them, carrying filthy lucre.
Guy met in Normandy with the last person he could have expected to
fall in with--no other than the Emperor of Almayne, a marvellously
ubiquitous person to be met with in legends, and frequently encountered
in the seaports of inland towns. The historians are here a little at
issue. One says that Master Guy having found a certain Dorinda tied to
the stake, and awaiting a champion who would stake his own life for
her rescue, inquired the “antecedents” of the position. Dorinda, it
appears, had been as rudely used as young lady possibly could be, “by
the Duke of Blois, his son,” and the duke was so enraged at Dorinda’s
charge against his favorite Otto, that he condemned her to be burned
alive, unless a champion appeared in time to rescue her by defeating
the aforesaid Otto in single combat. Guy, of course, transacted the
little business successfully; spoiled Otto’s beauty by slashing his
nose; and so enchanted Dorinda, that she never accused her champion of
doing aught displeasing to her.
Anxious as I am touching the veracity of this narrative, I have
recorded what biographers state, though not in their own words. But I
must add, that in some of the histories this episode about Dorinda is
altogether omitted, and we only hear of Master Guy appearing in panoply
at a tournament given by the Emperor of Allemagne, in Normandy--which
is much the same, gentle reader, as if I were, at your cost, to give
a concert and ball, with a supper from Farrance’s, and all, not in
my house, but in yours. Nevertheless, in Normandy the tournament was
held, and the paternal Emperor of Allemagne, having then a daughter,
Blanche, of whom he wished to get rid, he set her up as the prize of
the conquering knight in the tournament.
I think I hear you remark something as to the heathenness of the
custom. But it is a custom sacred to these times; and our neighbors
(for of course neither you nor I could condescend to such manners)
get up evening tournaments of whist, quadrilles, and a variety of
singing--of every variety but the good and intelligible, and at these
modern tournaments given for the express purpose which that respectable
old gentleman, the Emperor of Allemagne, had in view when he opened his
lists; the “girls” are the prizes of the carpet-knights. So gentlemen,
_faites votre jeu_, as the philosopher who presided at Frescati’s used
to say--_faites votre jeu, Messieurs_; and go in and win. Perhaps if
you read Cowper, you may be the better armed against loss in such a
conflict.
I need not say that Master Guy’s good sword, which gleamed like
lightning in the arena, and rained blows faster than ever Mr. Blanchard
rained them, in terrific Coburg combats, upon the vulnerable crest of
Mr. Bradley--won for him the peerless prize--to say nothing of a dog
and a falcon thrown in. Master Guy rather ungallantly declined having
the lady, though her father would have given him _carte blanche_; he
looked at her, muttered her name, and then murmured, “Blanche, as
thou art, yet art thou black-a-moor, compared with my Phillis;”--and
with this unchivalric avowal, for it was a part of chivalry to say a
thing and think another, he returned to England, carrying with him the
“Spaniel King’s Charls,” as French authors write it, and the falcon,
with a ring and a perch, like a huge parroquet.
Master Guy entered Warwick in a “brougham,” as we now might say, and
sorely was he put to it with the uneasy bird. At every lurch of the
vehicle, out flapped the wings, elongated was the neck, and Master Guy
had to play at “dodge” with the falcon, who was intent upon darting
his terrific beak into the cavalier’s nose. At length, however, the
castle was safely reached; the presents were deposited at the feet of
Phillis the Fair, and Guy hoped, like the Peri, and also like that
gentle spirit to be disappointed, that the gates of paradise were about
to open. But not so, Phillis warmly praised his little regard for that
pert minx, Blanche, or _Blanc d’Espagne_, as she wickedly added; and
she patted the spaniel, and offered sugar to the falcon; and, after the
dinner to which Guy _was_ invited, she intimated in whispers, that they
were both “too young as yet” (not that she believed so), and that more
deeds must be done by Guy, ere the lawyers would be summoned by her
papa to achieve some of their own.
The youthful Guy went forth “reluctant but resolved,” and he _would_
have sung as he went along,
“Elle a quinze ans, moi j’en ai seize,”
of Sedaine and Grétry, only neither poet nor composer, nor the opera
of _Richard Cœur de Lion_, had yet appeared to gladden heart and ear.
But the sentiment was there, and perhaps Sedaine knew of it when he
penned the words. However this may be, Master Guy, though soft of
heart, was not so of arm, for on this present cause of errantry he
enacted such deeds that their very enumeration makes one breathless.
His single sword cleared whole forests of hordes of brigands, through
whose sides his trenchant blade passed as easily as the sabre, when
held by Corporal Sutton, through a dead sheep. Our hero was by no means
particular as to what he did, provided he was doing something; nor what
cause he fought for, provided there were a cause and a fight. Thus we
find him aiding the Duke of Louvain against his old friend the Emperor
of Allemagne. He led the Duke’s forces, slew thousands upon thousands
of the enemy, and, as though he had the luck of a modern Muscovite
army, did not lose more than “one man,” with slight damage to the
helmet of a second.
Master Guy, not yet twenty, surpassed the man whom Mr. Thiers calls
“_ce pur Anglais_,” Mr. Pitt, for he became a prime minister ere he
had attained his majority. In that capacity he negotiated a peace for
the Duke with the Emperor. The two potentates were so satisfied with
the negotiator, that out of compliment they offered him the command
of their united fleet against the Pagan Soldan of Byzantium. They
did not at all expect that he would accept it; but then they were
not aware that Master Guy had much of the spirit which Sidney Smith,
in after-years, discerned in Lord John Russell--and the enterprising
Guy accepted the command of the entire fleet, with quite an entire
confidence.
He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than we
might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that statesman
to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having swept the sea, he
rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, nearly annihilated
Mohammedanism--and he was as invincible and victorious against every
kind of Pagan. It was in the East that he overthrew in single combat,
the giants Colbron and his brother Mongadora. He was resting after this
contest, and leaning like the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword,
at the entrance to his tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante,
approaching him, politely begged that he might take his head, as he
had promised the same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of
health which might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely
bade him take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it “like
French falconers,” and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead
of losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged
the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, on
the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as Galerius
did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon a vote of the Roman
senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by the justness of his quarrel,
subdued the infidel Soldan, but the latter, to show, as we are told,
his insuperable hatred for Christianity, took handfuls of his own
blood, and cast it in the face of his conqueror--and no doubt here,
the victor had in his mind the true story of Julian insulting “the
Galilæan.” We thus see how history is made to contribute to legend.
And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed upon.
He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see a lion and a
dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by dint of claws,
without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and receiving with
complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast.
He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry in a wood,
looking for his wife who had been carried off by a score of ravishers.
While the noble lord sat down on a mossy bank, like a gentleman in
a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in his presence, and slew all the
ravishers, “in funeral order,” the youngest first. He subsequently
stood godfather to his friend Terry’s child, and as I am fond of
historical parallels, I may notice that Sir Walter Scott performed the
same office for a Terry, who if he was not a lord, often represented
them, to say nothing of monarchs and other characters.
Master Guy’s return to England was a little retarded by another
characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Louvain, he found
Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle--“governor” of the
castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked Master Guy so much as filial
ingratitude, and despite all that Otto could urge about niggardly
allowance, losses at play, debts of honor, and the parsimony of the
“governor,” our champion made common cause with the “indignant parent,”
and not only mortally wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy
brought him to a “sense of his situation,” and Otto died in a happy
frame of mind, leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by
way of a “souvenir,” and certainly the governor never forgot it. As
for Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for
England, and as he drew his sword from the animal’s flank, he remarked,
there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto himself.
However, he took the head and hams with him, for Phillis was fond of
both; and as she was wont to say, if there was anything that could
seduce her, it was brawn!
When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that amphibious town
now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were awaiting him,
to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the north that was
laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the waists which the
men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan was then at York hoping to
terrify the indomitable beast by power of an army, which in combat with
the noxious creature made as long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon
itself.
Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the good
folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty feet long,
or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter of fact that
our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On his return he met
an ovation in York; Athelstan entertained him at a banquet, covered
him with honor, endowed him with a good round sum, and _thus_ all the
newborn male children in the county became Guys. At least two thirds of
them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in
favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son,
whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of
November.
I will not pause on this matter. I will only add that the Earl of
Warwick, finding Guy a man whom the King delighted to honor, accepted
him for a son-in-law; and then, ever wise, and civil, and proper, he
discreetly died. The King made Guy Earl of Warwick, in his place, and
our hero being now a married man, he of course ceased to be _Master_
Guy.
And here I might end my legend, but that it has a moral in it Guy
did a foolish but a common thing, he launched out into extravagant
expenses, and, suddenly, he found himself sick, sad, and insolvent.
Whether, therewith, his wife was soured, creditors troublesome, and
bailiffs presuming, it is hard to say. One thing, however, is certain,
that to save himself from all three, Earl Guy did what nobles often do
now, in the same predicament, “went abroad.” Guy, however, travelled
in primitive style. He went on foot, and made his inn o’nights in
church-yards, where he colloquized with the skulls after the fashion of
Hamlet with the skull of “poor Yorick.” He had given out that he was
going to Jerusalem, but hearing that the Danes were besieging Athelstan
at Winchester, he went thither, and, in modest disguise, routed them
with his own unaided hand. Among his opponents, he met with the giant
Colbron whom he had previously slain in Orient lands, and the two
fought their battles o’er again, and with such exactly similar results
as to remind one of the peculiar philosophy of Mr. Boatswain Cheeks.
This appearance of Colbron in two places is a fine illustration of the
“myth,” and I mention it expressly for the benefit of the next edition
of the Right Reverend Doctor Whateley’s “Historical Fallacies.” But to
resume.
Guy, imparting a confidential statement of his identity and intentions
to the King, left him, to take up his abode in a cave, in a cliff, near
his residence; and at the gates of his own castle he received, in the
guise of a mendicant, alms of money and bread, from the hands of his
wife. I strongly suspect that the foundation of this section of our
legend rests upon the probable fact that Phillis was of that quality
which is said to belong to gray mares; and that she led Guy a life
which made him a miserable Guy indeed; and that the poor henpecked man
took to bad company abroad, and met with small allowance of everything
but reproach at home And _so_ he “died.”
A dramatic author of Charles I.’s reign, has, however, resuscitated him
in “A Tragical History of Guy, Earl of Warwick,” enacted several times
in presence of that monarch, and professedly written by a certain “B.
J.,” whom I do not at all suspect of being Ben Jonson. The low comedy
portion of this tragic drama is of the filthiest sort, dealing in
phrases and figures which I can hardly conceive would now be tolerated
in the lowest den of St. Giles’s, certainly not out of it. If Charles
heard this given more than once, as the titlepage intimates, “more
shame for him.” If his Queen was present, she haply may not have
understood the _verba ad summam caveam spectantia_, and if a daughter
could have been at the royal entertainment, why then the very idea
revolts one, and pity is almost lost in indignation. That the author
himself thought well of the piece, which he printed in 1661, is proved
by the defiant epigraph which says:--
“Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua.”
I must not devote much space to a retrospective review of this piece,
particularly as the action begins after Guy has ceased to be “Master,”
and when, on his announcement of going to Jerusalem (perhaps to the
Jews to do a little business in bills), Phillis makes some matronly
remarks in a prospective sense, and a liberty of illustration which
would horrify a monthly nurse.
However, Guy goes forth and meets with a giant so huge, that his squire
Sparrow says it required four-and-twenty men to throw mustard in his
mouth when he dined. From such giants, Heaven protects the errant Guy,
and with a troop of fairies, wafts him to Jerusalem. Here he finds
Shamurath of Babylon assaulting the city, but Guy heaps miracle on
miracle of valor, and produces such astounding results that Shamurath,
who is a spectator of the deeds and the doer; inquires, with a
suspicion of Connaught in the accent of the inquiry, “What divil or man
is this?”
The infidel is more astonished than ever when Guy, after defeating
him, takes him into controversy, and laying hold of him as Dr. Gumming
does of Romanism, so buffets his belief that, the soldier, fairly out
of breath and argument, gives in, and declares himself a Christian, on
conviction.
During one-and-twenty years, Guy has a restless life through the five
acts of this edifying tragedy, and when he is seen again in England,
overcoming the Danes, he intimates to Athelstan that he has six years
more to pass in disguise, ere a vow, of which we have before heard
nothing, will be fulfilled. Athelstan receives all that is said, in
confidence; and promises affably, “upon my word,” not to betray the
secret. Guy is glad to hear that Phillis is “pretty well;” and then he
takes up his residence as I have before told, according to the legend.
He and an Angel occasionally have a little abstruse disquisition; but
the most telling scene is doubtless where the bread is distributed to
the beggars, by Phillis. Guy is here disguised as a palmer, and Phillis
inquires if he knew the great Earl, to which Guy answers, with a wink
of the eye, that he and the Earl had often drank at the same crystal
spring. But Phillis is too dull, or too melancholy to trace her way
through so sorry a joke.
And now, just as the hour of completion of the vowed time of his
disguise, Guy takes to dying, and in that state he is found by
Rainhorn, the son who knows him not. He sends a token by the young
fellow to Phillis, who begins to suspect that the palmer who used to
be so particular in asking for “brown bread” at her gate, must be
the “Master Guy” of the days of sunny youth, short kirtles, and long
love-making. Mother and son haste to the spot, but the vital spark has
fled. Phillis exclaims, with much composed thought, not unnatural in a
woman whose husband has been seven-and-twenty years away from home, and
whose memory is good: “If it be he, he has a mould-wart underneath his
ear” to which the son as composedly remarks, “View him, good mother,
satisfy your mind.” Thereupon the proper identification of the “party”
is established; and the widow is preparing to administer, without will
annexed, when Rainhorn bids her banish sorrow, as the King is coming.
The son evidently thinks the honor of a living king should drown sorrow
for a deceased parent; just as a Roman family that can boast of a Pope
in it, does not put on mourning even when that Pope dies; the _having
had him_, being considered a joy that no grief should diminish.
Athelstan is evidently a King of Cockayne, for he affably expresses
surprise at the old traveller’s death, seeing, says his Majesty, that
“I had appointed _for_ to meet Sir Guy” to which the son, who has now
succeeded to the estate, replies, in the spirit of an heir who has been
waiting long for an inheritance:--“that the death has happened, and can
not now be helped.”
But the most remarkable matter in this tragedy is that uttered by Time,
who plays prologue, epilogue, and interlude between the acts. Whatever
Charles may have thought of the piece, he was doubtless well-pleased
with Time, who addresses the audience in verse, giving a political
turn to the lesson on the stage. I dare say the following lines were
loudly applauded, if not by the king, by the gallants, courtiers, and
cavaliers generally:--
“In Holy Land abroad Guy’s spirits roam,
And not in deans and chapters’ lands at home.
His sacred fury menaceth that nation,
Which held Judea under sequestration.
_He_ doth not strike at surplices and tippets,
To bring an olio in of sects and sippets;
But deals his warlike and death-doing blows
Against his Saviour’s and his sov’reign’s foes.”
How the Royalist throats must have roared applause, and warrantably
too, at these genial lines; and how must the churchmen in the pit have
stamped with delight when Time subsequently assured them that Guy
took all his Babylonian prisoners to Jerusalem, and had them probably
christened by episcopally-ordained ministers! If the house did not ring
with the cheers of the Church-and-King audience there, why they were
unworthy of the instruction filtered through legend and tragedy.
Such is the story of “Master Guy;” a story whose incidents have
doubtless meaning in them, but which were never turned to more
practical purpose than when they were employed to support a tottering
altar and a fallen throne. Reader, let us drink to the immortal memory
of MASTER GUY; and having seen what sort of man he was whom the king
delighted to honor, let us see what honors were instituted by kings for
other deserving men.
GARTERIANA.
“Honor! Your own worth before
Hath been sufficient preparation.”--_The Maid’s Revenge._
A brief sketch of the history of the foundation of the Order of
the Garter will be found in another page. Confining myself here to
anecdotical detail, I will commence by observing, that in former
times, no Knight could be absent from two consecutive feasts of the
order, without being fined in a jewel, which he was to offer at St.
George’s altar. The fine was to be doubled every year, until he had
made atonement. Further, every knight was bound to wear the Garter
in public, wherever he might be, on pain of a mulct of half a mark.
Equally obligatory was it on the knight, in whatever part of the world
he was residing, or however he was engaged, to wear the sanguine mantle
of the order from the eve of St. George till vesper-time on the morrow
of the festival. Some of the chevaliers who were in distant lands
must have caused as much surprise by their costume, as a Blue-coat
boy does, wandering in his strangely-colored garb, in the streets
of Paris. I need not allude to the absurd consequence which would
attend the enforcing of this arrangement in our own days. Hunting is
generally over before the eve of St. George’s day, and therefore a
robed Knight of the Garter could never be seen taking a double fence,
ditch and rail, at the tail of the “Melton Mowbray.” But even the sight
of half a dozen of them riding down Parliament street at the period
in question, would hardly be a stranger spectacle. A slight money
offering of a penny exempted any rather loose-principled knight from
attending divine service at St. George’s Chapel when he was in or near
Windsor. When a knight died, all his surviving comrades were put to
the expense of causing a certain number of masses to be said for his
soul. The sovereign-lord of the order had one thousand masses chanted
in furtherance of his rescue from purgatory. There was a graduated
scale through the various ranks till the knight-bachelor was come to.
For him, only one hundred masses were put up. This proves either that
the knight’s soul was not so difficult of deliverance from what Prince
Gorschakoff would call the “feu d’enfer,” or that the King’s was so
heavily pressed to the lowest depths of purgatory by its crimes, that
it required a decupled effort before it could be rescued.
“Companionship,” it may be observed, profited a knight in some degree
if, being knave as well as knight, he fell under the usual sentence
of being “drawn, hanged, and beheaded.” In such case, a Knight of
the Garter only suffered decapitation, as Sir Simon Burley in 1388.
The amount of favor shown to the offending knight did not admit of
his being conscious of much gratitude to him at whose hands it was
received. It may be mentioned, that it did not always follow that a
nobleman elected to be knight willingly accepted the proffered Garter.
The first who refused it, after due election, in 1424, was the Duke of
Burgundy. He declined it with as much scorn as Uhland did the star of
merit offered to the poet by the present King of Bavaria.
In treating of stage knights, I shall be found to have placed at their
head Sir John Falstaff. The original of that character according to
some namely, Sir John Fastolf, claims some notice here, as a Knight of
the Garter who was no more the coward which he was said to be, than
Falstaff is the bloated buffoon which some commentators take him for.
Sir John Fastolf was elected Knight of the Garter in 1426. Monstrelet
says he was removed from the order for running away, without striking
a blow, at the battle of Patay. Shakespeare’s popular Sir John has
nothing in common with this other Sir John, but we have Falstolf
himself in Henry VI. act iv. sc. 1, with Talbot, alluding to his vow,
that
“When I did meet thee next,
To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg,
The which I have done, because unworthily
Thou wast installed in that high degree.”
This sort of suspension or personal deprivation was never allowed by
the rules of the order, which enjoined the forms for degrading a knight
who was proved to have acted cowardly. The battle of Patay was fought
in 1429; and as there is abundant testimony of Sir John having been in
possession of the Garter and all its honors long after that period;
and, further, that his tomb in Pulham Mary, Norfolk, represented him in
gilt armor, with his crest and two escutcheons, with the cross of St.
George within the order, we may fairly conclude that if the charge was
ever made, of which there is no trace, it assuredly never was proven.
If there were some individuals who refused to accept the honor at all,
there were others who were afraid to do so without curious inquiry.
Thus, in the reign of Henry VI. we hear of the embassador from
Frederick III. Emperor of Germany (one Sir Hertook von Clux), stating
that his master wishes to know “what it would stand him in, if he were
to be admitted into the honorable order!” Cautious Austria!
There are examples both of courtesy and sarcasm among the Knights of
the Garter. I may cite, for instance, the case of the Duke of York, in
the reign of Henry VI. A. D. 1453. The King was too ill to preside at
the Chapter; the Duke of Buckingham was his representative; and the
Duke of York, so little scrupulous in most matters, excused himself
from attending on this occasion, because, as he said, “the sovereign
having for some time been angry with him, he durst not attend, lest he
should incur his further displeasure, and thereby aggravate the illness
under which the King was suffering.” When the same Duke came into
power, he gave the Garter to the most useful men of the York party,
beheading a few Lancastrian knights in order to make way for them. At
the Chapter held for the purpose of electing the York aspirants, honest
John de Foix, Earl of Kendal, declined to vote at all. He alleged that
he was unable to discern whether the candidates were “without reproach”
or not, and he left the decision to clearsighted people. The Earl was
a Lancastrian, and he thus evaded the disagreeable act of voting for
personal and political enemies.
But whatever the intensity of dislike one knight may have had against
another, there were occasions on which they went, hand in hand, during
the celebration of mass, to kiss that esteemable relic, the heart of
St. George. This relic had been brought to England by the Emperor
Sigismund. Anstis remarks, after alluding to the obstinacy of those
who will not believe all that St. Ambrose says touching the facts
of St. George, his slaying of the dragon, and his rescue of a royal
virgin, that “whosoever is so refractory as obstinately to condemn
every part of this story, is not to be bore with.” He then adds: “this
true martyr and excellent and valued soldier of Christ, after many
unspeakable torments inflicted on him by an impious tyrant, when he
had bent his head, and was just ready to give up the ghost, earnestly
entreated Almighty God, that whoever, in remembrance of him, and his
name, should devoutly ask anything, might be heard, a voice instantly
came from Heaven, signifying that that was granted which he had
requested.... While living, by prayer he obtained that whoever should
fly to him for his intercession, should not pray nor cry out in vain.
He ordered the trunk of his body, which had origin from among infidels,
to be sent to them, that they whom he had not been able to serve, when
living, might receive benefit from him, when dead; that those infidels
who by any misfortune had lost their senses, by coming to him or his
chapel, might be restored to soundness of mind and judgment. His head
and other members were to be carried, some one way and some another.
But his heart, the emblem of lively love, was bequeathed wholly to
Christians, for whom he had the most fervent affection. Not to all
them in general, though Christians, but to Englishmen alone; and not
to every part of England, but only to his own Windsor, which on this
account must have been more pleasing to the sovereigns and all other
the knights of this most illustrious order. Thus his heart, together
with a large portion of his skull, is there kept with due honor and
veneration. Sigismund, Emperor of Alemain, always august, being chosen
in this honorable order, presented this heart to the invincible Henry
V., who gave orders to have it preserved in that convenient place,
where he had already instituted for himself solemn exequies for ever,
that the regard he had for all others might be past dispute.” This is
very far, indeed, from being logical, but the fact remains that during
the reign of Henry VI., the heart seems to have been regarded with more
than usual reverence by the knights of the two factions which were
rending England. Each hoped to win St. George for a confederate.
The chapters were not invariably held at Windsor, nor in such solemn
localities as a chapel. In 1445, Henry VI., held a chapter at the
Lion Inn in Brentford. In this hostelrie the King created Sir Thomas
Hastings and Sir Alonzo d’Almade, Knights of the Garter. To the latter,
who was also made Earl of Avranches, in the best room of a Brentford
inn, the monarch also presented a gold cup. The whole party seems
to have made a night of it in the pleasant locality, and the new
chevaliers were installed the next morning--after which, probably,
mulled sack went round in the golden cup.
Shakespeare makes Richard III. swear by his George, his Garter, and his
Crown; but the George and Collar were novelties introduced by Henry
VII. The latter King held one of the most splendid chapters which ever
assembled, at York, prefacing the work there by riding with all the
knights, in their robes, to the morning mass of requiem, and following
it up by similarly riding to even-sung. This was more decent than Henry
VI.’s tavern chapter of the (Red) Lion, in Brentford. Henry VII. was
fond of the solemn splendor of installations, at which he changed his
costume like a versatile actor, was surrounded by ladies as well as
knights, and had Skelton, the poet, near to take notes for songs and
sonnets, descriptive of the occasion. A sovereign of the order, like
Henry VII., so zealous to maintain its splendor and efficiency, merited
the gift which was conferred upon him by the Cardinal of Rouen--of the
bones of one of the legs of St. George. The saint had many legs, but it
is not said where these bones were procured, and they who beheld them,
at the chapter held in St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1505, probably little
troubled themselves as to whence the precious relics were derived.
Henry, in return, left an image of St. George, of one hundred and
forty ounces, adorned with masses of precious stones, to the College
of Windsor, “there to remain _while the world shall endure_, to be set
upon the high altar at all solemn feasts.” Leg bones and costly image
would now be sought for in vain. The world has outlived them, and
suffers nothing by their loss.
It was the successor of Richmond, namely Henry VIII. who granted to
these knights what may be termed a sumptuary privilege, that of being
permitted to wear woollen cloth made out of the realm. None but a
knight, save the peers, dared don a coat or mantle made of foreign
cloth. In love of splendor, Henry was equal to his predecessor, and
perhaps never was a more brilliant spectacle seen than on the 27th of
May, 1519, when the King and a glittering cortège rode from Richmond to
Windsor, and changed steeds and drank a cup at the “Catherine’s Wheel,”
in Colnbrook, by the way. The Queen and a galaxy of ladies met them in
Eton, and the usual solemnities were followed by a gorgeous banquet,
at which there were such meat and music as had scarcely ever been so
highly enjoyed at a festival before. The middle of the hall was crowded
with spectators, but at the close of the repast, these were turned out,
when “the King was served of his void, the knights also, standing all
along”--which must have been a remarkably edifying exhibition.
Henry re-modelled the order, and framed the statutes by which it is now
chiefly governed. Among them was the one directing that no person of
mean birth should be elected, and this the King himself very speedily
broke, by electing Thomas Cromwell. The latter returned thanks for the
honor in the very humblest strain, and while he seemed conscious that
he was entirely unworthy of the distinction, he appeared desirous to
assure the sneering knights’ companions who had been compelled to give
him their suffrages, that ignoble as he was, he would imitate nobility
as closely as possible. But there were men, from the period of the
institution of the order downward to Henry’s time, who, if of higher
birth than Cromwell, were not of higher worth. Very many had forfeited
their dignity as knights by treasonable practices; and Henry decreed
that wherever these names occurred in the records, the words “Vœ
Proditor!”--Out upon the traitor--should be written against them in the
margin. The text had thus a truly Tudor comment.
Under the succeeding sovereign, Edward VI., a great portion of the
splendor of the religious ceremonies at the installation was abolished.
It was in this reign that Northumberland procured the ejection of Lord
Paget from the order, on the ground that the meanness of his birth
had always disqualified him, or as Edward VI. says in his journal,
“for divers his offences, and _chiefly_ because he was no gentleman of
blood, neither of father-side nor mother-side.” Lord Paget, however,
was restored under Mary, and the record of his degradation was removed
from the register.
Under Mary, if there was some court servility there was also some
public spirit. When the Queen created her husband Philip a knight, an
obsequious herald, out of compliment to the “joint-sovereigns,” took
down the arms of England in the chapel at Windsor, and was about to set
up those of Spain. This, however, was forbidden “by certain lords,”
and brave men they were, for in such a display of English spirit there
was peril of incurring the ill-will of Mary, who was never weary of
heaping favors on the foreign King-consort, whom she would have made
generalissimo of her forces if she had dared. It is a curious fact that
Philip was not ejected from the order, even when he had despatched the
Spanish Armada to devastate the dominions of the sovereign.
In illustration of the fact that the Garter never left the leg of a
knight of the order, there are some lines by the Elizabethan poet
Peele, which are very apt to the occasion. Speaking of the Earl of
Bedford, Peele says--
--“Dead is Bedford! virtuous and renowned
For arms, for honor, and religious love;
And yet alive his name in Fame’s records,
That held his Garter dear, and wore it well.
Some worthy wight but blazon his deserts:
Only a tale I thought on by the way,
As I observed his honorable name.
I heard it was his chance, o’erta’en with sleep,
To take a nap near to a farmer’s lodge.
Trusted a little with himself belike,
This aged earl in his apparel plain,
Wrapt in his russet gown, lay down to rest,
His badge of honor buckled to his leg.
Bare and naked. There came a pilfering swad
And would have preyed upon this ornament
Essayed t’ unbuckle it, thinking him asleep.
The noble gentleman, feeling what he meant--
‘Hold, foolish lad,’ quoth he, ‘a better prey:
‘This Garter is not fit for ev’ry leg,
‘And I account it better than my purse.
The varlet ran away, the earl awaked.
And told his friends, and smiling said withal,
‘’A would not, had ’a understood the French
‘Writ on my Garter, dared t’ have stol’n the same.’
This tale I thought upon, told me for truth,
The rather for it praised the Posy,
Right grave and honorable, that importeth much--
‘Evil be to him,’ it saith, ‘that evil thinks.’”
Elizabeth was distinguished for loving to hold newly-chosen knights
in suspense, before she ratified their election by her approval. The
anniversary banquets too fell into disuse during her reign, and she
introduced the most unworthy knight that had ever stood upon the record
of the order. This was Charles IX. of France. On the other hand she
sent the Garter to Henri Quatre. He was the last French monarch who was
a companion of the order, till the reign of Louis XVIII. On the day the
latter came up from Hartwell to Stanmore, on his way to France, at the
period of the first restoration, the Prince Regent invested him with
the brilliant insignia at Carlton House. It was on this occasion Louis
XVIII. observed that he was the first King of France who had worn the
garter since the period of Henri Quatre. Louis had erased his own name
from the Golden Book of Nobility of Venice, when he heard that the
name of Bonaparte had been inserted therein. He, perhaps, would have
declined receiving the Garter, if he could have foreseen that the royal
niece of the Prince Regent would, in after years, confer the order on
the imperial nephew of Napoleon.
The period of James is marked by some pretty quarrels among the
officials. Thus at the installation of Prince Henry, there was a feast
which was well nigh turned into a fray. At the very beginning of it,
the prebends and heralds fell to loggerheads on the delicate question
of precedency. The alms-knights mingled in the quarrel by siding with
the prebends, and claiming the next degree of precedency before the
heralds. Reference was made to the Earls of Nottingham and Worcester.
The referees adjudged the heralds to have right of precedency before
the prebends. Thereupon the proud prebends, oblivious of Christian
humility, refused to go to church at the tail of the heralds. The
latter went in exultingly without them, and the prebends would not
enter until a long time had elapsed, so that it could not be said they
followed the gentlemen of the tabard. The delicate question was again
angrily discussed, and at length referred to the whole body of knights.
The noble fraternity, after grave deliberation, finally determined that
on the next day of St. George, being Sunday, in the procession to the
church, the alms-knights should go first, then the pursuivants of arms,
then the prebends (many of whom were doctors of divinity), and finally
the heralds. The latter were cunning rogues, and no inconsiderable
authority in matters of precedency; and they immediately declared that
the knights had decreed to them the better place, inasmuch as that in
most processions the principal personages did not walk first.
Of the knights of this reign, Grave Maurice, Prince of Orange, and
Frederick the (Goody) Palsgrave of the Rhine, were among the most
celebrated. They were installed in 1613, the Prince by proxy, and the
Palsgrave in person. A young and graceful Count Ludovic of Nassau, was
chosen at the last moment, to represent the Prince, whose appointed
representative, Count Henry, was detained in Holland by adverse winds.
“The feast,” says an eye-witness, “was in the Great Hall, where the
king dined at the upper table alone, served in state by the Lord Gerard
as Sewer, the Lord Morris as Cupbearer, the Lord Compton as Carver;
all that were of the order, at a long cross table across the hall. The
Prince by himself alone, and the Palatine a little distance from him.
But the Count Nassau was ranged over-against my Lord Admiral, and so
took place of all after the Sovereign Princes, not without a little
muttering of our Lords, who would have had him ranged according to
seniority, if the king had not overruled it by prerogative.”
Wilson, in his history of James I., narrates a curious anecdote
respecting this Grave Maurice and the ribbon of the order. “Prince
Maurice took it as a great honor to be admitted into the Fraternity
of that Order, and wore it constantly; till afterward, some villains
at the Hague, that met the reward of their demerit (one of them, a
Frenchman, being groom of the Prince’s chamber) robbed a jeweller of
Amsterdam that brought jewels to the Prince. This groom, tempting him
into his chamber, to see some jewels, there, with his confederates,
strangled the man with one of the Prince’s Blue Ribbons; which being
afterward discovered, the Prince would never suffer so fatal an
instrument to come about his neck.”
James, by raising his favorite Buckingham, then only Sir George
Villiers, to the degree of Knight of the Garter, was considered to
have as much outraged the order as Henry VIII. had done by investing
Cromwell with the insignia. Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley
Carleton, says, “The King went away the next day after St. George’s
Feast, toward Newmarket and Thetford, the Earl of Rutland and Sir
George Villiers being that morning elected into the order of the
Garter, which seemed at first a strange choice, in regard that the
wife of the former is an open and known recusant, and _he_ is said to
have many dangerous people about him; and the latter is so lately come
into the sight of the world, and withal it is doubted that he had not
sufficient likelihood to maintain the dignity of the place, according
to express articles of the order. But to take away that scruple, the
King hath bestowed upon him the Lord Gray’s lands, and means, they
say, to mend his grant with much more, not far distant, in the present
possession of the Earl of Somerset, if he do _cadere causâ_ and sink in
the business now in hand.” The last passage alludes to the murder of
Overbury.
The going down to Windsor was at this time a pompous spectacle.
The riding thither of the Knights Elect is thus spoken of by a
contemporary: “On Monday,” (St. George’s day, 1615), “our Knights
of the Garter, Lord Fenton and Lord Knollys, ride to Windsor, with
great preparation to re-vie one with another who shall make the
best show. Though I am of opinion the latter will carry it by many
degrees, by reason of the alliance with the houses of the Howards,
Somerset, Salisbury, and Dorset, with many other great families that
will bring him their friends, and most part of the pensioners. Yet
most are persuaded the other will bear away the bell, as having the
best part of the court, all the bed-chamber, all the prince’s servants
and followers, with a hundred of the Guard, that have new rich coats
made on purpose, besides Sir George Villiers (the favorite), and Mr.
Secretary--whose presence had been better forborne, in my judgment,
for many reasons--but that every man abound in his own sense.” James
endeavored to suppress, in some measure, the expensive ride of the
Knights Elect to Windsor, but only with partial success. His attempted
reform, too, had a selfish aspect; he tried to make it profitable to
himself. He prohibited the giving of livery coats, “for saving charge
and avoiding emulation,” and at the same time ordered that all existing
as well as future companions should present a piece of plate of the
value of twenty pounds sterling at least for the use of the altar in
St. George’s Chapel.
Charles I. held chapters in more places in England than any other
king--now at York, now at Nottingham, now at Oxford, and in other
localities. These chapters were sometimes attended by as few as four
knights, and for the most part they were shorn of much of the ancient
ceremony. He held some brilliant chapters at Windsor, nevertheless.
At one of them, the election of the Earl of Northumberland inspired
a bard, whose song I subjoin because it is illustrative of several
incidents which are far from lacking interest.
“A brief description of the triumphant show made by the Right Honorable
Aulgernon Percie Earl of Northumberland, at his installation and
initiation into the princely fraternity of the Garter, on the 13th of
May, 1635.”
_To the tune of “Quell the Pride.”_
“You noble buds of Britain,
That spring from honor’s tree,
Who love to hear of high designs,
Attend awhile to me.
And I’ll (in brief) discover what
Fame bids me take in hand--
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“The order of the Garter,
Ere since third Edward reigned
Unto the realm of England hath
A matchless honor gained.
The world hath no society,
Like to this princely band,
To raise
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“The honor of his pedigree
Doth claim a high regard,
And many of his ancestors
For fame thought nothing hard.
And he, through noble qualities,
Which are exactly scanned,
Doth raise
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“Against the day appointed,
His lordship did prepare;
To publish his magnificence
No charges he did spare.
The like within man’s memory
Was never twice in hand
To raise
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“Upon that day it seemed
All Brittany did strive,
And did their best to honor him
With all they could contrive.
For all our high nobility
Joined in a mutual land
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“The common eyes were dazzled
With wonder to behold
The lustre of apparel rich,
All silver, pearl, and gold,
Which on brave coursers mounted,
Did glisten through the Strand,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“But ere that I proceed
This progress to report,
I should have mentioned the feast
Made at Salisbury Court.
Almost five hundred dishes
Did on the table stand,
To raise
The praise
Of great Northumberland.”
_The Second Part, to the same tune._
“The mightiest prince or monarch
That in the world doth reign,
At such a sumptuous banquet might
Have dined without disdain,
Where sack, like conduit water,
Was free ever at command,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“The famous Fleet-street conduit,
Renowned so long ago,
Did not neglect to express what love
She to my lord did owe.
For like an old proud woman
The painted face doth stand
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“A number of brave gallants,
Some knights and some esquires,
Attended at this triumph great,
Clad in complete attires.
The silver half-moon gloriously
Upon their sleeves doth stand,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“All these on stately horses,
That ill endured the bit,
Were mounted in magnific cost,
As to the time was fit.
Their feathers white and red did show,
Like to a martial band,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“The noble earls and viscounts,
And barons, rode in state:
This great and high solemnity
All did congratulate.
To honor brave Earl Percy
Each put a helping hand
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“King Charles, our royal sovereign,
And his renownéd Mary,
With Britain’s hope, their progeny,
All lovingly did tarry
At noble Viscount Wimbleton’s,
I’ the fairest part o’ th’ Strand,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“To famous Windsor Castle,
With all his gallant train,
Earl _Pearcy_ went that afternoon
His honor to obtain.
And there he was installed
One of St. George’s band,
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.
“Long may he live in honor,
In plenty and in peace;
For him, and all his noble friends,
To pray I’ll never cease.
This ditty (which I now will end)
Was only ta’en in hand
To blaze
The praise
Of great Northumberland.”
This illustrative ballad bears the initials “M. P.” These, probably,
do not imply either a member of Parliament, or of the house of
Percy. Beneath the initials we have the legend, “Printed at London,
for Francis Coules, and are” (verses _subaudiuntur_) “to be sold at
his shop in the Old Bayley.” There are three woodcuts to illustrate
the text. The first represents the Earl on horseback; both peer
and charger are very heavily caparisoned, and the steed looks as
intelligent as the peer. In front of this stately, solid, and leisurely
pacing couple, is a mounted serving-man, armed with a stick, and riding
full gallop at nobody. The illustration to the second part represents
the Earl returning from Windsor in a carriage, which looks very much
like the Araba in the Turkish Exhibition. The new Knight wears his hat,
cloak, collar and star; his figure, broad-set to the doorway, bears
no distant resemblance to the knave of clubs, and his aristocratic
self-possession and serenity are remarkable, considering the bumping
he is getting, as implied by the wheels of his chariot being several
inches off the ground. The pace of the steeds, two and twohalves of
whom are visible, is not, however, very great. They are hardly out
of a walk. But perhaps the bareheaded coachman and the as bareheaded
groom have just pulled them up, to allow the running footmen to reach
the carriage. Two of these are seen near the rear of the vehicle,
running like the brace of mythological personages in Ovid, who ran the
celebrated match in which the apples figured so largely. The tardy
footmen have just come in sight of their lord, who does not allow his
serenity to be disturbed by chiding them. The Percy wears as stupid
an air as his servants, and the only sign of intelligence anywhere in
the group is to be found in the off-side wheeler, whose head is turned
back, with a sneering cast in the face, as if he were ridiculing the
idea of the whole show, and was possessed with the conviction that he
was drawing as foolish a beast as himself.
The Earl appears to have ridden eastward, in the direction pointed by
his own lion’s tale, before he drove down to Windsor. The show seems to
have interested all ranks between the Crown and the Conduit in Fleet
street. Where Viscount Wimbledon’s house was, “in the fairest part of
the Strand,” I can not conjecture, and as I can not find information on
this point in Mr. Peter Cunningham’s “Hand-Book of London,” I conclude
that the site is not known.
In connection with Charles I. and his Garter, I will here cite a
passage from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of England,”
page 165. “Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was a favorite at St. Germains.
He wore the Garter, a badge of honor which has very seldom been
conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It was believed,
indeed, in the French court, that in order to distinguish him from the
other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, he had been
decorated with that very George which Charles I. had, on the scaffold,
put into the hands of Juxon.” Lauzun, I shall have to notice under the
head of foreign knights. I revert here to the George won by Charles and
given to Lauzun. It was a very extraordinary jewel, curiously cut in an
onyx, set about with twenty-one large table diamonds, in the fashion of
a garter. On the under side of the George was the portrait of Henrietta
Maria, “rarely well limned,” says Ashmole, “and set in a case of gold,
the lid neatly enamelled with goldsmith’s work, and surrounded with
another Garter, adorned with a like number of equal-sized diamonds, as
was the foresaid.” The onyx George of Charles I. was in the possession
of the late Duke of Wellington, and is the property of the present Duke.
There is something quite as curious touching the history of the
Garter worn by Charles I., as what Mr. Macaulay tells concerning the
George. The diamonds upon it, forming the motto, were upward of four
hundred in number. On the day of the execution, this valuable ornament
fell into the hands of one of Cromwell’s captains of cavalry, named
Pearson. After one exchange of hands, it was sold to John Ireton,
sometime Lord-Mayor of London, for two hundred and five pounds. At the
Restoration, a commission was appointed to look after the scattered
royal property generally; and the commissioners not only recovered
some pictures belonging to Charles, from Mrs. Cromwell, who had placed
them in charge of a tradesman in Thames street, but they discovered
that Ireton held the Garter, and they summoned him to deliver it up
accordingly. It has been said that the commissioners offered him the
value of the jewel if he would surrender it. This is not the case. The
report had been founded on a misapprehension of terms. Ireton did not
deny that he possessed the Garter by purchase, whereupon “composition
was offered him, according to the direction of the Commission, as in
all other like cases where anything could not be had in kind.” That is,
he was ordered to surrender the jewel, or if this had been destroyed,
its value, or some compensation in lieu thereof. Ireton refused the
terms altogether. The King, Charles II., thereupon sued him in the
Court of King’s Bench, where the royal plaintiff obtained a verdict for
two hundred and five pounds, and ten pounds costs of suit.
In February, 1652, the Parliament abolished all titles and honors
conferred by Charles I. since the 4th of January, two years previously.
This was done on the ground that the late King had conferred such
titles and honors, in order to promote his wicked and treacherous
designs against the parliament and people of England. A fine of one
hundred pounds was decreed against every offender, whenever he employed
the abolished title, with the exception of a knight, who was let off
at the cheaper rate of forty pounds. Any one convicted of addressing
a person by any of the titles thus done away with, was liable to a
fine of ten shillings. The Parliament treated with silent contempt the
titles and orders of knighthood conferred by Charles I. As monarchy
was defunct, these adjuncts of monarchy were considered as defunct
also. The Protector did not create a single Knight of the Garter, nor
of the Bath. “_These_ orders,” says Nicolas, “were never formally
abolished, but they were probably considered so inseparably united to
the person, name, and office of a king, as to render it impossible
for any other authority to create them.” Cromwell, however, made one
peer, Howard, Viscount Howard of Morpeth, ten baronets and knights,
and conferred certain degrees of precedency. It was seldom that he
named an unworthy person, considering the latter in the Protector’s own
point of view, but the Restoration was no sooner an accomplished fact,
when to ridicule one of Oliver’s knights was a matter of course with
the hilarious dramatic poets. On this subject something will be found
under the head of “Stage Knights.” Meanwhile, although there is nothing
to record touching Knights of the Garter, under the Commonwealth,
we may notice an incident showing that Garter King-at-arms was not
altogether idle. This incident will be sufficiently explained by the
following extract from the third volume of Mr. Macaulay’s “History of
England.” The author is speaking of the regicide Ludlow, who, since the
Restoration, had been living in exile at Geneva. “The Revolution opened
a new prospect to him. The right of the people to resist oppression, a
right which, during many years, no man could assert without exposing
himself to ecclesiastical anathemas and to civil penalties, had
been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, and had been
proclaimed by Garter King-at-arms, on the very spot where the memorable
scaffold had been set up.”
Charles II. did not wait for the Restoration in order to make or unmake
knights. He did not indeed hold chapters, but at St. Germains, in
Jersey, and other localities, he unknighted knights who had forgotten
their allegiance in the “late _horrid_ rebellion,” as he emphatically
calls the Parliamentary and Cromwellian periods, and authorized other
individuals to wear the insignia, while he exhorted them to wait
patiently and hopefully for their installations at Windsor. At St.
Germains, he gave the Garter to his favorite Buckingham; and from
Jersey he sent it to two far better men--Montrose, and Stanley, Earl of
Derby. The worst enemies of these men could not deny their chivalrous
qualities. Montrose on the scaffold, when they hung (in derision) from
his neck the book in which were recorded his many brave deeds, very
aptly said that he wore the record of his courage with as much pride as
he ever wore the Garter. Stanley’s chivalry was never more remarkable
than in the skirmish previous to Worcester, when in the hot affray, he
received seven shots in his breast-plate, thirteen cuts on his beaver,
five or six wounds on his arms and shoulders, and had two horses
killed under him. When he was about to die, he returned the Garter,
by the hands of a faithful servant, to the king, “in all humility and
gratitude,” as he remarked, “spotless and free from any stain, as he
received it, according to the honorable example of my ancestors.”
Charles made knights of the Garter of General Monk and Admiral
Montague. The chapter for election was held in the Abbey of St.
Augustine’s at Canterbury. It was the first convenient place which
the king could find for such a purpose after landing. “They were the
only two,” says Pepys, “for many years who had the Garter given them
before they had honor of earldom, or the like, excepting only the Duke
of Buckingham, who was only Sir George Villiers when he was made a
knight of the Garter.” The honor was offered to Clarendon, but declined
as above his deserts, and likely to create him enemies. James, Duke
of York, however, angrily attributed Clarendon’s objection to being
elected to the Garter to the fact that James himself had asked it for
him, and that the Chancellor was foolishly unwilling to accept any
honor that was to be gained by the Duke’s mediation.
Before proceeding to the next reign, let me remark that the George and
Garter of Charles II. had as many adventures or misadventures as those
of his father. In the fight at Worcester his collar and garter became
the booty of Cromwell, who despatched a messenger with them to the
Parliament, as a sign and trophy of victory. The king’s lesser George,
set with diamonds, was preserved by Colonel Blague. It passed through
several hands with much risk. It at length fell again into the hands of
the Colonel when he was a prisoner in the Tower. Blague, “considering
it had already passed so many dangers, was persuaded it could yet
secure one hazardous attempt of his own.” The enthusiastic royalist
looked upon it as a talisman that would rescue him from captivity.
Right or wrong in his sentiment, the result was favorable. He succeeded
in making his escape, and had the gratification of restoring the George
to his sovereign.
The short reign of James II. offers nothing worthy of the notice of
the general reader with respect to this decoration; and the same
may be said of the longer reign of William III. The little interest
in the history of the order under Queen Anne, is in connection with
her foreign nominations, of which due notice will be found in the
succeeding section. Small, too, is the interest connected with these
matters in the reign of George I., saving, indeed, that under _him_ we
find the last instance of the degradation of a knight of the garter,
in the person of James, Duke of Ormund, who had been attainted of
high treason. His degradation took place on the 12th July, 1716. The
elections were numerous during this reign. The only one that seems to
demand particular notice is that of Sir Robert Walpole, First Lord of
the Treasury. He gave up the Bath on receiving the Garter in 1726,
and he was the only commoner who had received the distinction since
Sir George Monk and Sir Edward Montague were created, sixty-six years
previously.
The first circumstance worthy of record under George II. is, that
the color of the garter and ribbon was changed from light blue to
dark, or “Garter-blue,” as it is called. This was done in order to
distinguish the companions made by Brunswick from those assumed to
be fraudulently created by the Pretender Stuart. Another change was
effected, but much less felicitously. What with religious, social, and
political revolution, it was found that the knights were swearing to
statutes which they could not observe. Their consciences were disturbed
thereat--at least they said so; but their sovereign set them at ease
by enacting that in future all knights should promise to break no
statutes, except on dispensation from the sovereign! This left the
matter exactly where it had been previously.
The first circumstance worthy of attention in the reign of George III.,
was that of the election of Earl Gower, president of the council, in
1771. The sharp eye of Junius discovered that the election was a farce,
for in place of the sovereign and at least six knights being present,
as the statutes required, there were only four knights present, the
Dukes of Gloucester, Newcastle, Northumberland, and the Earl of
Hertford. The first duke too was there against his will. He had, says
Junius, “entreated, begged, and implored,” to be excused from attending
that chapter--but all in vain. The new knight seems to have been
illegally elected, and as illegally installed. The only disagreeable
result was to the poor knights of Windsor. People interested in the
subject had made remarks, and while the illegal election of the
president of the council was most properly put before the King,
representation was made to him that the poor knights had been wickedly
contravening their statutes, for a very long period. They had for years
been permitted to reside with their families wherever they chose to fix
their residence. This was pronounced irregular, and George III., so lax
with regard to Lord Gower, was very strict with respect to these poor
knights. They were all commanded to reside in their apartments attached
to Windsor Castle, and there keep up the poor dignity of their noble
order, by going to church twice every day in full uniform. There were
some of them at that period who would as soon have gone out twice a day
to meet the dragon.
The order of the Garter was certainly ill-used by this sovereign. In
order to admit all his sons, he abolished the statute of Edward (who
had as many sons as George had when he made the absurd innovation,
but who did not care to make knights of them _because_ they were his
sons), confining the number of companions to twenty-five. Henceforward,
the sovereign’s sons were to reckon only as over and above that number.
As if this was not sufficiently absurd, the king subsequently decreed
eligibility of election to an indefinite number of persons, provided
only that they could trace their descent from King George II.!
No Companion so well deserved the honor conferred upon him as he who
was the most illustrious of the English knights created during the
sway of the successor of George III., as Regent; namely, the late Duke
of Wellington. Mr. Macaulay, when detailing the services and honors
conferred on Schomberg, has a passage in which he brings the names
of these two warriors, dukes, and knights of the Garter, together.
“The House of Commons had, with general approbation, compensated the
losses of Schomberg, and rewarded his services by a grant of a hundred
thousand pounds. Before he set out for Ireland, he requested permission
to express his gratitude for this magnificent present. A chair was set
for him within the bar. He took his seat there with the mace at his
right hand, rose, and in a few graceful words returned his thanks and
took his leave. The Speaker replied that the Commons could never forget
the obligation under which they already lay to his Grace, that they saw
him with pleasure at the head of an English army, that they felt entire
confidence in his zeal and ability, and that at whatever distance he
might be he would always be, in a peculiar manner, an object of their
care. The precedent set on this interesting occasion was followed with
the utmost minuteness, a hundred and twenty-five years later, on an
occasion more interesting still. Exactly on the same spot, on which, in
July, 1689, Schomberg had acknowledged the liberality of the nation,
a chair was set in July, 1814, for a still more illustrious warrior,
who came to return thanks for a still more splendid mark of public
gratitude.”
There is nothing calling for particular notice in the history of the
Order since the election of the last-named knight. Not one on whose
shoulders has been placed “the robe of heavenly color,” earned so
hardly and so well the honor of companionship. This honor, however,
costs every knight who submits to the demand, not less than one hundred
and eight pounds sterling, in fees. It is, in itself, a heavy fine
inflicted on those who render extraordinary service to the country, and
to whom are presented the order of the Garter, and an order from the
Garter King-at-arms to pay something more than a hundred guineas in
return. The fine, however, is generally paid with alacrity; for, though
the non-payment does not unmake a knight, it has the effect of keeping
his name from the register.
I have already observed that Mr. Macaulay, in his recently-published
History, has asserted that very few foreigners, except they were
sovereign princes, were ever admitted into the companionship of the
Garter. Let us, then, look over the roll of illustrious aliens, and see
how far this assertion is correct.
FOREIGN KNIGHTS OF THE GARTER.
There is some error in Mr. Macaulay’s statement, which, as a matter of
history, may be worth correcting. So far from there having been few
aliens, except sovereign princes, admitted into the order, the fact,
save in recent times, is exactly the reverse. The order contemplated
the admission of foreigners, from the very day of its foundation. On
that day, three foreigners were admitted, none of whom was a sovereign
prince. Not one of the foreign sovereigns with whom Edward was in
alliance, nor any of the royal relatives of the Queen, were among the
original companions. The aliens, who were not sovereign princes, were
the Captal de Buch, a distinguished Gascon nobleman, and two bannerets
or knights, who with the other original companions had served in the
expeditions sent by Edward against France.
Again, under Richard II., among the most famous alien gentlemen created
knights of the Garter, were the Gascon soldier Du Preissne; Soldan
de la Tour, Lord of much land in Xaintonge; the Dutch Count William
of Ostervant, who made a favor of accepting the honorable badge; the
Duke of Bavaria (not yet Emperor), and Albert, Duke of Holland, who
was hardly a sovereign prince, but who, nevertheless, may be accounted
as such, seeing that, in a small way indeed, more like a baron than a
monarch, he exercised some sovereign rights. The Duke of Britanny may,
with more justice, be included in the list of sovereign dukes who were
members of the order. Under Henry IV., neither alien noble nor foreign
prince appears to have been elected, but under his successor, fifth
of the name, Eric X., King of Denmark, and John I., King of Portugal,
were created companions. They were the first kings regnant admitted to
the order. Some doubt exists as to the date of their admission, but
none as to their having been knights’ companions. Dabrichecourt is
the name of a gentleman lucky enough to have been also elected during
this reign, but I do not know if he were of foreign birth or foreign
only by descent. The number of the fraternity became complete in this
reign, by the election of the Emperor Sigismund. Under Henry V., the
foreign sovereign princes, members of the order, were unquestionably
more numerous than the mere alien gentlemen; but reckoning from the
foundation, there had been a greater number of foreign knights not
of sovereign quality than of those who were. The sovereign princes
did not seem to care so much for the honor as private gentlemen in
foreign lands. Thus the German, Sir Hartook von Clux, accepted the
honor with alacrity, but the King of Denmark allowed five years to
pass before he intimated that he cheerfully or resignedly tendered
his acceptance. At the first anniversary festival of the Order, held
under Henry VI., as many robes of the order were made for alien knights
not sovereign princes, as for gartered monarchs of foreign birth. The
foreign princes had so little appreciated the honor of election, that
when the Sovereign Duke of Burgundy was proposed, under Henry VI., the
knights would not go to election until that potentate had declared
whether he would accept the honor. His potentiality declared very
distinctly that he would not; and he is the first sovereign prince
who positively refused to become a knight of the Garter! In the same
reign Edward, King of Portugal, was elected in the place of his father,
John:--this is one of the few instances in which the honor has passed
from father to son. The Duke of Coimbra, also elected in this reign,
was of a foreign princely house, but he was not a sovereign prince.
He may reckon with the alien knights generally. The Duke of Austria
too, Albert, was elected before he came to a kingly and to an imperial
throne; and against these princes I may place the name of Gaston de
Foix, whom Henry V. had made Earl of Longueville, as that of a simple
alien knight of good estate and knightly privileges. One or two scions
of royal houses were elected, as was Alphonso, King of Aragon. But
there is strong reason for believing that Alphonso declined the honor.
There is some uncertainty as to the period of the election of Frederick
III., that economical Emperor of Austria, who begged to know what the
expenses would amount to, before he would “accept the order.” All the
garters not home-distributed, did not go to deck the legs of foreign
sovereign princes. Toward the close of the reign we find the Vicomte de
Chastillion elected, and also D’Almada, the Portuguese knight of whose
jolly installation at the Lion in Brentford, I have already spoken.
An Aragonese gentleman, Francis de Surienne, was another alien knight
of simply noble quality; he was elected in the King’s bedchamber at
Westminster; and the alien knights would more than balance the foreign
sovereign princes, even if we throw in Casimir, King of Poland, who was
added to the confraternity under the royal Lancastrian.
The first foreigner whom Edward IV. raised to companionship in the
order, was not a prince, but a private gentleman named Gaillard Duras
or Durefort. The honor was conferred in acknowledgment of services
rendered to the King, in France; and the new knight was very speedily
deprived of it, for traitorously transferring his services to the
King of France. Of the foreign monarchs who are said to have been
_elected_ companions, during this reign--namely, the Kings of Spain
and Portugal--there is much doubt whether the favor was conferred at
all. The Dukes of Ferrara and Milan were created knights, and these
may be reckoned among ducal sovereigns, although less than kings; and
let me add that, if the Kings of Spain and Portugal _were_ elected,
the elections became void, because these monarchs failed to send
proxies to take possession of their stalls. Young Edward V. presided
at no election, and his uncle and successor, Richard III., received no
foreign prince into the order. At the installation, however, of the
short-lived son of Richard, that sovereign created Geoffrey de Sasiola,
embassador from the Queen of Spain, a knight, by giving him three blows
on the shoulders with a sword, and by investing him with a gold collar.
Henry VII. was not liberal toward foreigners with the many garters
which fell at his disposal, after Bosworth, and during his reign. He
appears to have exchanged with Maximilian, the Garter for the Golden
Fleece, and to have conferred the same decoration on one or two heirs
to foreign thrones, who were not sovereign princes when elected.
It was not often that these princes were installed in person. Such
installation, however, did occasionally happen; and never was one more
singular in its origin and circumstances, than that of Philip, Archduke
of Austria. Philip had resolved to lay claim to the throne of Spain by
right of his wife Joan, daughter of Ferdinand of Castile and Aragon. He
was on his way to Spain, when foul winds and a tempestuous sea drove
him into Weymouth. Henry invited him to Windsor, treated him with great
hospitality, and installed him Knight of the Garter. Philip “took the
oath to observe the statutes, without any other qualification than
that he might not be obliged to attend personally at the chapters, or
to wear the collar, except at his own pleasure. In placing the collar
round his neck, and in conducting him to his stall, Henry addressed him
as ‘Mon fils,’ while Philip, in return, called the King ‘Mon père,’ and
these affectionate appellations are repeated in the treaty of peace and
unity between the two countries, which was signed by Henry and Philip,
while sitting in their respective stalls, and to the maintenance of
which they were both then solemnly sworn. Previously to the offering,
Philip wished to stand before his stall, like the other knights, and to
follow the King to the altar, requesting to be allowed to do his duty
as a knight and brother of the order ought to do to the sovereign; but
Henry declined, and taking him by the left hand, the two Kings offered
together. After the ceremony, Philip invested Henry, Prince of Wales,
with the collar of the Golden Fleece, into which order he had, it is
said, been elected at Middleburgh in the preceding year, 1506.
Under Henry VIII. we find the first Scottish monarch who ever wore
the Garter, namely James V. He accepted the insignia “with princely
heart and will,” but, in a formal instrument, he set down the statutes
which he would swear to observe, and he rejected all others. Francis,
King of France, Charles V., Emperor of Germany, and Ferdinand, King of
Hungary, were also members of the order. But the _sovereign_ princes
elected during this reign did not outnumber the alien knights of
less degree. When Henry was at Calais, he held a chapter, at which
Marshal Montmorency, Count de Beaumont, and Philip de Chabot, Count
de Neublanc, were elected into the order. This occasion was the first
and only time that the Kings of England and France attended together
and voted as companions in the chapters of their respective orders.
Like the other knights, Francis nominated for election into the
Garter, three earls or persons of higher degree, three barons, and
three knights-bachelors, and the names present an interesting fact,
which has not been generally noticed. Henry was then enamored of Anne
Boleyn, whom he had recently created Marchioness of Pembroke, and who
accompanied him to Calais. With a solitary exception, the French King
gave all his suffrages for his own countrymen, and as the exception
was in favor of her brother, George, Lord Rochford, it was evidently
intended as a compliment to the future Queen of England.
It was the intention of Edward VI. to have created Lewis, Marquis of
Gonzaga, a knight of the order, but there is no evidence that he was
elected. It is difficult to ascertain the exact course of things during
this reign; for Mary, subsequently, abrogated all the changes made
by Edward, in order to adopt the statutes to the exigencies of the
reformed religion. She did even more than this; she caused the register
to be defaced, by erasing every insertion which was not in accordance
with the Romish faith. It is known, however, that Henri II. of France
was elected. His investiture took place in a bed-room of the Louvre in
Paris. He rewarded the Garter King-at-arms with a gold chain worth two
hundred pounds, and his own royal robe, ornmented with “aglets,” and
worth twenty-five pounds. Against this one sovereign prince we have to
set the person of an alien knight--the Constable of France. The foreign
royal names on the list were, however, on the accession of Mary, three
against one of foreign knights of lower degree. That of Philip of Spain
soon made the foreign royal majority still greater; and this majority
may be said to have been further increased by the election of the
sovereign Duke of Savoy. Mary elected no foreign knight beneath the
degree of sovereign ruler--whether king or duke.
Elizabeth very closely followed the same principle. Her foreign knights
were sovereigns, or about to become so. The first was Adolphus, Duke of
Holstein, son of the King of Denmark, and heir of Norway. The second
was Charles IX. of France, and the third, Frederick, King of Denmark;
the Emperor Rudolf was, perhaps, a fourth; and the fifth, Henri Quatre,
the last king of France who wore the Garter till the accession of
Louis XVIII. As for the Spanish widower of Mary, Sir Harris Nicholas
observes, “Philip, king of Spain, is said to have returned the Garter
by the hands of the Queen’s ambassador, Viscount Montague, who had been
sent to induce him to renew the alliance between England and Burgundy.
Philip did not conceal his regret at the change which had taken
place in the religion and policy of his country; but he displayed no
sectarian bitterness, expresses himself still desirous of opposing the
designs of the French, who sought to have Elizabeth excommunicated, and
stated that he had taken measures to prevent this in the eyes of a son
of the Church of Rome, the greatest of all calamities, from befalling
her, without her own consent. It appears, however, that Elizabeth did
not accept of Philip’s resignation of the Garter, for he continued a
companion until his decease, notwithstanding the war between England
and Spain, and the attempt to invade this country by the Spanish Armada
in 1588.”
When I say Elizabeth closely followed the example of Mary I should add
as an instance wherein she departed therefrom--the election of Francis
Duke of Montmorency, envoy from the French King. The Queen bestowed
this honor on the Duke, “in grateful commemoration,” says Camden, “of
the love which Anne, constable of France, his father, bore unto her.”
At the accession of James I., however, Henri IV. of France was the only
foreigner, sovereign or otherwise, who wore the order of the Garter.
Those added by James were the King of Denmark, the Prince of Orange,
and the Prince Palatine. Of the latter I have spoken in another place;
I will only notice further here, that under James, all precedence of
stalls was taken away from princes below a certain rank; that is to
say, the last knights elected, even the King’s own son, must take the
last stall. It was also then declared “that all princes, not absolute,
should be installed, henceforth, in the puisne place.”
There was _one_ foreign knight, however, whose installation deserves a
word apart, for it was marked by unusual splendor, considering how very
small a potentate was the recipient of the honor. This was Christian,
Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. On the last day of the year 1624,
James, with his own hands, placed the riband and George round the neck
of the Duke. The latter was then twenty-four years of age. “The Duke
of Brunswick,” says Chamberlain, in a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton,
January 8, 1625, “can not complain of his entertainment, which was
every way complete, very good and gracious words from the King, with
the honor of the Garter, and a pension of two thousand pounds a year.
The Prince lodged him in his own lodgings, and at parting, gave him
three thousand pounds in gold, besides other presents.” James conferred
the Garter on no less than seven of his Scottish subjects. If these may
be reckoned now, what they were considered then, as mere foreigners,
the alien knights will again outnumber the foreign sovereign princes,
wearers of the Garter.
The first knight invested by Charles I. was an alien chevalier, of
only noble degree. This was the Duke de Chevreuse, who was Charles’s
proxy at his nuptials with Henrietta Maria, and who thus easily won
the honors of chivalry among the Companions of St. George. It seems,
however, that the honor in question was generally won by foreigners,
because of their being engaged in furthering royal marriages. Thus,
when the King’s agent in Switzerland, Mr. Fleming, in the year 1633,
suggested to the government that the Duke of Rohan should be elected
a knight of the Garter, Mr. Secretary Coke made reply that “The
proposition hath this inconvenience, that the rites of that ancient
order comport not with innovation, and no precedent can be found of any
foreign subject ever admitted into it, if he were not employed in an
inter-marriage with this crown, as the Duke of Chevreuse lately was.”
There certainly was not a word of truth in what the Secretary Coke thus
deliberately stated. Not only had the Garter frequently been conferred
on foreign subjects who had had nothing to do as matrimonial agents
between sovereign lovers, but only twelve years after Coke thus wrote,
Charles conferred the order upon the Duke d’Espernon, who had no claim
to it founded upon such service as is noticed by the learned secretary.
At the death of Charles I. there was not, strictly speaking, a single
foreign sovereign prince belonging to the order. The three foreign
princes, Rupert, William of Orange, and the Elector Palatine, can
not justly be called so. The other foreign knights were the Dukes of
Chevreuse and Espernon.
The foreign knights of the order created by Charles II. were Prince
Edward, son of “Elizabeth of Bohemia;” Prince Maurice, his elder
brother; Henry, eldest son of the Duke de Thouas, William of Nassau,
then three years of age, and subsequently our William III.; Frederick,
Elector of Brandenburg; Gaspar, Count de Morchin; Christian, Prince
Royal of Denmark; Charles XI., King of Sweden; George, Elector of
Saxony; and Prince George of Denmark, husband of the Princess Anne.
It will be seen that those who could be strictly called “sovereign
princes,” claiming allegiance and owing none, do not outnumber
alien knights who were expected to render obedience, and could
not sovereignly exert it. Denmark and Sweden, it may be observed,
quarrelled about precedency of stalls with as much bitterness as if
they had been burghers of the “Krähwinkel” of Kotzebue.
The short reign of James II. presents us with only one alien Knight of
the Garter, namely, Louis de Duras, created also Earl of Feversham. “Il
était le second de son nom,” says the Biographie Universelle, “qui eut
été honoré de cette decoration, remarque particulière dans la noblesse
Française.”
The great Duke of Schomberg, that admirable warrior given to England
by the tyranny of Louis XIV., was the first person invested with the
Garter by William III. The other foreign knights invested by him were
the first King of Prussia, William Duke of Zell, the Elector of Saxony,
William Bentinck (Earl of Portland), Von Keppel (Earl of Albemarle),
and George of Hanover (our George I.) Here the alien knights, not of
sovereign degree, again outnumbered those who _were_ of that degree.
The Elector of Saxony refused to join William against France, unless
the Garter were first conferred on him.
Anne conferred the Garter on Meinhardt Schomberg, Duke of Leinster,
son of the great Schomberg; and also on George Augustus of Hanover
(subsequently George II. of England). Anne intimated to George Louis,
the father of George Augustus, that, being a Knight of the Garter, he
might very appropriately invest his own son. George Louis, however,
hated that son, and would have nothing to do with conferring any
dignity upon him. He left it with the commissioners, Halifax and
Vanbrugh, to act as they pleased. They performed their vicarious office
as they best could, and that was only with “maimed rights.” George
Louis, with his ordinary spiteful meanness, ordered the ceremony
to be cut short of all display. He would not even permit his son to
be invested with the habit, under a canopy as was usual, and as had
been done in his own case; all that he would grant was an ordinary
arm-chair, whereon the electoral prince might sit in state, if he
chose, or was able to do so! These were the only foreigners upon whom
Anne conferred the Garter; an order which she granted willingly to very
few persons indeed.
“It is remarkable,” says Nicolas, “that the order was not conferred
by Queen Anne upon the Emperor, nor upon any of the other sovereigns
with whom she was for many years confederated against France. Nor did
her Majesty bestow it upon King Charles III. of Spain, who arrived
in England in September, 1703, nor upon Prince Eugene (though, when
she presented him with a sword worth five thousand pounds sterling on
taking his leave in March, 1712 there were seven vacant ribands), nor
any other of the great commanders of the allied armies who, under the
Duke of Marlborough, gained those splendid victories that rendered her
reign one of the most glorious in the annals of this country.”
George I. had more regard for his grandson than for his son; and he
made Frederick (subsequently father of George III.) a Companion of
the Order, when he was not more than nine years of age. He raised to
the same honor his own brother, Prince Ernest Augustus, and invested
both knights at a Chapter held in Hanover in 1711. With this family
exception, the Order of the Garter was not conferred upon any foreign
prince in the reign of George I.
George II. gave the Garter to that deformed Prince of Orange who
married his excitable daughter Anne. The same honor was conferred
on Prince Frederick of Hesse Cassel, who espoused George’s amiable
daughter Mary; Prince Frederick of Saxe Gotha, the Duke of Saxe
Weisenfels, the Margrave of Anspach, the fatherless son of the Prince
of Orange last named, and, worthiest of all, that Prince Ferdinand of
Brunswick who won the honor by gaining the battle of Minden. He was
invested with cap, habit, and decorations, in front of his tent and in
the face of his whole army. His gallant enemy, De Broglie, to do honor
to the new knight, proclaimed a suspension of arms for the day, drew
up his own troops where they could witness the spectacle of courage
and skill receiving their reward, and with his principal officers
dining with the Prince in the evening. “Each party,” says Miss Banks,
“returned at night to his army, in order to recommence the hostilities
they were engaged in, by order of their respective nations, against
each other, on the next rising of the sun.” I do not know what this
anecdote most proves--the cruel absurdity of war, or the true chivalry
of warriors.
The era of George III. was indeed that in which foreign princes,
sovereign and something less than that, abounded in the order. The
first who received the Garter was the brother of Queen Charlotte,
the reigning Duke of Mecklenburg Strelitz. Then came the Duke of
Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, who married Augusta, the sister of George
III. Caroline of Brunswick was the issue of this marriage. Of the
kings, _roitelets_, and petty princes of Germany who were added to
the Garter, or rather, had the Garter added to them, it is not worth
while speaking; but there is an incident connected with the foreign
knights which _does_ merit to be preserved. When Bonaparte founded
the Legion of Honor, he prevailed on the King of Prussia (willing to
take anything for his own, and reluctant to sacrifice anything for the
public good) to accept the cross of the Legion for himself, and several
others assigned to him for distribution. The king rendered himself
justly abhorred for this disgraceful act; but he found small German
princes quite as eager as he was to wear the badge of the then enemy
of Europe. A noble exception presented itself in the person of the
Duke of Brunswick, a Knight of the Garter, to whom the wretched king
sent the insignia of the French order in 1805. The duke, in a letter
to the king, refused to accept such honor, “because, in his quality of
Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter, he was prevented from
receiving any badge of chivalry instituted by a person at war with the
sovereign of that order.” The Prussian king found an easier conscience
in the Prince of Hesse Cassel, who was also a Knight of the Garter.
This individual, mean and double-faced as the king, wore the cross of
the Legion of Honor with the Garter. At _that_ troubled period, it was
exactly as if some nervous lairds, in the days of Highland feuds, had
worn, at the same time, the plaids of the Macdonalds and Campbells, in
order to save their skins and estates by thus pretending to be members
of two hostile parties.
Under the Regency of George IV., the foreign sovereign princes were
admitted into the order without any regard whatever to the regulations
by statute. Within one year, or very little more than that period, two
emperors, three kings, and an heir to a throne, who soon after came
to his inheritance, were enrolled Companions of the order. But it was
the era of victories and rejoicings, and no one thought of objecting
to a prodigality which would have astounded the royal founder. Long
after the period of victory, however, the same liberality continued
to be evinced toward foreign princes of sovereign degree. Thus at the
accession of Charles X., the England monarch despatched the Duke of
Northumberland as Embassador Extraordinary to attend at the coronation
of the French monarch, and to invest him, subsequently, with the Order
of the Garter. I remember seeing the English procession pass from
the duke’s residence in the Rue du Bac, over the Pont Royal to the
Tuileries. It puzzled the French people extremely. It took place on
Tuesday, June 7, 1825. At noon, “four of the royal carriages,” says
the Galignani of the period, “drawn by eight horses, in which were the
Baron de Lalivre and M. de Viviers, were sent to the Hotel Galifet
for the Duke of Northumberland.” The two envoys who thus contrived to
ride in four carriages and eight horses--a more wonderful feat than
was ever accomplished by Mr. Ducrow--having reached the ducal hotel,
were received by the duke, Lord Granville, our ordinary embassador,
and Sir George Naylor, his Britannic Majesty’s Commissioners charged
to invest the King of France with the insignia of the Garter. The
procession then set out; and, as I have said, it perplexed the French
spectators extremely. They could not imagine that so much ceremony was
necessary in order to put a garter round a leg, and hang a collar from
a royal neck. Besides the four French carriages-and-eight, there were
three of the duke’s carriages drawn by six horses; one carriage of
similar state, and two others more modestly drawn by pairs, belonging
to Lord Granville. The carriage of “Garter” himself, behind a couple
of ordinary steeds; and eight other carriages, containing the suites
of the embassadors, or privileged persons who passed for such in
order to share in the spectacle, closed the procession. The duke had
a very noble gathering around him, namely, the Hon. Algernon Percy,
his secretary, the Marquis of Caermarthen, the Earl of Hopetoun, Lords
Prudhoe (the present duke), Strathaven, Pelham, and Hervey, the Hon.
Charles Percy, and the goodhumored-looking Archdeacon Singleton. Such
was the _entourage_ of the embassador extraordinary. The ordinary
embassador, Lord Granville, was somewhat less nobly surrounded. He had
with him the Hon. Mr. Bligh, and Messrs. Mandeville, Gore, Abercrombie,
and Jones. Sir George Naylor, in his Tabard, was accompanied by a cloud
of heralds, some of whom have since become kings-of-arms--namely,
Messrs. Woods, Young, and Wollaston, and his secretary, Mr. Howard.
More noticeable men followed in the train. There were Earl Gower and
Lord Burghersh, the “Honorables” Mr. Townshend, Howard, and Clive,
Captain Buller, and two men more remarkable than all the rest--the
two embassadors included--namely, Sir John Malcolm and Sir Sidney
Smith. Between admiring spectators, who were profoundly amazed at the
sight of the duke in his robes, the procession arrived at the palace,
where, after a pause and a reorganizing in the Hall of Embassadors,
the party proceeded in great state into the Gallery of Diana. Here
a throne had been especially erected for the investiture, and the
show was undoubtedly most splendid. Charles X. looked in possession
of admirable health and spirits--of everything, indeed, but bright
intellect. He was magnificently surrounded. The duke wore with his
robes that famous diamond-hilted sword which had been presented to him
by George IV., and which cost, I forget how many thousand pounds. His
heron’s plume alone was said to be worth five hundred guineas. His
superb mantle of blue velvet, embroidered with gold, was supported by
his youthful nephew, George Murray (the present Duke of Athol), dressed
in a Hussar uniform, and the Hon. James Drummond, in a Highland suit.
Seven gentlemen had the responsible mission of carrying the insignia on
cushions, and Sir George preceded them, bearing a truncheon, as “Garter
Principal King-at-arms.” The duke recited an appropriate address,
giving a concise history of the order, and congratulating himself on
having been employed on the present honorable mission. The investiture
took place with the usual ceremonies; but I remember that there was
no salute of artillery, as was enjoined in the book of instructions
drawn up by Garter. The latter official performed his office most
gracefully, and attached to the person of the King of France, that day,
pearls worth a million of francs. The royal knight made a very pleasant
speech when all was concluded, and the usual hospitality followed the
magnificent labors of an hour and a half’s continuance.
On the following evening, the Duke gave a splendid _fête_ at his hotel,
in honor of the coronation of Charles X., and of his admission into the
Order of the Garter. The King and Queen of Wurtemburg were present,
with some fifteen hundred persons of less rank, but many of whom were
of greater importance in society. Perhaps not the least remarkable
feature of the evening was the presence together, in one group, of the
Dauphin and that Duchess of Angoulême who was popularly known as the
“orphan girl of the Temple,” with the Duchess of Berri, the Duke of
Orleans (Louis Philippe), and Talleyrand. The last-named still wore
the long bolster-cravat, of the time of the Revolution, and looked as
cunning as though he knew the destiny that awaited the entire group,
three of whom have since died in exile--he alone breathing his last
sigh, in calm tranquillity, in his own land.
Charles X. conferred on the ducal bearer of the insignia of the Garter
a splendid gift--one of the finest and most costly vases ever produced
at the royal manufacture of Porcelain at Sèvres. The painting on it,
representing the Tribunal of Diana, is the work of M. Leguai, and it
occupied that distinguished artist full three years before it was
completed. Considering its vast dimensions, the nature of the painting,
and its having passed twice through the fire without the slightest
alteration, it is unique of its kind. This colossal vase now stands in
the centre of the ball-room in Northumberland House.
The last monarch to whom a commission has carried the insignia of
the Garter, was the Czar Nicholas. It was characteristic of the man
that, courteous as he was to the commissioners, he would not, as
was customary in such cases, dine with them. They were entertained,
however, according to his orders, by other members of his family.
It is since the reign of George III. that Mr. Macaulay’s remark
touching the fact of the Garter being rarely conferred on aliens,
except sovereign princes, may be said to be well-founded. No alien,
under princely rank, now wears the Garter. The most illustrious of the
foreign knights are the two who were last created by patent, namely,
the Emperor Louis Napoleon and the King of Sardinia. The King of
Prussia is also a knight of the order, and, as such, he is bound by
his oath never to act against the sovereign of that order; but in our
struggle with felonious Russia, the Prussian government, affecting to
be neutral, imprisons an English consul on pretence that the latter has
sought to enlist natives of Prussia into the English service, while, on
the other hand, it passes over to Russia the material for making war,
and sanctions the raising of a Russian loan in Berlin, to be devoted,
as far as possible, to the injury of England. The King is but a poor
knight!--and, by the way, that reminds me that the once so-called poor
knights of Windsor can not be more appropriately introduced than here.
THE POOR KNIGHTS OF WINDSOR, AND THEIR DOINGS.
The founder of the Order of the Garter did well when he thought of the
“Milites pauperes,” and having created a fraternity for wealthy and
noble cavaliers, created one also for the same number of “poor knights,
infirm of body, indigent and decayed,” who should be maintained for
the honor of God and St. George, continually serve God in their
devotions, and have no further heavy duty, after the days of bustle and
battle, than to pray for the prosperity of all living knights of the
Garter, and for the repose of the souls of all those who were dead. It
was resolved that none but really poor knights should belong to the
fraternity, whether named, as was their privilege, by a companion of
the noble order, or by the sovereign, as came at last to be exclusively
the case. If a poor knight had the misfortune to become the possessor
of property of any sort realizing twenty pounds per annum, he became
at once disqualified for companionship. Even in very early times, his
position, with house, board, and various aids, spiritual and bodily,
was worth more than this.
To be an alms knight, as Ashmole calls each member, implied no
degradation whatever; quite the contrary. Each poor but worthy
gentleman was placed on a level with the residentiary canons of
Windsor. Like these, they received twelvepence each, every day that
they attended service in the chapel, or abode in the College, with a
honorarium of forty shillings annually for small necessaries. Their
daily presence at chapel was compulsory, except good and lawful reason
could be shown for the contrary. The old knights were not only required
to be at service, but at high mass, the masses of the Virgin Mary,
as also at Vespers and Complins--from the beginning to the end. They
earned their twelvepence honestly, but nevertheless the ecclesiastical
corporation charged with the payment, often did what such corporations,
of course, have never tried to do since the Reformation--namely, cheat
those who ought to have been recipients of their due. Dire were the
discussions between the poor (and pertinacious) knights, and the dean,
canons, and treasurers of the College. It required a mitred Archbishop
of York and Lord Chancellor of England to settle the dispute, and
a very high opinion does it afford us of the good practical sense
of Church and Chancery in the days of Henry VI., when we find that
the eminent individual with the double office not only came to a
happy conclusion rapidly, and ordered all arrears to be paid to the
poor knights, but decreed that the income of the treasurer should
be altogether stopped, until full satisfaction was rendered to the
“milites pauper.” For the sake of such Chancery practice one would
almost consent to take the Church with it.
But not only did the lesser officials of that Church cheat the veteran
knights of their pay, but their itching palm inflicted other wrong. It
was the fitting custom to divide the fines, levied upon absentees from
public worship, among the more habitually devout brethren. Gradually,
however, the dean and canons appropriated these moneys to themselves,
so that the less godly the knights were, the richer were the dean and
canons. Further, many dying noblemen had bequeathed very valuable
legacies to the College and poor fraternity of veterans. These the
business-like ecclesiastics had devoted to their own entire profit; and
it required stringent command from king and bishop, in the reign of
Richard II., before they would admit the military legatees even to a
share in the bequest.
Not, indeed, that the stout old veterans were always blameless. Good
living and few cares made “fast men” of some of them. There were
especially two in the reign last named, who created very considerable
scandal. These were a certain Sir Thomas Tawne and Sir John Breton.
They were married men, but the foolish old fellows performed homage to
vessels of iniquity, placed by them on the domestic altar. In other
words, they were by far too civil to a couple of hussies with red faces
and short kirtles, and _that_--not that such circumstance rendered
the matter worse--before the eyes of their faithful and legitimate
wives. The bishop was horror-stricken, no doubt, and the exemplary
ecclesiastics of the College were enjoined to remonstrate, reprove,
and, if amendment did not follow, to expel the offenders.
Sir Thomas, I presume, heeded the remonstrance and submitted to live
more decorously, for nothing more is said of him. Jolly Sir John was
more difficult to deal with. He too may have dismissed Cicely and
made his peace with poor Lady Breton, but the rollicking old knight
kept the College in an uproar, nevertheless. He resumed attendance at
chapel, indeed, but he did this after a fashion of his own. He would
walk slowly in the procession of red-mantled brethren on their way to
service, so as to obstruct those who were in the rear, or he would
walk in a ridiculous manner, so as to rouse unseemly laughter. I am
afraid that old Sir John was a very sad dog, and, however the other old
gentleman may have behaved, he was really a godless fellow. Witness
the fact that, on getting into chapel, when he retired to pray, he
forthwith fell asleep, and could, or would, hardly keep his eyes open,
even at the sacrament at the altar.
After all, there was a gayer old fellow than Sir John Breton among
the poor knights. One Sir Emanuel Cloue is spoken of who appears to
have been a very Don Giovanni among the silly maids and merry wives of
Windsor. He was for ever with his eye on a petticoat and his hand on a
tankard; and what with love and spiced canary, he could never sit still
at mass, but was addicted to running about among the congregation. It
would puzzle St. George himself to tell all the nonsense he talked on
these occasions.
When we read how the bishop suggested that the King and Council should
discover a remedy to check the rollicking career of Sir Edmund, we
are at first perplexed to make out why the cure was not assigned to
the religious officials. The fact, however, is that they were as
bad as, or worse than, the knights. They too were as often to be
detected with their lips on the brim of a goblet, or on the cheek
of a damsel. There was Canon Lorying. He was addicted to hawking,
hunting, and jollification; and the threat of dismissal, without
chance of reinstalment, was had recourse to, before the canon ceased
to make breaches in decorum. The vicars were as bad as the canons.
The qualifications ascribed to them of being “inflated and wanton,”
sufficiently describe by what sins these very reverend gentlemen
were beset. They showed no reverence for the frolicsome canons, as
might have been expected; and if both parties united in exhibiting
as little veneration for the dean, the reason, doubtless, lay in the
circumstance that the dean, as the bishop remarked, was remiss, simple,
and negligent, himself. He was worse than this. He not only allowed
the documents connected with the Order to go to decay, or be lost,
but he would not pay the vicars their salaries till he was compelled
to do so by high authority. The dean, in short, was a sorry knave; he
even embezzled the fees paid when a vicar occupied a new stall, and
which were intended to be appropriated to the general profit of the
chapter, and pocketed the entire proceeds for his own personal profit
and enjoyment. The canons again made short work of prayers and masses,
devoting only an hour each day for the whole. This arrangement may
not have displeased the more devout among the knights; and the canons
defied the bishop to point out anything in the statutes by which they
were prevented from effecting this abbreviation of their service, and
earning their shilling easily. Of this ecclesiastical irregularity
the bishop, curiously enough, solicited the state to pronounce its
condemnation; and an order from King and Council was deemed a good
remedy for priests of loose thoughts and practices. A matter of more
moment was submitted to the jurisdiction of meaner authority. Thus,
when one of the vicars, John Chichester, was “scandalized respecting
the wife of Thomas Swift” (which is a very pretty way of putting his
offence), the matter was left to the correction of the dean, who was
himself censurable, if not under censure--for remissness, negligence,
stupidity, and fraud. The dean’s frauds were carried on to that
extent that a legacy of £200 made to the brotherhood of poor knights,
having come to the decanal hands, and the dean not having accounted
for the same, compulsion was put on him to render such account; and
_that_ appears to be all the penalty he ever paid for his knavery.
Where the priests were of such kidney, we need not wonder that the
knights observed in the dirty and much-encumbered cloisters, the
licentiousness which was once common to men in the camp.
Churchmen and knights went on in their old courses, notwithstanding the
interference of inquisitors. Alterations were made in the statutes, to
meet the evil; some knights solicited incorporation among themselves,
separate from the Church authorities; but this and other remedies were
vainly applied.
In the reign of Henry VIII. the resident knights were not all military
men. Some of them were eminent persons, who, it is thought, withdrew
from the world and joined the brotherhood, out of devotion. Thus there
was Sir Robert Champlayne, who had been a right lusty knight, indeed,
and who proved himself so again, after he returned once more to active
life. Among the laymen, admitted to be poor knights, were Hulme,
formerly Clarencieux King-at-arms; Carly, the King’s physician: Mewtes,
the King’s secretary for the French language; and Westley, who was made
second baron of the Exchequer in 1509.
The order appears to have fallen into hopeless confusion, but Henry
VIII., who performed many good acts, notwithstanding his evil deeds
and propensities, bequeathed lands, the profits whereof (£600) were to
be employed in the maintenance of “Thirteen Poor Knights.” Each was
to have a shilling a day, and their governor, three pounds, six and
eightpence, additional yearly. Houses were built for these knights
on the south side of the lower ward of the castle, where they are
still situated, at a cost of nearly £3000. A white cloth-gown and a
red cloth-mantle, appropriately decorated, were also assigned to each
knight. King James doubled the pecuniary allowance, and made it payable
in the Exchequer, quarterly.
Charles I. intended to increase the number of knights to their
original complement. He did not proceed beyond the intention. Two of
his subjects, however, themselves knights, Sir Peter La Maire and Sir
Francis Crane, left lands which supplied funds for the support of five
additional knights.
Cromwell took especial care that no knight should reside at Windsor,
who was hostile to his government; and he was as careful that no
preacher should hold forth there, who was not more friendly to the
commonwealth than to monarchy.
At this period, and for a hundred years before this, there was not
a man of real knight’s degree belonging to the order, nor has there
since been down to the present time. In 1724 the benevolent Mr. Travers
bequeathed property to be applied to the maintenance of Seven Naval
Knights. It is scarcely credible, but it is the fact, that seventy
years elapsed before our law, which then hung a poor wretch for
robbing to the amount of forty shillings, let loose the funds to be
appropriated according to the will of the testator, and under sanction
of the sovereign. What counsellors and attorneys fattened upon the
costs, meantime, it is not now of importance to inquire. In 1796,
thirteen superannuated or disabled lieutenants of men-of-war, officers
of that rank being alone eligible under Mr. Travers’s will, were duly
provided for. The naval knights, all unmarried, have residences and
sixty pounds per annum each, in addition to their half-pay. The sum of
ten shillings, weekly, is deducted from the “several allowances, to
keep a constant table.”
The Military and Naval Knights--for the term “Poor” was dropped, by
order of William IV.--no longer wear the mantle, as in former times;
but costumes significant of their profession and their rank therein.
There are twenty-five of them, one less than their original number, and
they live in harmony with each other and the Church. The ecclesiastical
corporation has nothing to do with their funds, and these unmarried
naval knights do not disturb the slumbers of a single Mr. Brook within
the liberty of Windsor.
In concluding this division, let me add a word touching the
KNIGHTS OF THE BATH.
There was no more gallant cavalier in his day than Geoffrey, Earl of
Anjou. He was as meek as he was gallant. In testimony of his humility
he assumed a sprig of the broom plant (planta genista) for his device,
and thereby he gave the name of Plantagenet to the long and illustrious
line.
If his bravery raised him in the esteem of women, his softness
of spirit earned for him some ridicule. Matilda, the “imperially
perverse,” laughed outright when her sire proposed she should accept
the hand of Geoffrey of Anjou. “He is so like a girl,” said Matilda.
“There is not a more lion-hearted knight in all Christendom,” replied
the king. “There is none certainly so sheep-faced,” retorted the
arrogant heiress; she then reluctantly consented to descend to be mate
of the wearer of the broom.
Matilda threw as many obstacles as she could in the way of the
completion of the nuptial ceremony. At last this solemn matter was
definitively settled to come off at Rouen, on the 26th of August, 1127.
Geoffrey must have been a knight before his marriage with Matilda.
However this may be, he is said to have been created an English knight
in honor of the occasion. To show how he esteemed the double dignity
of knight and husband, he prepared himself for both, by first taking
a bath, and afterward putting on a clean linen shirt. Chroniclers
assure us that this is the first instance, since the Normans came into
England, in which bathing is mentioned in connection with knighthood.
Over his linen shirt Geoffrey wore a gold-embroidered garment, and
above all a purple mantle. We are told too that he wore silk stockings,
an article which is supposed to have been unknown in England until a
much later period. His feet were thrust into a gay pair of slippers, on
the outside of each of which was worked a golden lion. In this guise he
was wedded to Matilda, and never had household lord a greater virago
for a lady.
From this circumstance the Knights of the Bath are said to have had
their origin. For a considerable period, this order of chivalry
ranked as the highest military order in Europe. All the members were
companions. There was but one chief, and no knight ranked higher, nor
lower, than any other brother of the society. The order, nevertheless,
gradually became obsolete. Vacancies had not been filled up; that
Garter had superseded the Bath, and it was not till the reign of George
II. that the almost extinct fraternity was renewed.
Its revival took place for political reasons, and these are well
detailed by Horace Walpole, in his “Reminiscences of the Courts of
George the First and Second.” “It was the measure,” he says, “of Sir
Robert Walpole, and was an artful bunch of thirty-six ribands, to
supply a fund of favors, in lieu of places. He meant, too, to stave
off the demand for garters, and intended that the red should have been
a stage to the blue; and accordingly took one of the former himself.
He offered the new order to old Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for
her grandson the Duke, and for the Duke of Bedford, who had married
one of her granddaughters. She haughtily replied, that they should
take nothing but the Garter. ‘Madam,’ said Sir Robert, coolly, ‘they
who take the Bath will the sooner have the Garter.’ The next year he
took the latter himself, with the Duke of Richmond, both having been
previously installed knights of the revived institution.”
Sir Robert respected the forms and laws of the old institution, and
these continued to be observed down to the period following the battle
of Waterloo. Instead of their creating a new order for the purpose of
rewarding the claimants for distinction, it was resolved to enlarge
that of the Bath, which was, therefore, divided into three classes.
First, there was the Grand Cross of the Bath (G. C. B.), the reward of
military and diplomatic services.
The second class, of Knights Commanders (C. B.), was open to those
meritorious persons who had the good luck to hold commissions not below
the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel or Post-Captain. The members of this
class rank above the ordinary knights-bachelors.
The third class, of Knights Companions, was instituted for officers
holding inferior commissions to those named above, and whose services
in their country’s cause rendered them eligible for admission.
These arrangements have been somewhat modified subsequently, and not
without reason. Henry VIIth’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey is the
locality in which the installation of the different knights takes
place. The statutes of the order authorize the degradation of a knight
“convicted of heresy against the Articles of the Christian religion;”
or who has been “attainted of high treason,” or of “cowardly flying
from some field of battle.” It is rather curious that felony is not
made a ground of degradation. The Duke of Ormond was the last Knight
of the Garter who was degraded, for treason against George I. Addison,
after the degradation, invariably speaks of him as “the late Duke.” A
more grievous offender than he was that Earl of Somerset, who had been
a reckless page, and who was an unworthy Knight of the Garter, under
James I. He was convicted of murder, but he was not executed, and to
the day of his death he continued to wear the Garter, of which he had
been pronounced unworthy. The last instances of degradation from the
Order of the Bath were those of Lord Cochrane (in 1814), for an alleged
misdemeanor, and Sir Eyre Coote, two years subsequently. In these cases
the popular judgment did not sanction the harsh measures adopted by
those in authority.[1]
[1] Subsequently, the Prince Regent ordered the name of Captain
Hanchett to be erased from the roll of the Bath, he having been struck
off the list of Captains in the Royal Navy.
In olden times, the new Knights of the Bath made as gallant display
in public as the Knights of the Garter. In reference to this matter,
Mr. Mackenzie Walcott, in his “Westminster,” cites a passage from an
author whom he does not name. The reverend gentleman says: “On Sunday,
July 24th, 1603, was performed the solemnity of Knights of the Bath
riding honorably from St. James’s to the Court, and made show with
their squires and pages about the Tilt-yard, and after went into the
park of St. James, and there lighted from their horses and went up into
the King’s Majesty’s presence, in the gallery, where they received the
order of Knighthood of the Bath.”
The present “Horse-Guards” occupies a portion of the old Tilt-yard; but
for the knightly doings there, and also in Smithfield, I must refer all
curious readers to Mr. Charles Knight’s “Pictorial History of London.”
THE ORDER OF THE THISTLE, if Scottish antiquaries may be credited, is
almost as ancient as the times in which the first thistle was nibbled
at by the primitive wild-ass. Very little, however, is known upon the
subject, and that little is not worth repeating. The earliest certain
knowledge dates from Robert II., whose coins bore the impress of St.
Andrew and his cross. James III. is the first monarch who is known to
have worn the thistle, as his badge. There is no evidence of these
emblems being connected with knighthood until the reign of James V. The
Reformers, subsequently, suppressed the chivalric order, as popish, and
it was not till the reign of James II. of England that the thistle and
chivalry again bloomed together. The order is accessible only to peers.
A commoner may have conferred more honor and service on his country
than all the Scottish peers put together, but no amount of merit could
procure him admission into the Order of the Thistle. Nevertheless three
commoners _did_ once belong to it; but their peculiar merit was that
they were heirs presumptive to dukedoms.
Ireland was left without an order until the year 1783, when George III.
good-naturedly established that of St. Patrick, to the great delight
of many who desired to be knights, and to the infinite disgust of all
who were disappointed. Except in name and local circumstances there is
nothing that distinguishes it from other orders.
I must not conclude this section without remarking, that shortly after
the sovereignty of Malta and the Ionian Isles was ceded to Great
Britain, the Order of St. Michael was instituted in 1818, for the
Purpose of having what Walpole calls “a fund of ribands,” to reward
those native gentlemen who had deserved or desired favors, if not
places.
The Order of the Guelphs was founded by the Prince Regent in 1815.
George III. had designed such an order for the most distinguished of
his Hanoverian subjects. Down to the period of the accession of Queen
Victoria, however, the order was conferred on a greater number of
Englishmen than of natives of Hanover. Since the latter Kingdom has
passed under the rule of the male heir of the line of Brunswick, the
order of Guelph has become a foreign order. Licenses to accept this
or any other foreign order does not authorize the assumption of any
style, appellation, rank, precedence, or privilege appertaining unto
a knight-bachelor of these realms. Such is the law as laid down by
a decision of Lord Ellenborough, and which does not agree with the
judgment of Coke.
The history of foreign orders would occupy too much of my space; but
there is something so amusing in the history of an order of knights
called “Knights of the Holy Ampoule,” that a few words on the subject
may not be unacceptable to such readers as are unacquainted with the
ephemeral cavaliers in question.
THE KNIGHTS OF THE “SAINTE AMPOULE.”
“Mais ce sont des chevaliers pour rire.”--_Le Sage._
There have been knights who, like “special constables,” have been
created merely “for the nonce;” and who have been as ephemeral as the
shortlived flies so called. This was especially the case with the
Knights of the Holy “Ampoule,” or anointing oil, used at the coronation
of the kings of France.
This oil was said to have been brought to St. Remy (Remigius) by a
dove, from Heaven, and to have been placed by the great converter
of Clovis, in his own tomb, where it was found, by a miraculous
process. St. Remy himself never alluded either to the oil or the story
connected with it. Four centuries after the saint’s death the matter
was first spoken--nay, the oil was boldly distilled, by Hinckmar,
Archbishop of Rheims. This archi-episcopal biographer of St. Remy has
inserted wonders in the saint’s life, which staggered, while they
amused, the readers who were able to peruse his work by fireside, in
castle-hall, or convert refectory. I can only allude to one of these
wonders--namely, the “Sainte Ampoule.” Hinckmar actually asserted that
when St. Remy was about to consecrate with oil, the humble King Clovis,
at his coronation, a dove descended from Heaven, and placed in his
hands a small vial of holy oil. Hinckmar defied any man to prove the
contrary. As he further declared that the vial of oil was still to be
found in the saint’s sepulchre, and as it was so found, accordingly,
Hinckmar was allowed to have proved his case. Thenceforward, the
chevaliers of the St. Ampoule were created, for a day--that of the
crowning of the sovereign. They had charge of the vial, delivered it to
the archbishop, and saw it restored to its repository; and therewith,
the coronation and their knightly character concluded together. From
that time, down to the period of Louis XVI., the knights and the vial
formed the most distinguished portion of the coronation procession and
doings at the crowning of the kings of France.
Then ensued the Revolution; and as that mighty engine never touched
anything without smashing it, you may be sure that the vial of St. Remy
hardly escaped destruction.
On the 6th of October, 1793, Citizen Rhull entered the modest apartment
of Philippe Hourelle, _chief marguillier_ of the Cathedral of Rheims,
and without ceremony demanded that surrender should be made to him of
the old glass-bottle of the _ci-devant_ Remy. Philippe’s wig raised
itself with horror; but as Citizen Rhull told him that it would be as
easy to lift his head from his shoulders as his wig from his head, if
he did not obey, the _marguillier_ stammered out an assertion that the
reliquary was in the keeping of the curé, M. Seraine, to whom he would
make instant application.
“Bring pomatum and all,” said Citizen Rhull, who thus profanely
misnamed the sacred balm or thickened oil, which had anointed the head
and loins of so many kings from Charles the Bald, downward.
“May I ask,” said Philippe, timidly, “what you will do therewith?”
“Grease _your_ neck, that the knife may slip the easier through it,
unless you bring it within a decade of minutes.”
“Too much honor by half,” exclaimed Philippe. “I will slip to the curé
as rapidly as if I slid the whole way on the precious ointment itself.
Meanwhile, here is a bottle of Burgundy--”
“Which I shall have finished within the time specified. So, despatch;
and let us have t’other bottle, too!”
When Philippe Hourelle had communicated the request to the curé,
Monsieur Seraine, with a quickness of thought that did justice to his
imagination, exclaimed, “We will take the rogues in, and give them
a false article for the real one.” But the time was so short; there
was no second ancient-looking vial at hand; there was not a pinch of
pomatum, nor a spoonful of oil in the house, and the curé confessed,
with a sigh, that the genuine relic must needs be surrendered. “But
we can save some of it!” cried M. Seraine; “here is the vial, give me
the consecrating spoon.” And with the handle of the spoon, having
extracted some small portions, which the curé subsequently wrapped up
carefully, and rather illegibly labelled, the vial was delivered to
Philippe, who surrendered it to Citizen Rhull, who carried the same
to the front of the finest cathedral in France, and at the foot of
the statue of Louis XV. Citizen Rhull solemnly hammered the vial into
powder, and, in the name of the Republic, trod the precious ointment
underfoot till it was not to be distinguished from the mud with which
it was mingled.
“And so do we put an end to princes and pomatum,” cried he.
Philippe coughed evasively; smiled as if he was of the same way of
thinking with the republican, and exclaimed, very mentally indeed,
“Vivent les princes et la pommade.” Neither, he felt assured, was
irrevocably destroyed.
The time, indeed, did come round again for princes, and Napoleon was
to be crowned at Notre Dame. He cared little as to what had become of
the Heaven-descended ointment, and he might have anointed, as well as
crowned, himself. There were some dozen gentlemen who hoped that excuse
might be discovered for creating the usual order of the Knights of the
Ampoule; but the Emperor did not care a fig for knights or ointment,
and, to the horror of all who hoped to be chevaliers, the imperial
coronation was celebrated without either. But then Napoleon was
discrowned, as was to be expected from such profanity; and therewith
returned the Bourbons, who, having forgotten nothing, bethought
themselves of the Saint Ampoule. Monsieur de Chevrières, magistrate at
Rheims, set about the double work of discovery and recovery. For some
time he was unsuccessful. At length, early in 1819, the three sons
of the late Philippe Hourelle waited on him. They made oath that not
only were they aware of a portion of the sacred ointment having been
in the keeping of their late father, but that his widow succeeded the
inheritance, and that she reckoned it as among her choicest treasures.
“She has nothing to do but to make it over to me,” said Monsieur
Chevrières; “she will be accounted of in history as the mother of the
knights of the Ampoule of the Restoration.”
“It is vexatious,” said the eldest son, “but the treasure has been
lost. At the time of the invasion, our house was plundered, and the
relic was the first thing the enemy laid his hands on.”
The disappointment that ensued was only temporary. A judge named
Lecomte soon appeared, who made oath that he had in his keeping a
certain portion of what had at first been consigned to the widow
Hourelle. The portion was so small that it required an eye of faith,
very acute and ready indeed, to discern it. The authorities looked
upon the relic, and thought if Louis XVIII. could not be crowned till
a sufficient quantity of the holy ointment was recovered wherewith to
anoint him, the coronation was not likely to be celebrated yet awhile.
Then arose a crowd of priests, monks, and ex-monks, all of whom
declared that the curé, M. Seraine, had imparted to them the secret of
his having preserved a portion of the dried anointing oil, but they
were unable to say where he had deposited it. Some months of hesitation
ensued, when, in summer, M. Bouré, a priest of Berry-au-Bac, came
forward and proclaimed that he was the depositary of the long-lost
relic, and that he had preserved it in a portion of the winding-sheet
of St. Remy himself. A week later M. Champagne Provotian appeared, and
made deposition to the following effect: He was standing near Rhull
when the latter, in October, 1793, destroyed the vial which had been
brought from Heaven by a dove, at the foot of the statue of Louis XV.
When the republican struck the vial, some fragments of the glass flew
on to the coat-sleeve of the said M. Champagne. These he dexterously
preserved, took home with him, and now produced in court.
A commission examined the various relics, and the fragments of glass.
The whole was pronounced genuine, and the chairman thought that by
process of putting “that and that together,” there was enough of
legend, vial, and ointment to legitimately anoint and satisfy any
Christian king.
“There is nothing now to obstruct your majesty’s coronation,” said
his varlet to him one morning, after having spent three hours in a
service for which he hoped to be appointed one of the knights of the
Sainte Ampoule; “there is now absolutely nothing to prevent that august
ceremony.”
“Allons donc!” said Louis XVIII. with that laugh of incredulity, that
shrug of the shoulders, and that good-humored impatience at legends and
absurdities, which made the priests speak of him as an infidel.
“What shall be done with the ointment?” said the knight-expectant.
“Lock it up in the vestry cupboard, and say no more about it.” And
this was done with some ceremony and a feeling of disappointment. The
gathered relics, placed in a silver reliquary lined with white silk,
and enclosed in a metal case under three locks, were deposited within
the tomb of St. Remy. There it remained till Charles X. was solemnly
crowned in 1825. In that year, positively for the last time, the
knights of the Sainte Ampoule were solemnly created, and did their
office. As soon as Charles entered the choir, he knelt in the front
of the altar. On rising, he was led into the centre of the sanctuary,
where a throned chair received his august person. A splendid group
half-encircled him; and then approached the knights of the Sainte
Ampoule in grand procession, bearing all that was left of what the
sacred dove did or did not bring to St. Remy, for the anointing of
Clovis. Not less than three prelates, an archbishop and two bishops,
received the ointment from the hands of the knights, and carried it to
the high altar. Their excellencies and eminences may be said to have
performed their office with unction, but the people laughed alike at
the knights, the pomatum, and the ceremony, all of which combined could
not endow Charles X. with sense enough to keep his place. The knights
of the Sainte Ampoule may be said now to have lost their occupation for
ever.
Of all the memorabilia of Rheims, the good people there dwelt upon none
more strongly than the old and splendid procession of these knights of
the Sainte Ampoule. The coronation cortège seemed only a subordinate
point of the proceedings; and the magnificent canopy, upheld by the
knights over the vial, on its way from the abbey of St. Remy to the
cathedral, excited as much attention as the king’s crown.
The proceedings, however, were not always of a peaceable character.
The Grand Prior of St. Remy was always the bearer of the vial, in its
case or shrine. It hung from his neck by a golden chain, and he himself
was mounted on a white horse. On placing the vial in the hands of
the archbishop, the latter pledged himself by solemn oath to restore
it at the conclusion of the ceremony; and some half-dozen barons were
given as hostages by way of security. The procession back to the abbey,
through the gayly tapestried streets, was of equal splendor with that
to the cathedral.
The horse on which the Grand Prior was mounted was furnished by the
government, but the Prior claimed it as the property of the abbey
as soon as he returned thither. This claim was disputed by the
inhabitants of Chêne la Populeux, or as it is vulgarly called, “Chêne
la Pouilleux.” They founded their claim upon a privilege granted to
their ancestors. It appeared that in the olden time, the English had
taken Rheims, plundered the city, and rifled the tomb of St. Remy, from
which they carried off the Sainte Ampoule. The inhabitants of Chêne,
however, had fallen upon the invaders and recovered the inestimable
treasure. From that time, and in memory and acknowledgment of the deed,
they had enjoyed, as they said, the right to walk in the procession
with the knights of the Sainte Ampoule, and had been permitted to claim
the horse ridden by the Grand Prior. The Prior and his people called
these claimants scurvy knaves, and would by no means attach any credit
to the story. At the coronation of Louis XIII. they did not scruple to
support their claim by violence. They pulled the Prior from his horse,
terribly thrashed the monks who came to his assistance, tore the canopy
to pieces, thwacked the knights right lustily, and carried off the
steed in triumph. The respective parties immediately went to law, and
spent the value of a dozen steeds, in disputes about the possession
of a single horse. The contest was decided in favor of the religious
community; and the turbulent people of Chêne were compelled to lead
the quadruped back to the abbey stables. They renewed their old claim
subsequently, and again threatened violence, much to the delight of
the attorneys, who thought to make money by the dissension. At the
coronations of Louis XV. and Louis XVI. these sovereigns issued special
decrees, whereby the people of Chêne were prohibited from pretending to
any property in the horse, and from supporting any such pretensions by
acts of violence.
The history of foreign orders would require a volume as large as
Anstis’s; but though I can not include such a history among my
gossiping details, I may mention a few curious incidents connected with
THE ORDER OF THE HOLY GHOST.
There is a singular circumstance connected with this order. It was
founded by the last of the Valois, and went out with the last of the
Bourbons. Louis Philippe had a particular aversion for the orders
which were most cherished by the dynasty he so cleverly supplanted.
The Citizen King may be said to have put down both “St. Louis” and the
“Holy Ghost” cavaliers. He did not abolish the orders by decree; but
it was clearly understood that no one wearing the insignia would be
welcome at the Tuileries.
The Order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henri, out of gratitude
for two events, for which no other individual had cause to be grateful.
He was (when Duke of Anjou) elected King of Poland, on the day of
Pentecost, 1573, and on the same day in the following year he succeeded
to the crown of France. Hence the Order with its hundred members, and
the king as grand master.
St. Foix, in his voluminous history of the order, furnishes the
villanous royal founder with a tolerably good character. This is more
than any other historian has done; and it is not very satisfactorily
executed by this historian himself. He rests upon the principle that
the character of a king, or his disposition rather, may be judged
by his favorites. He then points to La Marck, Mangiron, Joyeuse,
D’Epernon, and others. Their reputations are not of the best, rather
of the very worst; but then St. Foix says that they were all admirable
swordsmen, and carried scars about them, in front, in proof of their
valor: he evidently thinks that the _bellica virtus_ is the same thing
as the other virtues.
On the original roll of knights there are names now more worthy of
being remembered. Louis de Gonzague, Duke de Nevers, was one of these.
On one occasion, he unhorsed the Huguenot Captain de Beaumont, who, as
he lay on the ground, fired a pistol and broke the ducal kneepan. The
Duke’s squire bent forward with his knife to despatch the Captain; the
Duke, however, told the latter to rise. “I wish,” said he, “that you
may have a tale to tell that is worth narrating. When you recount, at
your fireside, how you wounded the Duke de Nevers, be kind enough to
add that he gave you your life.” The Duke was a noble fellow. Would
that his generosity could have restored his kneepan! but he limped to
the end of his days.
But there was a nobler than he, in the person of the Baron d’Assier,
subsequently Count de Crussol and Duke d’Uzes. He was a Huguenot, and
I confess that I can not account for the fact of his being, at any
time of his life, a Knight of the Order of the Holy Ghost. Henri III.
was not likely to have conferred the insignia even on a pervert. His
name, however, is on the roll. He was brave, merciful, pious, and
scrupulously honest. When he captured Bergerai, he spared all who
had no arms in their hands, and finding the women locked up in the
churches, he induced them to return home, on promise of being protected
from all molestation. These poor creatures must have been marvellously
fair; and the baron’s eulogy on them reminds me of the expression of
the soldiers when they led Judith through the camp of Holofernes: “Who
could despise this people that have among them such women.”
The baron was not a little proud of his feat, and he thought that if
all the world talked of the continence of Scipio, he had a right to
claim some praise as the protector of female virtue. Accordingly, in
forwarding an account of the whole affair to the Duc de Montpensier,
he forwarded also a few samples of the ladies. “I have _only_ chosen
twenty of the handsomest of them,” he writes, “whom I have sent
you that you may judge if they were not very likely to tempt us to
reprisals; they will inform you that they have suffered not the least
dishonor.” By sending them to Montpensier’s quarters the ladies were
in great danger of incurring that from which the Baron had saved
them. But he winds up with a small lecture. He writes to the Duke:
“You are a devotee [!]; you have a ghostly father; your table is
always filled with monks; your hear two or three masses every day;
and you go frequently to confession. _I_ confess myself only to God.
I hear no masses. I have none but soldiers at my table. Honor is the
sole director of my conscience. It will never advise me to order
violence against woman, to put to death a defenceless enemy, or to
break a promise once given.” In this lecture, there was, in fact, a
double-handed blow. Two birds were killed with one stone. The Baron
censured, by implication, both the Duke and his religion. I was
reminded of him by reading a review in the “Guardian,” where the same
skilful method is applied to criticism. The reviewer’s subject was
Canon Wordsworth’s volume on Chevalier Bunsen’s “Hippolytus.” “The
canon’s book,” said the reviewer (I am quoting from memory), “reminds
us--and it must be a humiliation and degradation to an intelligent,
educated, and thoughtful man--of one of Dr. Cumming’s Exeter Hall
lectures.” Here the ultra high church critic stunned, with one blow,
the merely high-church priest and the no-church presbyterian.
There was generosity, at least, in another knight of this order,
Francis Goaffier, Lord of Crèvecœur. Catherine of Medicis announced to
him the appointment of his son to the command of a regiment of foot.
“Madame,” said the Knight of the Holy Ghost, “my son was beset, a night
or two ago, by five assassins; a Captain La Vergne drew in his defence,
and slew two of the assailants. The rest fled, disabled. If your
majesty will confer the regiment on one who deserves it, you will give
it to La Vergne.”--“Be it so,” said Catherine, “and your son shall not
be the less well provided for.”
One, at least, of the original knights of this order was famous for
his misfortunes; this was Charles de Hallewin, Lord of Piennes. He
had been in six-and-twenty sieges and battles, and never came out of
one unscathed. His domestic wounds were greater still. He had five
sons, and one daughter who was married. The whole of them, with his
son-in-law, were assassinated, or died accidentally, by violent deaths.
The old chevalier went down to his tomb heart-broken and heirless.
Le Roi, Lord of Chavigny, and who must not be mistaken for an ancestor
of that Le Roi who died at the Alma under the title of Marshal St.
Arnaud, is a good illustration of the blunt, honest knight. Charles IX.
once remarked to him that his mother, Catherine de Medicis, boasted
that there was not a man in France, with ten thousand livres a year,
at whose hearth she had not a spy in her pay. “I do not know,” said Le
Roi, “whether tyrants make spies, or spies tyrants. For my own part, I
see no use in them, except in war.”
For honesty of a still higher sort, commend me to Scipio de Fierques,
Lord of Lavagne. Catherine de Medicis offered to make this, her distant
relative, a marshal of France. “Good Heavens, Madame!” he exclaimed,
“the world would laugh at both of us. I am simply a brave gentleman,
and deserve _that_ reputation; but I should perhaps lose it, were you
to make a marshal of me.” The dignity is taken with less reluctance
in our days. It was this honest knight who was asked to procure the
appointment of queen’s chaplain for a person who, by way of bribe,
presented the gallant Scipio with two documents which would enable
him to win a lawsuit he was then carrying on against an obstinate
adversary. Scipio perused the documents, saw that they proved his
antagonist to be in the right, and immediately withdrew his opposition.
He left the candidate for the queen’s chaplaincy to accomplish the
object he had in view, in the best way he might.
There was wit, too, as might be expected, among these knights. John
Blosset, Baron de Torci, affords us an illustration. He had been
accused of holding correspondence with the enemy in Spain, and report
said that he was unworthy of the Order of the Holy Ghost. He proved
his innocence before a chapter of the order. At the end of the
investigation, he wittily applied two passages from the prayer-book of
the knights, by turning to the king, and saying, “Domine ne projicias
me a facie tuâ, et _spiritum sanctum tuum_ ne auferas a me.” “Lord,
cast me out from thy presence, and take not thy ‘Holy Spirit’ from me.”
And the king bade him keep it, while he laughed at the rather profane
wit of John Blosset.
There was wit, too, of a more practical nature, among these knights of
the Holy Spirit. The royal founder used occasionally to retire with
the knights to Vincennes. There they shut themselves up, as they said,
to fast and repent; but, as the world said, to indulge in pleasures
of a very monster-like quality. The royal dukes of a later period in
France used to atone for inordinate vice by making their mistresses
fast; the royal duchesses settled their little balance with Heaven,
by making their servants fast. It appears that there was nothing of
this vicarious penance in the case of Henri III. and his knights. Not
that all the knights willingly submitted to penance which mortified
their appetites. Charles de la Marck, Count of Braine. was one of those
impatient penitents. On a day on which rigid abstinence had been
enjoined, the king was passing by the count’s apartment, when he was
struck by a savory smell. King as he was, he immediately applied his
eye to the keyhole of the count’s door, and beheld the knight blowing
lustily at a little fire under a chafing-dish, in which there were two
superb soles frying in savory sauce. “Brother knight, brother knight,”
exclaimed Henri, “I see all and smell much. Art thou not ashamed thus
to transgress the holy rule?”--“I should be much more so,” said the
count, opening the door, “if I made an enemy of my stomach. I can bear
this sort of abstinence no longer. Here am I, knight and gentleman,
doubly famished in that double character, and I have been, in my own
proper person, to buy these soles, and purchase what was necessary for
the most delicious of sauces: I am cooking them myself, and they are
now done to a turn. Cooked _aux gratins_, your majesty yourself can
not surely resist tasting. Allow me”--and he pushed forward a chair,
in which Henri seated himself, and to the “soles _aux gratins_,” such
as Vefour and Very never dished up, the monarch sat down, and with the
hungry count, discussed the merits of fasting, while they enjoyed the
fish. It was but meagre fare after all; and probably the repast did not
conclude there.
Charity is illustrated in the valiant William Pot (a very ancient name
of a very ancient family, of which the late archdeacon of Middlesex and
vicar of Kensington was probably a descendant). He applied a legacy of
sixty thousand livres to the support of wounded soldiers. Henri III.,
who was always intending to accomplish some good deed, resolved to
erect an asylum for infirm military men; but, of course, he forgot it.
Henri IV., who has received a great deal more praise than he deserves,
also expressed his intention to do something for his old soldiers;
but he was too much taken up with the fair Gabrielle, and she was not
like Nell Gwynne, who turned her intimacy with a king to the profit
of the men who poured out their blood for him. The old soldiers were
again neglected; and it was not till the reign of Louis XIV. that Pot’s
example was again recalled to mind, and profitable action adopted in
consequence. When I think of the gallant Pot’s legacy, what he did
therewith, and how French soldiers benefited thereby, I am inclined to
believe that the German troops, less well cared for, may thence have
derived their once favorite oath, and that _Potz tausend!_ may have
some reference to the sixty thousand livres which the compassionate
knight of Rhodes and the Holy Ghost devoted to the comfort and solace
of the brave men who had been illustriously maimed in war.
The kings of France were accustomed to create a batch of knights of
the Holy Ghost, on the day following that of the coronation, when
the monarchs became sovereign heads of the order. The entire body
subsequently repaired from the Cathedral to the Church of St. Remi,
in grand equestrian procession, known as the “cavalcade.” Nothing
could well exceed the splendor of this procession, when kings were
despotic in France, and funds easily provided. Cavalry and infantry in
state uniforms, saucy pages in a flutter of feathers and ribands, and
groups of gorgeous officials preceded the marshals of France, who were
followed by the knights of the Holy Ghost, after whom rode their royal
Grand Master, glittering like an Eastern king, and nodding, as he rode,
like a Mandarin.
The king and the knights performed their devotions before the shrine of
Saint Marcoul, which was brought expressly from the church of Corbeni,
six leagues distance from Rheims. This particular ceremony was in
honor of the celebrated old abbot of Nantua, who, in his lifetime,
had been eminently famous for his success in curing the scrofulous
disorder called “the king’s evil.” After this devotional service, the
sovereign master of the order of the Holy Ghost was deemed qualified
to cure the evil himself. Accordingly, decked with the mantle and
collar of the order, and half encircled by the knights, he repaired
to the Abbey Park to touch and cure those who were afflicted with the
disease in question. It was no little labor. When Louis XVI. performed
the ceremony, he touched two thousand four hundred persons. The form
of proceeding was singular enough. The king’s first physician placed
his hand on the head of the patient; upon which a captain of the
guard immediately seized and held the patient’s hands closely joined
together. The king then advanced, head uncovered, with his knights, and
touched the sufferers. He passed his right hand from the forehead to
the chin, and from one cheek to the other; thus making the sign of the
cross, and at the same time pronouncing the words, “May God cure thee;
the king touches thee!”
In connection with this subject, I may add here that Evelyn, in his
diary, records that Charles II. “began first to touch for the evil,
according to custom,” on the 6th of July, 1660, and after this fashion.
“His Majesty sitting under his state in the Banqueting House, the
chirurgeons caused the sick to be brought, and led up to the throne,
where they kneeling, the king strokes their faces or cheeks with both
his hands at once, at which instant a chaplain, in his formalities,
says, ‘He put his hands upon them, and He healed them.’ This is said to
every one in particular. When they have been all touched, they come up
again in the same order, and the other chaplain kneeling, and having
angel-gold strung on white riband on his arm, delivers them one by one
to his Majesty, who puts them about the necks of the touched as they
pass, while the first chaplain repeats, ‘That is the true light who
came into the world.’” The French ceremonial seems to me to have been
the less pretentious; for the words uttered by the royal head of the
order of the Holy Ghost, simply formed a prayer, and an assertion of a
fact: “May God heal thee; the king touches thee!” And yet who can doubt
the efficacy of the royal hand of Charles II., seeing that, at a single
touch, he not only cured a scrofulous Quaker, but converted him into a
good churchman?
The history of the last individual knight given in these imperfect
pages (Guy of Warwick), showed how history and romance wove themselves
together in biography. Coming down to a later period, we may find
another individual history, that may serve to illustrate the object
I have in view. The Chevalier de Bayard stands prominently forward.
But there was before _his_ time, a knight who was saluted by nearly
the same distinctive titles which were awarded to Bayard. I allude
to Jacques de Lelaing, known as “the knight without fear and without
doubt.” His history is less familiar to us, and will, therefore, the
better bear telling. Besides, Bayard was but a butcher. If he is not to
be so accounted, then tell us, gentle shade of Don Alonzo di Sotomayor,
why thy painful spirit perambulates the groves of Elysium, with a
scented handkerchief alternately applied to the hole in thy throat and
the gash in thy face? Is it not that, with cruel subtlety of fence
Bayard run his rapier into thy neck “four good finger-breadths,” and
when thou wast past resistance, did he not thrust his dagger into
thy nostrils, crying the while, “Yield thee, Signor Alonzo, or thou
diest!” The shade of the slashed Spaniard bows its head in mournful
acquiescence, and a faint sound seems to float to us upon the air, out
of which we distinguish an echo of “_The field of Monervyne_.”
JACQUES DE LELAING,
THE GOOD KNIGHT WITHOUT FEAR AND WITHOUT DOUBT.
“Faites silence; je vais parler de _lui_!”--_Boileau._
Between the city of Namur and the quaint old town of Dinant there is
as much matter of interest for the historian as of beauty for the
traveller and artist. War has been the most terrible scourge of the two
localities on the Meuse which I have just named. Namur has a present
reputation for cutlery, and an old one for “slashing blades” of another
description. Don John, the great victor at Lepanto, lies entombed in
the city, victim of the poison and the jealousy of his brother Philip.
There the great Louis proved himself a better soldier than Boileau did
a poet, when he attempted to put the royal soldier’s deeds into rhyme.
Who, too, can stand at St. Nicholas’s gate, without thinking of “my
uncle Toby,” and the Frenchmen, for whose dying he cared so little,
on the glacis of Namur? At present the place, it is true, has but a
dull and dreamy aspect. Indeed, it may be said of the inhabitants, as
of Molly Carew’s lovers, that “It’s dhrames and not sleep that comes
into their heads.” Such, at least, would seem to be the case, if I
may draw a conclusion from what I saw during the last summer, at the
bookseller’s stall at the Namur station, where I found more copies of
a work professing to interpret dreams than of any other production,
whether grave or _gaillard_.
Dinant, a curious old town, the high limestone-rocks behind which
seems to be pushing it from off its narrow standing-ground into the
Meuse, has even bloodier reminiscences than Namur; but of these I
will not now speak. Between the two cities, at the most picturesque
part of the stream, and on the loftiest cliff which rises above the
stream, is the vast ruin of the old _titanic_ castle of Poilvache, the
once rather noisy home of the turbulent household of those terrible
brothers, known in chivalrous history as the “Four Sons of Aymon.”
During one of the few fine evenings of the last summer, I was looking
up at this height, from the opposite bank, while around me stood in
groups a number of those brilliant-eyed, soft-voiced, ready-witted
Walloons, who are said to be the descendants of a Roman legion, whose
members colonized the country and married the ladies in it! A Walloon
priest, or one at least who spoke the dialect perfectly, but who had a
strong Flemish accent when addressing to me an observation in French,
remained during the period of my observation close at my side. “Are
these people,” said I to him, “a contented people?” He beckoned to a
cheerful-looking old man, and assuming that he was contented with the
dispensation that had appointed him to be a laborer, inquired of him
which part of his labor he loved best? After pausing for a minute,
the old peasant replied in very fair French, “I think the sweetest
task I have is when I mow that meadow up at Bloquemont yonder, for
the wild thyme in it embalms the very air.” “But your winter-time,”
said I, “must be a dark and dreary time.” “Neither dark nor dreary,”
was the remark of a tidy woman, his wife, who was, at the moment, on
her knees, sewing up the ragged rents in the gaberdine of a Walloon
beggar--“Neither dark nor dreary. In winter-time, at home, we don’t
want light to get the children about us to teach them their catechism.”
The priest smiled. “And as for spring-time,” said her husband, “you
should be here to enjoy it; for the fields are then all flower, and
the sky is one song.” “There is poetry in their expressions,” said
I to the priest. “There is better than that,” said he, “there is
love in their hearts;” and, turning to the woman who was mending the
raiment of the passive mendicant, he asked her if she were not afraid
of infection. “Why should I fear?” was her remark. “I am doing but
little; Christ did more; He washed the feet of beggars; and we must
risk something, if we would gain Paradise.” The particular beggar to
whom she was thus extending most practical charity was by no means a
picturesque bedesman; but, not to be behind-hand in Χάρις toward him, I
expressed compassion for his lot. “My lot is not so deplorable,” said
he, uncovering his head; “I have God for my hope, and the charity of
humane people for my succor.” As he said this, my eye turned from him
to a shepherd who had just joined our group, and who was waiting to be
ferried over to the little village of Houx. I knew him by name, and
knew something of the solitariness of his life, and I observed to him,
“Jacques, you, at least, have a dull life of it; and you even now look
weary with the long hours you have been spending alone.” “Alone!” he
exclaimed, in a joyful tone, “I am never alone, and never weary. How
should I be either, when my days are passed in the company of innocent
animals, and time is given me to think of God!” The priest smiled even
more approvingly than before; and I remarked to him, “We are here in
Arcadia.” “But not without human sin,” said he, and pointing to a woman
at a distance, who was in the employ of the farmer’s wife, he asked the
latter how she could still have anything to do with a well-known thief.
“Eh, father,” was the comment of a woman whom John Howard would have
kissed, “starving her in idleness would not cure her of pilfering; and
between working and being well-watched, she will soon leave her evil
habits.” “You are a good Christian,” I said to her, “be you of what
community you may.” “She is a good Catholic,” added the priest. “I am
what the good God has made me,” was the simple reply of the Walloon
wife; “and my religion is this to go on my knees when all the house is
asleep, and then pray for the whole world.” “Ay, ay,” was the chorus
of those around her, “that is true religion.” “It is a part of true
religion,” interposed the priest; but I could not help thinking that he
would have done as well had he left Marie Justine’s text without his
comment. We walked together down to the bank of the river opposite the
Chateau of the young Count de Levignon the proprietor and burgomaster
of Houx. I looked up from the modern chateau to the ruins of the vast
castle where the sons of Aymon once held barbaric state, maintained
continual war, and affected a reverence for the mother of Him who was
the Prince of Peace. The good priest seemed to guess my thoughts, for
he remarked, “We live now in better times; the church is less splendid,
and chivalry less ‘glorious,’ if not extinct; but there is a closer
brotherhood of all men--at least,” he added hesitatingly--“at least I
hope so.” “I can not remember,” said I, “a single virtue possessed by
either Aymon or his sons, except brute courage, and a rude sort of
generosity, not based on principle, but born of impulse. It is a pity
that Belgium can not boast of more perfect chevaliers than the old
proprietors of Poilvache, and that you have not a hero to match with
Bayard.” “Belgium,” was his answer, “can make such boast, and had a
hero who had finished his heroic career long before Bayard was born.
Have you never heard of ‘the Good Knight without fear and without
doubt’?” “I have heard of one without fear and without reproach.” “That
title,” he remarked, “was but a plagiarism from that conferred on
Jacques de Lelaing, by his contemporaries.” And then he sketched the
outline of the good knight’s career, and directed me to sources where
I might gather more detailed intelligence. I was interested in what I
learned, and it is because I hope also to interest readers at home,
that I venture to place before them, however imperfectly rendered, a
sketch of the career of a brave man before the time of Bayard; one who
illustrates the old saying that--
“Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.”
Jacques de Lelaing, the good knight, without fear and without doubt,
was born in the château of Lelaing, in the first quarter of the
fifteenth century. The precise year is not known, but it was full half
a century before the birth of Bayard. He came of a noble race; that
is, of a race, the male portion of which saw more honor in slaughter
than in science. His mother was celebrated for her beauty as well as
nobility. She was wise, courteous, and _débonnaire_; well-mannered, and
full of all good virtues. So, at least, in nearly similar terms, wrote
George Chastellan of her, just two centuries ago.
Jacques de Lelaing was as precocious a boy as the Duke of Wharton in
his youth. At the age of seven, a priestly tutor had perfected him in
French and Latin, and the good man had so imbued him with literary
tastes that, in after life, the good knight found time to cultivate the
acquaintance of Captain Pen, as well as of Captain Sword; and specimens
of his handiwork are yet said to exist in the libraries of Flanders and
Brabant.
Jacques, however, was never a mere student, “sicklied o’er with the
pale cast of thought.” He loved manly sports; and he was yet but a
blooming youth when the “demoiseau of Clèves,” nephew of that great
Duke whom men, for no earthly reason, called Philip _the Good_, carried
off his young friend from the castle of Lelaing, and made of him a
squire, not of dames, but of knights, in the turbulent court of the
ducal Philip, with the benevolent qualification to his name.
The youth entered upon his career with a paternal provision which
bespoke at once the liberality and the wisdom of his father, stout
William de Lelaing. The sire bestowed upon his son four splendid
horses, a well-skilled groom, and a “_gentleman of service_” which,
in common phrase, means a valet, or “gentleman’s gentleman.” But the
young soldier had more than this in his brain; namely, a well-lettered
cleric, commissioned to be for ever expounding and instructing, with
a special object, to boot, that Jacques should not forget his Latin!
Excellent sire thus to care for his son! If modern fathers only might
send into barracks with their sons, when the latter first join their
regiments, reverend clerks, whose office it should be to keep their
pupils well up in their catechism, the Eton grammar, and English
orthography, what a blessing it would be to the young gentlemen and to
all acquainted with them! As it is, we have officers worse instructed
and less intelligent than the sons of the artists who make their
uniforms.
When Jacques went forth into the world, his sire gave him as good
advice as Polonius threw away on his son Laertes. The sum of it was
according to the old French maxim, “Noblesse oblige”--“Inasmuch,” said
the old man, “as you are more noble than others by birth, so,” said he,
“should you be more noble than they by virtues.” The hearty old father
added an assurance, that “few great men gained renown for prowess and
virtue who did not entertain love for some dame or damoiselle.” This
last, however, was but an equivocal assurance, for by counselling
Jacques to fall in love with “some dame or damoiselle,” he simply
advised him to do so with any man’s wife or daughter. But it was
advice commonly given to young gentlemen in arms, and is, to this day,
commonly followed by them. Jacques bettered the paternal instruction,
by falling in love with two ladies at the same time. As ambitious
youths are wont to do, he passed by the white and pink young ladies
whom he met, and paid his addresses, with remarkable success, to two
married duchesses. Neither of these suspected that the smooth-chinned
young “squire” was swearing eternal fidelity to the other, or that this
light-mailed Macheath wooed his madiæval Polly with his pockets full of
“favors,” just bestowed on him by an unsuspecting Lucy. Thus has love
ever been made by officers and highwaymen.
But if Jacques loved two, there was not a lady at the Court of Burgundy
who did not love _him_. The most virtuous of them sighingly expressed
a wish that their husbands, _or their lovers_, were only like him. The
men hated him, while they affected to admire his grace, his bearing,
and his irresistible bravery. Jacques very complacently accepted the
love of the women and the envy of the men; and feeling that he had
something to be thankful for, he repaired to the shrine of the Virgin
at Hal, and thanked “Our Lady,” accordingly.
Now Philip the Good was good only just as Nicholas the Czar was “good.”
He had a fair face and a black heart. Philip, like Nicholas, joined
an outward display of conjugal decency with some private but very
crapulous indecency; and the Duke, like the Czar, was _the_ appalling
liar of his day. Philip had increased the ducal territory of Burgundy
by such means as secured Finland to Muscovy, by treachery of the most
fiendish quality; and in 1442, affecting to think that Luxembourg was
in the sick condition which Nicholas described as the condition of
Turkey--when the imperial felon thought he was making a confederate of
Sir Hamilton Seymour, the Duke resolved to seize on the territory in
question, and young Jacques de Lelaing was in an ecstacy of delight at
being permitted to join in this most rascally of expeditions.
Within a year, desolation was spread throughout a wide district. Fire
and sword did their devastating work, and the earth was swept of the
crops, dwellings, and human beings, which lay between the invaders
and Luxembourg. The city was ultimately taken by surprise, and the
good Philip delivered it up to pillage; then ensued a scene which
hell itself could not equal; and the Duke and his followers having
enacted horrors from which devils would have recoiled, they returned to
Brussels, where they were received with ten times more delight than if
they had come back from an expedition which had been undertaken for
the benefit of humanity.
What was called _peace_ now followed, and Jacques de Lelaing, having
fleshed his maiden sword, and gained the praise of brave men, and
the love of fair women, resolved to commence a series of provincial
excursions for his own especial benefit. As, in modern times,
professors without scholars, and actors without engagements, wander
from town to town, and give lectures at “the King’s Arms,” so Jacques
de Lelaing went forth upon his way, offering to fight all comers, in
presence of kings themselves.
His first appearance on this provincial tour was at Nancy, in 1445,
where a brilliant French Court was holding joyous festival while
awaiting the coming of Suffolk, who was commissioned to escort to
England a royal bride, in the person of Margaret of Anjou. The French
knights made light of the soldier of Burgundy; but Jacques, when
announcing that he was the holder of the tournament, added that no
French knight should unhorse him, unless God and his good lady decreed
otherwise.
The latter was not likely, and he felt himself secure, doubly so, for
he rode into the lists decorated with favors, gold embroidery, and
rich jewels, the gifts of the Duchesses of Orleans and Calabria, each
of whom fondly believed that she was the sole fair one by whose bright
eyes Jacques de Lelaing swore his prettiest oath. Accordingly, there
was not a cavalier who rode against him in that passage of arms, who
left the field otherwise than with broken or bruised bones. “What
manner of man will this be?” cried they, “if, even as a lad, he lays on
so lustily?”
The lad, at the subsequent banquet, to which he was borne in triumph,
again proved that he had the capacity of a man. He was fresh as a
rose just blown; gay as a lark in early spring. The queens of France
and Sicily conversed with him by the half hour, while ladies of lower
degree gazed at him till they sighed; and sighed, knowing full well
_why_, and caring very much, wherefore. Charles VII. too, treated him
with especial distinction, and conferred on him the rich prizes he had
won as victor in the rough tourney of the day. But there were other
guerdons awarded him that night, which he more highly prized. Jacques
visited the Duchess of Orleans in her bower, and carried away with him,
on leaving, the richest diamond she had to bestow. He then passed to
the pavilion of the Duchess of Calabria, a lady who, among other gifts
willingly made by her, placed upon his finger a brilliant ruby set in
a gorgeous gold ring. He went to his own bed that night as impudently
happy as a modern Lifeguardsman who is successfully fooling two ladies’
maids. His _cleric_ had left him, and Jacques had ceased to care for
the keeping-up of his Latin, except, perhaps, the conjugation of the
imperative mood of _amo_. “Amemus,” _let us love_, was the favorite
part of the mood, and the most frequently repeated by him and his brace
of duchesses.
Sometime after this very successful first appearance, and toward the
end of 1445, our doughty squire was traversing the cathedral of Notre
Dame of Antwerp, and was on the point of cursing the singers for their
bad voices, just as one might be almost justified in doing now, so
execrable are they; he was there and thus engaged, when a Sicilian
knight, named Bonifazio, came jingling his spurs along the transept,
and looking jauntingly and impertinently as he passed by. Jacques
looked boldly at this “pretty fellow” of the time, and remarked that
he wore a golden fetter ring on his left leg, held up by a chain of
the same metal fastened to a circlet above his knee. His shield bore
the device, “Who has fair lady, let him look to her well!” “It’s an
impertinent device,” said Jacques, touching the shield, by way of token
that he would fight the bearer for carrying it. “Thou art but a poor
squire, albeit a bold man,” said the Sicilian, with the air of one who
was half inclined to chastise the Hainaulter for his insolence. Toison
d’Or, the herald, whispered in the ear of the Hainaulter; thereupon,
Jacques exclaimed, “If my master, Duke Philip, will give me permission
to fight, thou darest not deny me, on his Grace’s territory.” Bonifazio
bowed by way of assent. The permission was gained, and the encounter
came off at Ghent. The first day’s combat was a species of preliminary
struggle on horseback, in which Jacques showed himself so worthy of
the spurs he did not yet wear, that Philip fastened them to his heels
the next day, and dubbed him Knight in solemn form. As the combatants
strode into the lists, on the second day, the Duke of Orleans remarked
to his Duchess, that Jacques was not so “gent as the Sicilian.” The
Duchess smiled, as Guinever smiled when she looked on Sir Launcelot,
while her husband, King Arthur, commented upon him; and she said, in
phrase known to all who read Spenser, “he loves a lady gent;” and she
added, with more of the smile and less of the blush, “he is a better
man than the Sicilian, and, to my thinking, he will this day prove it.”
“We shall see,” remarked the Duke carelessly.
“We shall see,” re-echoed the Duchess, with the sunniest of smiles.
Jacques, like the chivalric “gent” that he was, did honor to the
testimony of the Duchess. The combatants went at it, like stout men.
Jacques belabored his antagonist with a staff, the Sicilian answered by
thrusting a javelin at his adversary’s uncovered face. They then flung
away their arms and their shields, and hewed at each other with their
battle-axes. Having spoiled the edges of these, and loosened them from
their handles, by battering at each other’s skulls, they finally drew
their lusty and well-tempered swords, and fought so fiercely that the
gleaming of their swiftly manœuvred blades made them seem as if they
were smiting each other with lightning. Jacques had well-nigh dealt a
mortal thrust at the Sicilian, when, at the intervention of the Duke
of Orleans, Philip the Good flung his truncheon into the lists, and so
saved the foreign knight, by ending the fray. The Duchess reproved her
consort for being over-intrusive, but she smiled more gleesomely than
before. “Whither away, Sir Jacques?” asked she, as the latter modestly
bowed on passing her--the multitude the while rending the welkin with
their approving shout. “To the chapel in the wood,” replied Jacques,
“to render thanks for the aid vouchsafed to me by our Lady.” “Marry,”
murmured the Duchess, “we will be there too.” She thought it not less
edifying to see knight at his devotions than at beholding him in the
duello. “I am grateful to the Lady of Good Succor,” said Jacques. “And
thou doest right loyally,” was the comment of the Duchess.
The victory of the Belgian cavalier over the Sicilian gained for him
the distinctive name which he never lost, that of “the Good Knight.” To
maintain it, he proceeded to travel from court to court, as pugilists
itinerate it from fair to fair, to exhibit prowess and to gather
praise. The minor pugilist looks to pence as well as praise, and the
ancient knight had an eye to profit also--he invariably carried off
the horse, armor, and jewels of the vanquished. As Sir Jacques deemed
himself invincible, he looked to the realization of a lucrative tour.
“Go on thy way, with God’s blessing,” exclaimed his sire. “Go on thy
way, Jacques,” murmured his mother through her tears; “thou wilt
find ointment in thy valise, to cure all bruises. Heaven send thee a
surgeon, and thou break thy bones.”
Across the French frontier merrily rode Sir Jacques, followed by
his squire, and attended by his page. From his left arm hung a
splendidly-wrought helmet, by a chain of gold--the prize offered
by him to any one who could overcome him in single combat. Jacques
announced that, in addition, he would give a diamond to any lady or
demoiselle indicated to him by his conqueror. He stipulated that
whichever combatant first dropped his axe, he should bestow a bracelet
upon his adversary; and Jacques would only fight upon the condition
that neither knight should be fastened in his saddle--a regulation
which I should never think of seeing insisted upon anywhere, except by
equestrian aldermen when they amble on Mr. Batty’s horses, to meet the
Sovereign at Temple Bar. For the rest Jacques put his trust in God,
and relied upon the strength given him in the love of “the fair lady
who had more power over him than aught besides throughout the entire
world.” A hundred ladies fair, matrons and maids, who heard of this
well-advertised confidence, did not hesitate to exclaim, “Delicious
fellow! He means _me_!”
It was the proud boast of Jacques, that he traversed the capital, and
the provincial cities of France, without meeting with a knight who
would accept his defiance. It would be more correct to say--a knight
who _could_ take up his challenge. Charles VII. forbade his chivalry
from encountering the fierce Hainaulter anywhere but at the festive
board. In the South of France, then held by the English, he met with
the same civility; and he rode fairly into Spain, his lance in rest,
before his onward career was checked by the presence of an adversary.
That adversary was Don Diego de Guzman, Grand-master of Calatrava, and,
although he knew it not, ancestor to a future Empress of the French.
The Don met the Belgian on the borders of Castile, and accepted his
published challenge out of mere love, as the one silly fellow said of
the other, out of mere love for his “_très aimée dame_.” The “_dames_”
of those days enjoyed nothing so much as seeing the gentlemen thwack
each other; and considering what a worthless set these latter, for the
most part, were, the ladies had logically comic reasons to support
their argument.
It was necessary, however, for Don Diego to obtain the consent of his
sovereign to encounter in mortal combat a knight of the household of
Burgundy, then in alliance with Spain. The Sovereign was absent from
the country, and while an answer was being expected from him to the
application duly made, Jacques, at the head of a most splendid retinue,
trotted leisurely into Portugal, to tempt the Lusitanian knights to
set their lances against him. He rode forward to the capital, and was
greeted by the way, as if he had been as illustrious a monarch as
his ducal master. It was one ovation, from the frontier to Lisbon,
where he was welcomed by the most crowded of royal balls, at which
the King (Alphonso XV.) invited him to foot it with the Queen. The
King, however, was but an indifferent master of the ceremonies. The
late Mr. Simpson of Vauxhall, or the illustrious Baron Nathan of
Rosherville, would never have dreamed of taking the lady to introduce
her to the gentleman. This uncourteous process was, however, the one
followed by Alphonso, who taking his consort by the hand, led her to
Sire Jacques, and bad him tread a measure with her. Messire Jacques
consented, and there was more than enough of dancing, and feasting, and
pleasure-seeking, but no fighting. Lisbon was as dull to the Belgian
as Donnybrook Fair without a skrimmage used to be to all its lively
_habitués_. “I have had a turn with the Queen,” said Jacques, “let me
now have a tourney with your captains.” “Burgundy is my good friend,”
answered the King--and he was right in a double sense, for Burgundy
was as dear to him as Champagne is to the Czar’s valet, Frederick
William, who resides at Berlin. “Burgundy is our good friend,” answered
Alphonso, “and Heaven forbid that a knight from such a court should be
roughly treated by any knights at mine.” “By St. George! I defy them!”
exclaimed Jacques. “And even so let it rest,” said the monarch; “ride
back to Castile, and do thy worst upon the hard ribs of the Guzman.”
Jacques adopted the suggestion; and on the 3d of February, 1447, there
was not a bed in Valladolid to be had “for love or money;” so crowded
was that strong-smelling city with stronger-smelling Spaniards, whose
curiosity was even stronger than the odors they distilled, to witness
the “set-to” between the Belgian Chicken and the Castile Shaver!
I will not detail the preliminary ceremonies, the processions to the
field, the entry of the sovereigns, the fluttering of the ladies,
the excitement of the knights, and the eagerness of the countless
multitude. Jacques was on the ground by ten o’clock, where Guzman
kept him waiting till three; and then the latter came with an axe so
much longer than that wielded by the Belgian, that even the Spanish
umpires forbade its being employed. Don Diego’s own “godfather” for
the occasion was almost minded to thump him with the handle; and there
was all the trouble in the world to induce him to select another.
This being effected, each knight was conducted to his tent, with the
understanding that he was not to issue therefrom until the clarions
had thrice sounded by way of signal. At the very first blast, however,
out rushed the Guzman, looking as ferocious as a stage Richard who
has killed five false Richmonds, and is anxiously inquiring for the
real one wherewith to finish the half-dozen. The too volatile Don was
beckoned back by the chief herald as haughtily as when the sempiternal
Widdicombe points out with his whip some obvious duty to be performed
by Mr. Merryman. Diego retired muttering, but he again appeared in
front of his tent at the second note of summons from the trumpet, and
only withdrew after the king had assailed him “with an ugly word.” At
the third “flourish,” the two champions flew at each other, battle-axe
in hand. With this weapon they hammered at each other’s head, until
there was little sense left in either of them. At length, Diego was
disarmed; then ensued a contest made up partly of wrestling and
partly of boxing; finally, they had recourse to their swords, when
the king, perceiving that murder was likely to ensue, to one or both,
threw his bâton into the lists, put an end to the combat, and refused
permission to the adversaries to continue the struggle on horseback.
The antagonists shook hands, and the people shouted. The Spanish knight
is deemed, by Belgian chroniclers, as having come off “second best” in
the struggle; but it is also clear that Diego de Guzman was by far
the “toughest customer” that ever confronted Jacques de Lelaing. There
was some jealousy on the part of the Iberian, but his behavior was,
altogether, marked by generosity. He praised the prowess of Jacques,
and presented him with an Andalusian horse covered with the richest
trappings; and de Lelaing, as unwilling to be outdone in liberality
as in fight, sent to Guzman, by a herald, a magnificent charger, with
coverings of blue velvet embroidered in gold, and a saddle of violet
velvet, to be seated in which, was of itself a luxury. Much dancing at
court followed; and finally, the “good knight” left Valladolid loaded
with gifts from the king, praises from men, and love from the ladies,
who made surrender of more hearts than he had time to accept.
In Navarre and in Aragon he challenged all comers, but in vain. Swords
slept in scabbards, and battle-axes hung quietly from saddle-bows, and
there was more feasting than fighting. At length Jacques, after passing
through Perpignan and Narbonne, arrived at Montpelier, where he became
the guest of the famous Jacques Cœur, the silversmith and banker of
Charles VII. Old Cœur was a hearty old host, for he offered the knight
any amount of money he would honor him by accepting; and he intimated
that if De Lelaing, in the course of his travels had found it necessary
to pawn any of his plate or jewelry, _he_ (Jacques Cœur) would redeem
it free of expense. “My good master, the Duke of Burgundy,” replied the
errant chevalier, “provides all that is necessary for me, and allows
me to want for nothing;” and thereupon he went on his way to the court
of Burgundy, where he was received with more honor than if he had been
executing a mission for the especial benefit of humanity.
But these honors were little, compared with the rejoicings which took
place when the “good knight” revisited his native château, and the
parents who therein resided. His sire hugged him till his armor was
warm again; and his lady mother walked about the halls in a state of
ecstacy and thanksgiving. Finally, the rafters shook at the efforts of
the joyous dancers, and many a judicious matron instructed her daughter
how Jacques, who subdued the stoutest knights, might be himself subdued
by the very gentlest of ladies. The instruction was given in vain. The
good chevalier made love alike to young widows, wives, and daughters,
and having broken more hearts than he ever broke lances, he suddenly
left home in search of new adventures.
Great was the astonishment, and _that_ altogether of a pleasurable
sort, when the herald Charolais appeared at the Scottish court in
July, 1449, and delivered a challenge from Jacques to the whole of the
Douglases. It was accepted in their name by James Douglas, the brother
of the lieutenant-general of the kingdom; and in December of the year
last named, Jacques, with a retinue of fighting uncles, cousins, and
friends, embarked at Ecluse and set sail for Caledonia. The party were
more battered about by the sea than ever they had been by enemy on
land; and when they arrived at Leith, they looked so “shaky,” were so
pale and haggard, and had so little of a “slashing” look, wrapped up
as they were in surcoats and comforters, that the Scottish cavaliers,
observing the draggled condition of the strangers and of the plumes
which seemed to be moulting from their helmets, fairly asked them
what motive induced them to come so far in so sorry a plight, for
the mere sake of getting bruised by knights ashore after having been
tossed about, sick and sorry, during whole nights at sea. When the
northern cavaliers heard that honor and not profit had moved the
Belgian company, they marvelled much thereat, but prepared themselves,
nevertheless, to meet the new-comers in dread encounter at Stirling.
James II. presided at the bloody fray, in which three fought against
three. What the Scottish chroniclers say of the struggle, I can not
learn, but the Belgian historians describe their champions as having
been eminently victorious with every arm; and, according to them, the
Douglases were not only soundly drubbed, but took their beating with
considerable sulkiness. But there is much poetry in Belgian history,
and probably the doughty Douglas party may not have been so thoroughly
worsted as the pleasant chroniclers in question describe them to have
been. No doubt the conquerors behaved well, as we know “les braves
Belges” have never failed to do, if history may be credited. However
this may be, Jacques and his friends hurried from Scotland, appeared at
London before the meek Lancastrian king, Henry VI.; and as the latter
would not license his knights to meet the Burgundians in the lists,
the foreign fighting gentlemen had their passports _visé_, and taking
passage in the fast sailer “Flower of Hainault,” duly arrived at home,
where they were hailed with enthusiasm.
Jacques had short space wherein to breathe. An English knight, named
Thomas Karr, speedily appeared at the court of Philip the Duke, and
challenged De Lelaing, for the honor of old England. This affair caused
a great sensation, and the lists were dressed in a field near Bruges.
The English knight was the heavier man in flesh and armor, but Jacques,
of course, was the favorite. Dire was the conflict. The adversaries
strove to fell each other with their axes, as butchers do oxen. Karr
paralyzed, if he did not break, the arm of Jacques; but the Belgian,
dropping his axe, closed with his foe, and after a struggle, fell
with and upon him. Karr was required, as a defeated man, to carry the
gauntlet of the victor to the lady pointed out by him. But obstinate
Tom Karr protested against this, as he had only fallen on his elbow.
The umpires declared that he had had a full fall, “head, belly, arms,
and legs;” Jacques, however, was generous and would not insist. On the
contrary, adverting to the fact that he had himself been the first to
drop his own axe, he presented Karr with a rich diamond, as the forfeit
due by him who first lost a weapon in the combat.
Karr had terribly wounded Jacques, and the wound of the latter took
long to cure. The Duke Philip hastened his convalescence by naming
him counsellor and chamberlain; and as soon as the man so honored by
his master, had recovered from his wounds, he repaired to Chalons
on Saone, where he opened a “tourney,” which was talked of in the
country for many a long year afterward. Jacques had vowed that he would
appear in the closed lists thirty times before he had attained his
thirtieth year; and this tourney at Chalons was held by him against
all comers, in order the better to enable him to fulfil his vow. The
detail would be tedious; suffice it to say that the affair was of
barbarian magnificence, and that knights smashed one another’s limbs,
for personal honor, ladies’ love, and the glory of Our Lady in Tears!
Rich prizes were awarded to the victors, as rich forfeits were exacted
from the vanquished, and there was not only a sea of good blood spilt
in this splendidly atrocious fray, but as much bad blood made as
there was good blood shed. But then there was empty honor acquired,
a frail sort of affection gained, and an impalpable glory added to
the non-existent crown of an imaginary Venus Victrix, decorated with
the name of Our Lady of Tears! What more could true knights desire?
Chivalry was satisfied; and commonplace men, with only common sense
to direct them, had to look on in admiring silence, at risk of being
cudgelled if they dared to speak out.
Jacques was now at the height of his renown. He was “the good knight
without fear and without doubt;” and Duke Philip placed the last rose
in his chaplet of honor, by creating him a knight of the illustrious
order of the Golden Fleece. Thus distinguished, he rode about Europe,
inviting adversaries to measure swords with him, and meeting with none
willing to accept the invitation. In 1451 he was the embassador of
Burgundy at Rome, charged to negotiate a project of crusade against
the Turks. M. Alexander Henne, the author of the best compendium,
gathered from the chronicles, of the deeds of Jacques de Lelaing--says
that after the knight’s mission to Rome, he appeared at a passage of
arms held in the park at Brussels, in honor of the Duke of Burgundy’s
son, the Count of Charolais, then eighteen years of age, and about to
mate his first appearance in the lists. The Duchess, tender of her
son as the Dowager Czarina who kept her boys at home, and had not a
tear for other mothers, whose children have been bloodily sacrificed
to the savage ambition of Nicholas--the Duchess careful of the young
Count, was desirous that he should make essay before he appeared in
the lists. Jacques de Lelaing was accordingly selected to run a lance
with him. “Three days before the fete, the Duke, the Duchess, and the
Court repaired to the park of Brussels, where the trial was to be made.
In the first onset, the Count de Charolais shattered his lance against
the shield of Jacques, who raised his own weapon, and passed without
touching his adversary. The Duke perceived that the good knight had
spared his young adversary; he was displeased thereat, and sent Jacques
word that if he intended to continue the same course, he would do well
to meddle no further in the matter. Other lances were then brought,
and Jacques, running straight against the Count, both lances flew into
splinters. At this incident, the Duchess, in her turn, gave expression
to her discontent; but the Duke only laughed; and thus mother and
father were of different opinions; the one desiring a fair trial, the
other security for her son.” On the day of the great tourney, there
were assembled, with the multitude, on the great square at Brussels,
not less than two hundred and twenty-five princes, barons, knights,
and squires. Some of the noblest of these broke a lance with, and
perhaps the limbs of, their adversaries. The Count de Charolais broke
eighteen lances on that day, and he carried off the the prize, which
was conferred upon him by the ladies.
This was the last of the show-fights in which Jacques de Lelaing
exhibited himself. The bloodier conflicts in which he was subsequently
engaged, were far less to his credit. They formed a part of the savage
war which the despotic Duke and the nobles carried on against the free
and opulent cities, whose spirit of liberty was an object of hatred,
and whose wealth was an object of covetous desire, to the Duke and his
body of gentleman-like assassins. Many a fair town was devastated by
the Duke and his followers, who affected to be inspired by religious
feelings, a desire for peace, and a disinclination to make conquests.
Whereby it may be seen that the late Czar was only a Burgundian
duke enlarged, impelled by much the same principle, and addicted to
a similar sort of veracity. It was a time of unmitigated horrors,
when crimes enough were committed by the nobles to render the name
of aristocracy for ever execrable throughout Belgium; and atrocities
were practised by the enraged commons, sufficient to insure, for the
plebeians, the undying hatred of their patrician oppressors. There
was no respect on either side for age, sex, or condition. The people,
of every degree, were transformed into the worst of fiends--slaying,
burning, violating, and plundering; and turning from their accursed
work to kneel at the shrine of that Mary whose blessed Son was the
Prince of Peace. Each side slaughtered, hung, or drowned its prisoners;
but the nobles gave the provocation by first setting the example,
and the commons were not cruel till the nobility showed itself alike
destitute of honor and of mercy. The arms of the popular party were
nerved by the infamy of their adversaries, but many an innocent man
on either side was condemned to suffer, undeservedly, for the sins
of others. The greatest efforts were made against the people of the
district and city of Ghent, but all Flanders sympathized with them in
a war which was considered national. In the struggle, the Duke won no
victory over the people for which the latter did not compel him to pay
a frightful price; he was heartily sick of the war before it was half
concluded--even when his banner was being most successfully upheld by
the strong arm and slender scruples of Jacques de Lelaing.
The good knight was however, it must be confessed, among the few--if
he were not the only one--of the betterminded nobles. He had been
commissioned by the Duke to set fire to the Abbey of Eenaeme, and he
obeyed without hesitation, and yet with reluctance. He destroyed the
religious edifice with all which it contained, and which could be made
to burn; but having thus performed his duty as a soldier, he forthwith
accomplished his equally bounden duty, as a Christian--and, after
paying for three masses, at which he devoutly assisted, he confessed
himself to a predicant friar, “making a case of conscience,” says
one of his biographers, “of having, out of respect for discipline,
committed an act which the uprightness of his heart compelled him to
condemn as criminal.” Never was there a better illustration of that
so-called diverse condition of things which is said to represent a
distinction without a difference.
The repentance of Jacques de Lelaing came, it is hoped, in time. He
did well, at all events, not to defer it any longer, for he was soon
on the threshold of that world where faith ceases and belief begins.
He was engaged, although badly wounded, in inspecting the siege-works
in the front of the Chateau de Pouckes, that Flemish cradle of the
Pooks settled in England. It was on a June afternoon of the year 1453,
that Jacques, with a crowd of nobles half-encircling him, rode out, in
spite of the protest of his doctors (because, as he said, if he were to
remain doing nothing he should certainly die), in order that he might
have _something_ to do. There was a famous piece of artillery on the
Burgundian side, which was sorely troublesome to the stout little band
that was defending Pouckes. It was called the “Shepherdess,” but never
did shepherdess speak with so thundering-unlovely a voice, or fling her
favors about her with such dire destruction to those upon whom they
were showered. Jacques drew up behind the _manteau_ of this cannon, to
watch (like our gallant seamen at Sebastopol) the effects of the shot
discharged from it. At the same moment a stone projectile, discharged
from a culverin by the hand of a young artilleryman of Ghent, who was
known as the son of Henry the Blindman, struck Jacques on the forehead,
carrying away the upper part of his head, and stretched him dead upon
the field. A Carmelite brother rushed up to him to offer the succor and
consolation of religion, but it was too late. Jacques had sighed out
his last breath, and the friar decently folded the dead warrior’s arms
over his breast. A mournful troop carried the body back to the camp.
The hero of his day died in harness. He had virtues that fitted him
for a more refined, a more honest, in short, a more Christian, period.
These he exercised whenever he could find opportunity, but such
opportunity was rare. He lived at a period when, as M. de Sismondi has
remarked, “Knights thought of nothing but equalling the Rolands and
Olivers of the days of Charlemagne, by the destruction of the vile
canaille”--a sort of pastime which has been recently recommended in our
senate, although the days of chivalry be gone. The noble comrades of
Jacques, as M. Henne observes, acknowledged but one species of supreme
pleasure and glory, which consisted in making flow abundantly the
blood of villains--or, as they are now called, the lower orders. But
in truth the modern “villain” or the low-class man is not exclusively
to be found in the ranks which have had such names applied to them. As
Bosquier-Gavaudan used so joyously to sing, some thirty years ago, in
the _Ermite de St. Avelle_:--
“Les gens de bien
Sont souvent des gens de rien;
Et les gens de rien
Sont souvent des gens de bien!”
For a knight, Jacques was really a respectable man, and so disgusted
with his butcher-like occupation, that, just before his death, he had
resolved to surrender his estate to a younger brother, and, since fate
had made of him a licensed murderer, to henceforth murder none but
eastern infidels--to slay whom was held to be more of a virtue than a
sin. Let us add of him, that he was too honest to earn a reputation by
being compassionate to half-a-dozen helpless foes, after directing
his men to slaughter a score of the mutilated and defenceless enemy.
Jacques de Lelaing would sooner have sent his dagger up to the hilt in
his own heart, than have violated the safeguard of a flag of truce.
_Such_ days and such doings of chivalry are not those most agreeable to
Russian chivalry. Witness Odessa, where the pious governor directed the
fire on a flag of truce which he swore he could not see; and witness
the massacre of Hango, the assassins concerned in which exploit were
defended by their worthy superior De Berg.
Jacques de Lelaing, however, it must not be forgotten, fell in a
most unworthy cause--that of a despot armed against free people. His
excellent master swore to avenge him; and he kept his word. When
the Château de Pouckes was compelled to surrender, Philip the Good
ordered every one found alive in it to be hung from the walls. He made
exception only of a priest or two, one soldier afflicted with what was
called _leprosy_, but which has now another name in the catalogue of
avenging maladies, and a couple of boys. It was precisely one of these
lads who had, by his well-laid shot, slain “the good knight without
fear and without doubt;” but Philip was not aware of this till the lad
was far beyond his reach, and in safety at Ghent.
Those who may be curious to know the course taken by the war until it
was terminated by the treaty of Lille, are recommended to study the
Chronicles of De Lettenhooe, of Olivier de la Marche, of Chastellain,
and Du Clery. I had no intention, at setting out, to paint a
battle-piece, but simply to sketch a single figure. My task is done,
however imperfectly, and, as old chroniclers were wont to say, May
Heaven bless the gentle reader, and send pistoles and abounding grace
to the unworthy author.
Such is the history of an individual; let us now trace the fortunes of
a knightly house. The story of the Guises belongs entirely to chivalry
and statesmanship.
THE FORTUNES OF A KNIGHTLY FAMILY.
“This deals with nobler knights and monarchs,
Full of great fears, great hopes, great enterprises.”
_Antony Brewer, “Lingua.”_
In the pleasant spring-time of the year 1506, a little boy, mounted
on a mule, and accompanied by a serving man on foot, crossed over
the frontier from Lorraine into France. The boy was a pretty child,
some ten years old. He was soberly clad, but a merry heart beat under
his gray jerkin; and his spirits were as light as the feather in his
bonnet. The servant who walked at his side was a simple yet faithful
follower of his house; but there was no more speculation in his
face than there was in that of the mule. Nothing could have looked
more harmless and innocent than the trio in question; and yet the
whole--joyous child, plodding servitor, and the mule whose bells rang
music as he trod--formed one of the most remarkable invasions of which
the kingdom of France has ever been the victim.
The boy was the fifth child of René and Philippa de Gueldres, the ducal
sovereigns of Lorraine. This duchy, a portion of the old kingdom of
Lotharingia--in disputes for the possession of which the children of
Charlemagne had shed rivers of blood--had maintained its independence,
despite the repeated attempts of Germany and France to reduce it to
subjection. At the opening of the sixteenth century, it had seen a
legal succession of sovereign and independent masters during seven
centuries. The reigning duke was René, the second of that name. He had
acquired estates in France, and he had inherited the hatred of Lorraine
to the Capetian race which had dethroned the heirs of Charlemagne.
It was for this double reason that he unostentatiously sent into
the kingdom of France one of his sons, a boy of fair promise. The
mission of the yet unconscious child was to increase the territorial
possessions of his family within the French dominions, and ultimately
to rule both Church and State--if not from the throne, why then from
behind it.
The merry boy proved himself in course of time to be no unfitting
instrument for this especial purpose. He was brought up at the French
court, studied chivalry, and practised passages of arms with French
knights; was the first up at _réveillée_, the last at a feast, the most
devout at mass, and the most winning in ladies’ bower. The princes of
the blood loved him, and so did the princesses. The army hailed him
with delight; and the church beheld in him and his brother, Cardinal
John, two of those champions whom it records with gladness, and
canonizes with alacrity.
Such was Claude of Lorraine, who won the heart and lands of Antoinette
de Bourbon, and who received from Francis I. not only letters of
naturalization, but the title of Duke of Guise. The locality so named
is in Picardy. It had fallen to the house of Lorraine by marriage, and
the dignity of Count which accompanied it was now changed for that of
Duke. It was not long before Claude made the title famous. The sword of
Guise was never from his grasp, and its point was unceasingly directed
against the enemies of his new country. He shed his own blood, and
spilled that of others, with a ferocious joy. Francis saw in him the
warmest of his friends and the bravest of his soldiers. His bravery
helped to the glory that was reaped at Marignan, at Fontarabia, and in
Picardy. Against internal revolt or foreign invasion he was equally
irresistible. _His_ sword drove back the Imperialists of Germany within
their own frontier; and when on the night of Pavia the warriors of
France sat weeping like girls amid the wide ruin around them, _his_
heart alone throbbed with hopeful impulses, and _his_ mind only was
filled with bright visions of victories to come.
These came indeed, but they were sometimes triumphs that earned for
him an immortality of infamy. The crest of his house was a double
cross, and this device, though it was no emblem of the intensity of
religion felt by these who bore it, _was_ significant of the double
sanguinary zeal of the family--a zeal employed solely for selfish ends.
The apostolic reformers of France were, at this period, in a position
of some power. Their preachers were in the pulpit, and their people
in the field. They heard the gospel leaning on their swords; and, the
discourse done, they rushed bravely into battle to defend what they had
heard.
Against these pious but strong-limbed confederates the wrath of
Guise was something terrible. It did not, like that of Francis
I.--who banqueted one day the unorthodox friends whom he burned the
next--alternate with fits of mercy. It raged without intermission,
and before it the Reformers of Alsatia were swept as before a blast
in whose hot breath was death. He spared neither sex nor age; and he
justified his bloody deeds by blasphemously asserting that he was
guided to them by the light of a cross which blazed before him in the
heavens. The church honored him with the name of “good and faithful
servant;” but there are Christian hearths in Alsatia where he is still
whisperingly spoken of as “the accursed butcher.”
When his own fingers began to hold less firmly the handle of his sword,
he also began to look among his children for those who were most likely
to carry out the mission of his house. His eye marked, approvingly,
the bearing of his eldest son Francis, Count D’Aumale; and had no less
satisfaction in the brothers of Francis, who, whether as soldiers or
priests, were equally ready to further the interests of Lorraine, and
call them those of Heaven. His daughter Mary he gave to James V. of
Scotland; and the bride brought destruction for her dowry. Upon himself
and his children, Francis I., and subsequently Henry II., looked at
last with mingled admiration and dread. Honors and wealth were lavished
upon them with a prodigal and even treasonable liberality. The generous
king gave to the insatiate Guise the property of the people; and when
these complained somewhat menacingly, Guise achieved some new exploit,
the public roar of applause for which sanctioned a quiet enjoyment of
his ill-gotten treasures.
For the purpose of such enjoyment he retired to his castle at
Joinville. The residence was less a palace than a monastery. It was
inhabited by sunless gloom and a deserted wife. The neglected garden
was trimmed at the coming of the duke, but not for his sake nor for
that of the faithful Antoinette. Before the eyes of that faithful wife
he built a bower for a mistress who daily degraded with blows the
hero of a hundred stricken fields. He deprecated the rough usage of
the courtesan with tears and gold; and yet he had no better homage for
the virtuous mother of his children, than a cold civility. His almost
sudden death in 1550 was accounted for as being the effect of poison,
administered at the suggestion of those to whom his growing greatness
was offensive. The accusation was boldly graven on his monument; and it
is probably true. No one however, profited by the crime.
The throne found in his children more dangerous supporters than he had
ever been himself; and the people paid for their popular admiration
with loss of life and liberty. The church, however, exulted; for
Claude of Lorraine, first Duke of Guise, gave to it the legitimate
son, Cardinal Charles, who devised the massacre of the day of St.
Bartholomew; and the illegitimate son, the Abbé de Cluny, who, on that
terrible day, made his dagger drink the blood of the Huguenots, till
the wielder of it became as drunk with frenzy as he was wont to be with
the fiery wine which was his peculiar and intense delight.
The first Duke of Guise only laid a foundation, upon which he left
his heirs and successors to build at their discretion. He had,
nevertheless, effected much. He had gained for his family considerable
wealth; and if he had not also obtained a crown, he had acquired
possession of rich crown-lands. The bestowing upon him of these
earned popular execration for the king; the people, at the same time,
confessed that the services of Guise were worthy of no meaner reward.
When King Francis saw that he was blamed for bestowing what the
recipient was deemed worthy of having granted to him, we can hardly
wonder that Francis, while acknowledging the merits of the aspiring
family, bade the members of his own to be on their guard against the
designs of every child of the house of Lorraine.
But _he_ was no child who now succeeded to the honors of his father,
the first duke. Francis of Guise, at his elevation to the ducal title,
saw before him two obstacles to further greatness. One was a weak
king, Henry II.; and the other, a powerful favorite, the Constable de
Montmorency, from whose family, it was popularly said, had sprung the
first Christian within the realm of France. Francis speedily disposed
of the favorite, and almost as speedily raised himself to the vacant
office, which he exercised so as to further his remote purposes. In the
meantime the king was taught to believe that his crown and happiness
were dependent on his Lorraine cousins, who, on their side, were not
only aiming at the throne of France for one member of the house, but
were aspiring to the tiara for a second; the crown of Naples for a
third--to influence in Flanders and in Spain, and even to the diadem of
Elizabeth of England, succession to which was recognised as existing in
them, by Mary Stuart, in case of her own decease without direct heirs.
It is said that the British Romanists looked forward with unctuous
complacency to the period when the sceptre of this island should fall
into the blood-stained grasp of a “Catholic Guise.”
It was not only the fortune of Francis to repair the ill luck
encountered in the field by Montmorency, but to gain advantages in
fight, such as France had not yet seen. The Emperor Charles V. had
well-nigh got possession of beleaguered Metz, when Guise threw himself
into the place, rescued it from the Emperor, and swept the Imperialists
out of France. His fiery wrath cooled only in presence of the wounded,
to whom he behaved with gentle and helping courtesy. His gigantic
labors here brought on an attack of fever; and when he was compelled
to seek rest in his house at Marchez, a host of priests and cardinals
of his family gathered round his court, and excited him to laughter by
rough games that suited but sorrily with their calling.
The second duke inherited his father’s hatred for “heretics.” The great
Colligny had been his bosom friend; but when that renowned Reformer
gave evidence of his new opinions upon religious subjects, then ensued,
first a coldness, then fits of angry quarrelling, and at last a duel,
in which, though neither combatant was even scratched, friendship was
slain for ever. Duke Francis was prodigal like his father, but then
his brother, Cardinal Charles, was minister of the finances: and the
king and his mistress, Diana de Poictiers, cared not how the revenue
was managed, so that money was forthcoming when necessity pressed.
The consequence was, that the king’s exchequer was robbed to supply
the extravagances of Guise. But then men began to associate with the
name the idea of deliverance from oppression; and they did not count
the cost. And yet victory did not invariably select for her throne
the glittering helm of the aspiring duke. The pope had selected him
as commander of the papal army acting against Naples, but intrigue
paralyzed the arm which had never before been conquered, and the
pontiff showered epigrams upon him instead of laurels.
In this momentary eclipse of the sun of his glory, the duke placed his
own neck under the papal heel. He served in the pope’s chapel as an
Acolyte, meekly bore the mantle of obese and sneering cardinals, and
exhibited a humility which was not without success. When at a banquet
given by a cardinal, Guise humbly sat down at the lower end of the
table, he asked a French officer who was endeavoring to thrust in below
him, “Why comest thou here, friend?” “That it might not be said,”
answered the soldier, “that the representative of the King of France
took the very lowest place at a priest’s table!”
From such reproaches Guise gladly fled, to buckle on his armor and
drive back an invasion of France by the Hispano-Flemings on the north.
The services he now rendered his country made the people almost forget
the infamy of their king, who was wasting life in his capital, and
the oppressive imposts of the financial cardinal, whom the sufferers
punningly designated as Cardinal _La Ruine_. The ruin he achieved was
forgiven in consideration of the glory accomplished by his brother,
who had defeated and destroyed the armies which threatened the capital
from the north; and who had effected much greater glory by suddenly
falling on Calais with a force of ten to one, and tearing from the
English the last of the conquests till then held by them in France. Old
Lord Wentworth, the governor, plied his artillery with a roar that was
heard on the English coast: but the roar was all in vain. There was a
proverb among our neighbors, and applied by them to every individual of
mediocre qualifications, that “he was not the sort of man to drive the
English out of France.” That man was found in Guise; and the capital
began naturally to contrast him with the heartless king, who sat at
the feet of a concubine, and recked little of the national honor or
disgrace. And yet, the medals struck to commemorate the recovery of
Calais bear the names only of Henri and Diana. They omit all mention of
the great liberator, Guise!
The faults of Henri, however, are not to be entirely attributed to
himself. He had some feelings of compassion for the wretched but
stout-hearted Huguenots, with whom, in the absence of Guise, he entered
into treaties, which, Guise present, he was constrained to violate!
In pursuit of the visions of dominion in France, and of the tiara at
Rome, the ambitious house sought only to gain the suffrages of the
church and the faithful. To win smiles from them, the public scaffolds
were deluged with the blood of heretics; and all were deemed so who
refused to doff their caps to the images of the virgin, raised in the
highways at the suggestion of the duke and the cardinal. This terrific
persecution begat remonstrance; but when remonstrance was treated as
if it were rebellion, rebellion followed thereupon; as, perhaps, was
hoped for; and the swords of the Guisards went flashing over every
district in France, dealing death wherever dwelt the alleged enemies
of God, who dared to commune with Him according to conscience, rather
than according to Rome. Congregations, as at Vassi, were set upon
and slaughtered in cold blood, without resistance. In the Huguenot
“temple” of this last place was found a Bible. It was brought to the
duke. This noble gentleman could spell no better than the great Duke
of Marlborough; and Guise was, moreover, worse instructed in the faith
which he professed. He looked into the Book of Life, unconscious of
what he held, and with a wondering exclamation as to what it might be
all about, he flung it aside, and turned to the further slaughter of
those who believed therein.
In such action he saw his peculiar mission for the moment, but he was
not allowed to pursue it unopposed. His intrigues and his cruelties
made rebels even of the princes of the blood; and Condé took the field
to revenge their wrongs, as well as those of the Reformers. The issue
was tried on the bloody day at Dreux, when the setting sun went down
on a Protestant army routed, and on Condé a captive; but sharing the
bed, as was the custom of the time, of his proved victor Guise. Never
did two more deadly enemies lie on the same couch, sleepless, and full
of mutual suspicion. But the hatred of Condé was a loyal hatred; that
of Guise was marked by treacherous malignity. The Protestant party, in
presence of that hot fury, seemed to melt away like a snow-wraith in
the sun. He and his Guisards were the terror of the so-called enemies
of the Faith. Those whom he could not reach by the sword, he struck
down by wielding against them the helpless hand of the king, who obeyed
with the passiveness of a _Marionette_, and raised stakes, and fired
the pile, and gave the victim thereto, simply because Guise would so
have it.
The duke received one portion at least of his coveted reward. At every
massacre of inoffensive Protestants, the Catholic pulpits resounded
with biblical names, showered down upon him by the exulting preachers.
When his banner had swept triumphantly over successive fields, whose
after-crops were made rich by heretical blood, then did the church
pronounce him to be a soldier divinely armed, who had at length
“consecrated his hands, and avenged the quarrel of the Lord.”
Guise lived, it is true, at a period when nothing was held so cheap
as life. Acts of cruelty were but too common in all factions. If he
delivered whole towns to pillage and its attendant horrors, compared
with which death were merciful, he would himself exhibit compassion,
based on impulse or caprice. He was heroic, according to the thinking
of his age, which considered heroism as being constituted solely of
unflinching courage. In all other respects, the duke, great as he
was, was as mean as the veriest knave who trailed a pike in his own
bands. Scarcely a letter addressed to his officers reached them without
having been previously read to their right worshipful master. There was
scarcely a mansion in the kingdom, whose lord was a man of influence,
but that at that table and the hearth there sat a guest who was the
paid spy of Francis of Guise.
It is hardly necessary to add that his morality generally was on a par
with the particular specimens we have given of it. Crowds of courtesans
accompanied him to the camp, while he deliberately exposed his own
wife, Anne of Este, the sister of Tasso’s Leonora, to the insulting
homage of a worthless king. Emphatically may it be said that the truth
was not in him. He gloried in mendacity. No other personage that I can
call to mind ever equalled him in lying--except, perhaps, those very
highly professing heroes who swagger in Greek tragedy. He procured, by
a lie, the capital conviction of Condé. The latter escaped the penalty,
and taxed the duke with his falsehood. Guise swore by his sword, his
life, his honor, his very soul, that he was innocent of the charge.
Condé looked on the ducal liar with a withering contempt, and turned
from him with a sarcasm that should have pierced him like a sword.
Pointed as it was, it could not find way through his corslet to his
heart. He met it with a jest, and deemed the sin unregistered.
There was a watchful public, nevertheless, observing the progress made
toward greatness by the chivalric duke, and his brother the cardinal.
Henry II. had just received the mortal blow dealt him at a tournament
by the lance of Montgomery. Francis II., his brother, the husband of
Mary Stuart, and therewith nephew to Guise, succeeded to the uneasy
throne and painful privileges of Henri. On the night of this monarch’s
decease, two courtiers were traversing a gallery of the Louvre. “This
night,” said one, “is the eve of the Festival of the Three Kings.” “How
mean you by that?” asked the other with a smile. “I mean,” rejoined the
first, “that to-morrow we shall have three monarchs in Paris--one of
them, King of France; the others Kings _in_ France--from Lorraine.”
Under the latter two, Duke and Cardinal, was played out the second
act of the great political drama of Lorraine. It was altogether a
melo-drama, in which there was abundance of light and shadow. At
times, we find the hero exhibiting exemplary candor; anon, he is the
dark plotter, or the fierce and open slayer of his kind. There are
stirring scenes of fights, wherein his adversaries draw their swords
against him, at the instigation of a disgusted King, who no sooner saw
Guise triumphant, than he devoted to death the survivors whom he had
clandestinely urged into the fray.
The battles were fought, on one side, for liberty of conscience; on
the other, for the sake of universal despotism. The bad side triumphed
during a long season; and field after field saw waving over it the
green banner of Lorraine. Catherine de Medicis, and her son Charles
IX., accompanied the Duke in more than one struggle, after the
short-lived reign of Francis II. had come to an end. They passed, side
by side, through the breach at Rouen; but accident divided them at
Orleans, where had assembled the gallant few who refused to despair for
the Protestant cause.
Guise beleaguered the city, and was menacingly furious at its obstinacy
in holding out. One evening he had ridden with his staff to gaze more
nearly at the walls, from behind which defiance was flung at him.
“You will never be able to get in,” remarked roughly a too presuming
official. “Mark me!” roared the chafed Duke, “yon setting sun will
know to-morrow how to get behind that rampart; and by Heaven, so will
I!” He turned his horse, and galloped back alone to his quarters. He
was encountered on his way by a Huguenot officer, Poltrot de la Mer,
who brought him down by a pistol-shot. The eyes of the dying Duke,
as he lay upon the ground, met for the last time the faint rays of
that departing sun, with which he had sworn to be up and doing on
the morrow. He died in his hut. His condition was one of extreme
“comfortableness.” He had robbed the King’s exchequer to gratify his
own passions;--and he thanked Heaven that he had been a faithful
subject to his sovereign! He had been notoriously unfaithful to a noble
and virtuous wife; and he impressed upon her with his faltering lips,
the assurance that “generally speaking” his infidelity as a husband did
not amount to much worth mentioning! He confessed to, and was shriven
by his two brothers, Cardinals John and Charles. The former was a
greater man than the Duke. The latter was known in his own times and
all succeeding, as “the bottle cardinal,” a name of which he was only
not ashamed, but his title to which he was ever ostentatiously desirous
to vindicate and establish.
The first Duke had acquired possession of crown-lands; the second had
at his disposal the public treasure; and the third hoped to add to the
acquisitions of his family the much-coveted sceptre of the Kings of
France.
Henri, surnamed _Le Balafré_, or “the scarred,” succeeded his father in
the year 1560. During the greater portion of his subsequent life, his
two principal objects were the destruction of Protestantism, and the
possession of the King’s person. He therewith flattered the national
vanity by declaring that the natural limits of France, on two sides,
were the Rhine and the Danube--an extension of frontier which was
never effected, except temporarily, in the latter days of Napoleon.
But the declaration entailed a popularity on the Duke which was only
increased by his victory at Jarnac, when the French Protestants not
only suffered defeat, but lost their leader, the brave and unfortunate
Condé. This gallant chief had surrendered, but he was basely murdered
by a pistol-shot, and his dead body, flung across an ass, was paraded
through the ranks of the victors, as a trophy. How far the Duke was an
accomplice in the crime, is not determined. That such incidents were
deemed lightly of by him, is sufficiently clear by his own proclamation
in seven languages, wherein he accused Coligny as the instigator of the
murder of the late Duke of Guise, and set a price upon that noble head,
to be won by any assassin.
For that so-called murder, Guise had his revenge on the day of St.
Bartholomew, when he vainly hoped that the enemies of his house had
perished for ever. On the head of more than one member of the house
of Guise rests the responsibility of that terrible day. During the
slaughter, Guise gained his revenge, but lost his love. The cries of
the victims were the nuptial songs chanted at the marriage-ceremony
of Henri of Navarre and Margaret, the King’s sister. The latter had
looked, nothing loath, upon the suit offered to her by Guise, who was
an ardent wooer. But the wooing had been roughly broken in upon by the
lady’s brother, the Duc d’Anjou, who declared aloud in the Louvre,
that if Guise dared look with lover’s eyes upon “Margot,” he would run
his knife into the lover’s throat! The threat had its influence, and
the unfaithful wooer, who had been all the while solemnly affianced
to a Princess Catherine of Cleves, married that remarkable brunette,
and showed his respect for her, by speaking and writing of her as
“that amiable lady, the negress.” It may be noticed in passing,
that the objection of D’Anjou to Guise as a brother-in-law, was not
personal; it had a political foundation. The two dukes became, indeed,
brothers-in-law; not by Guise marrying the sister of D’Anjou, but by
D’Anjou marrying the sister of Guise, and by sharing with her the
throne which he, subsequently, occupied rather than enjoyed, as Henri
III.
When summoned to the throne by the unedifying death of Charles IX.,
Henry of Anjou was king of Poland. He escaped from that country
with difficulty, in order to wear a more brilliant but a more fatal
crown in France. He had no sooner assumed it, when he beheld the
Guises encircling him, and leaving him neither liberty nor will. The
Protestants were driven into rebellion. They found a leader in Henry of
Navarre, and Guise and his friends made war against them, irrespective
of the King’s consent, and cut in pieces, with their swords, the
treaties entered into between the two Henrys, without the consent
of the third Henri--of Guise and Lorraine. The latter so completely
enslaved the weak and unhappy sovereign, as to wring from him, against
his remonstrance and conviction, the famous articles of Nemours,
wherein it was solemnly decreed in the name of the King, and confirmed
by the signature of Guise, that, thenceforward, it was the will of God
that there should be but one faith in France, and that the opposers
thereof would find that opposition incurred death.
There is a tradition that when Henri III. was told of this decree, he
was seated in deep meditation, his head resting upon his hand; and
that when he leaped to his feet with emotion, at the impiety of the
declaration, it was observed that the part of his moustache which had
been covered by his hand, had suddenly turned gray.
The misery that followed on the publication of these infamous articles
was widely spread, and extended to other hearths besides those of the
Huguenots. Sword, pestilence, and famine, made a desert of a smiling
country; and the universal people, in their common sorrow, cursed
all parties alike--“King and Queen, Pope and Calvin,” and only asked
from Heaven release from all, and peace for those who suffered by the
national divisions. The King, indeed, was neither ill-intentional nor
intolerant; but Guise so intrigued as to persuade the “Catholic” part
of the nation that Henri was incapable. Faction then began to look upon
the powerful subject as _the_ man best qualified to meet the great
emergency. He fairly cajoled them into rebellion. They were, indeed,
willing to be so cajoled by a leader so liberal of promises, and yet
he was known to be as cruel as he engaged himself to be liberal. He
often kept his own soldiers at a point barely above starvation; and the
slightest insubordination in a regiment entailed the penalty of death.
To his foes he was more terrible still. As he stood in the centre of a
conquered town that had been held by the Huguenots, it was sport to him
to see the latter tossed into the flames. On one occasion he ordered
a Huguenot officer to be torn asunder by young horses for no greater
crime than mutilating a wooden idol in a church. The officer had placed
the mutilated figure on a bastion of the city, with a pike across its
breast, as a satire on the guardianship which such a protector was
popularly believed to afford.
He could, however, be humane when the humor and good reason for it
came together. Thus he parted with a pet lioness, which he kept at his
quarters, on the very sufficient ground that the royal beast had, on a
certain morning, slain and swallowed one of his _favorite_ footmen! A
commonplace lacquey he might have spared without complaining; but he
could not, without some irritation, hear of a _valet_ being devoured
who, though a valet, had a profound belief that his master was a hero.
The “Bartholomew” had not destroyed all the foes of the name of Guise.
What was not accomplished on that day was sought to be achieved by
the “League.” The object of this society was to raise the Duke to the
throne of Henri, either before or after the death of the latter. The
King was childless, and the presumptive heir to the throne, Henri of
Navarre, was a Protestant. The Lorrainers had double reason, then,
for looking to themselves. The reigning sovereign was the last of
three brothers who had inherited the crown, and there was then a
superstitious idea that when three brothers had reigned in France, a
change of dynasty was inevitable.
Guise fired his followers with the assurance that the invasion of
England, and the establishment of Popery there, should be an enterprise
which they should be called upon to accomplish. The King was in great
alarm at the “League,” but he wisely constituted himself a member. The
confederates kept him in the dark as to the chief of their objects.
The suspicious monarch, on the other hand, encouraged his minions to
annoy his good cousin of Lorraine. One of these unworthy favorites, St.
Megrim, did more: he slandered the wife of Guise, who took, thereon,
a singular course of trial and revenge. He aroused his Duchess from
her solitary couch, in the middle of the night, hissed in her alarmed
ear the damning rumor that was abroad, and bade her take at once from
his hands the dagger or the poison-cup, which he offered her:--adding
that she had better die, having so greatly sinned. The offended and
innocent wife cared not for life, since she was suspected, and drank
off the contents of the cup, after protestation of her innocence. The
draught was of harmless preparation, for the Duke was well assured of
the spotless character of a consort whom he himself daily dishonored by
his infidelities. He kissed her hand and took his leave; but he sent
a score of his trusty-men into the courtyard of the Louvre, who fell
on St. Megrim, and butchered him almost on the threshold of the King’s
apartments.
The monarch made no complaint at the outrage; but he raised a tomb over
the mangled remains of his favorite minion, above which a triad of
Cupids represented the royal grief, by holding their stony knuckles to
their tearless eyes, affecting the passion which they could not feel.
In the meantime, while the people were being pushed to rebellion at
home, the ducal family were intriguing in nearly every court in Europe.
Between the intrigues of Guise and the recklessness of the King, the
public welfare suffered shipwreck. So nearly complete was the ruin,
that it was popularly said, “The Minions crave all: the King gives
all; the Queen-mother manages all; Guise opposes all; the Red Ass (the
Cardinal) embroils all, and would that the Devil had all!”
But the opposition of Guise was made to some purpose. By exercising it
he exacted from the King a surrender of several strong cities. They
were immediately garrisoned by Guisards, though held nominally by the
sovereign. From the latter the Duke wrung nearly all that it was in the
power of the monarch to yield; but when Guise, who had a design against
the life of the Protestant Henri of Navarre, asked for a royal decree
prohibiting the granting of “quarter” to a Huguenot in the field, the
King indignantly banished him from the capital. Guise feigned to obey;
but his celebrated sister, the Duchess of Montpensier, refused to share
in even a temporary exile. This bold woman went about in public, with
a pair of scissors at her girdle, which, as she intimated, would serve
for the _tonsure_ of brother Henri of Valois, when weariness should
drive him from a palace into a monastery.
The King, somewhat alarmed, called around him his old Swiss body
guard, and as the majority of these men professed the reformed faith,
Guise made use of the circumstance to obtain greater ends than any
he had yet obtained. The people were persuaded that their religion
was in peril; and when the Duke, breaking his ban, entered Paris and,
gallantly attired, walked by the side of the sedan of Catherine of
Medicis, on their way to the Louvre, to remonstrate with the unorthodox
king, the church-bells gave their joyous greeting, and the excited
populace hung upon the steps of the Duke, showering upon him blessings
and blasphemous appellations. “Hosanna to our new son of David!”
shouted those who affected to be the most pious; and aged women,
kissing his garment as he passed, rose from their knees, exclaiming,
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have
seen thy salvation!”
The less blasphemous or the more sincere sufficiently expressed their
satisfaction by hailing him, as he went on his way, smiling, “King of
Paris!”
The sound of this title reached the ears of Henri. Coupling it with
the unauthorized return of Guise to court, he passed into alternate
fits of ungovernable wrath and profound melancholy. He was under the
influence of the latter when there fell on his ear, words which make
him start from his seat--“_Percutiam pastorem, et dispergentur oves_;”
and when the Monarch looked round for the speaker, he beheld the Abbé
d’Elbene, who had thus calmly quoted Scripture, in order to recommend
murder. The King, though startled, was not displeased. On the contrary,
he smiled; and the smile was yet around his lips, and in his eyes, when
Guise entered the presence, and mistook the expression of the royal
face for one of welcome. The Duke, emboldened by what he saw, hurried
through a long list of grievances, especially dwelling on the lenity,
not to say favor, with which Henri treated the heretics generally. The
sovereign made a few excuses, which Guise heeded not; on the contrary,
he hastened to denounce the body of minions who polluted the palace.
“Love me, love my dog,” said Henri, in a hoarse voice. “Yes,” answered
Guise, peering into the royal and unnaturally sparkling eyes, “provided
he doesn’t bite!” The two men stood revealed before each other; and
from that hour the struggle was deadly. Henri would not give away,
with reference to his Swiss guard; and Guise, passing through Paris,
with his sword unsheathed, awoke the eager spirit of revolt, and looked
complacently on while the barricades were raised to impede the march
of the execrable Calvinistic Archers of the Guard. The “King of Paris”
earned a decisive victory; but before it was achieved, the King of
France hurried, in an agony of cowardly affright, from his capital. He
gazed for a moment on the city, as he departed, venting curses on its
ingratitude; for, said the fugitive Monarch, “I loved you better than I
did my own wife;”--which was indisputably true.
Guise might now have ascended the throne, had he not been too
circumspect. He deemed the royal cause lost, but he was satisfied for
the moment with ruling in the capital, as generalissimo. He stopped
the King’s couriers, and opened his letters. He confiscated the
property of Huguenots, and sold the same for his own benefit, while
he professed to care only for that of the Commonwealth. Finally, he
declared that the disturbed condition of affairs should be regulated by
a States-General, which he commanded rather than prayed Henri to summon
to a meeting at Blois. The King consented; and the 18th of October,
1588, was appointed for the opening. Guise entered the old town with
his family, and a host of retainers, cased in armor, and bristling
with steel. Henri had his mother Catherine at his side; but there were
also a few faithful and unscrupulous followers with him in the palace
at Blois; and as he looked on any of those who might happen to salute
him in passing, the King smiled darkly, and _Percutiam pastorem_ fell
in murmured satisfaction from his lips. The saturnine monarch became,
all at once, cheerful in his outward bearing, even when Guise was so
ruling the States as to make their proceedings turn to the detriment
of the monarchy. The Guise faction became anxious for the safety of
their leader, whose quarters were in the palace; but when the King, in
token of reconciliation begged the Duke to participate with him in the
celebration of the Holy Sacrament, there was scarcely a man capable of
interpreting the manner of the times, who did not feel assured that
under such a solemn pledge of security, there lay concealed the very
basest treachery. Guise, over-confident, scorned alike open warning
and dark innuendoes. He was so strong, and his royal antagonist
so weak, that he despised the idea of violence being used against
him--especially as the keys of the palatial castle were in his keeping,
as “Grand-Master” of the Court.
The 23d of December had arrived. The King intimated that he should
proceed early in the morning, soon after daybreak (but subsequently
to holding a council, to which he summoned the Duke and Cardinal), to
the shrine of Our Lady of Clery, some two miles distant; and the keys
of the gates were demanded, in order to let Henri have issue at his
pleasure, but in reality to keep the Guises within, isolated from their
friends without. Larchant, one of the Archers of the Guard, also waited
upon the Duke, to pray him to intercede for himself and comrades with
the King, in order to obtain for them an increase of pay. “We will do
ourselves the honor,” said Larchant, “to prefer our petition to your
Highness, in the morning, in a body.” This was a contrivance to prevent
Guise from being surprised at seeing so many armed men together in the
King’s antechamber, before the council was sitting. Henri passed a
sleepless night. His namesake of Guise, who had just sent his Duchess
homeward, her approaching confinement being expected, spent the whole
of the same night in the apartments of the Countess de Noirmoutier.
He was seen coming thence, before dawn, gayly dressed, and proceeding
to the Chapel of the Virgin, to perform his morning devotions. Long
before this, the King was a-foot, visiting the select archers who
had accepted the bloody mission of ridding the perplexed monarch of
his importunate adversary. He posted them, altered the arrangements,
reposted them, addressed them again and again on the lawfulness of
their office, and had some trouble to suppress an enthusiasm which
threatened to wake the Queen-mother, who slept below, and to excite the
suspicion of the Guards in the vicinity. Staircase and hall, closet and
arras, no coign of vantage but had its assassin ready to act, should
his fellows have failed.
Precisely at seven o’clock, Guise, attired in a light suit of
gray satin, and followed by Pericart, his secretary, entered the
council-chamber, where he found several members assembled; among
others, his younger brother, the “Bottle-Cardinal” de Guise. An hour
passed without the appearance of any message from the King, who was
in an inner apartment, now half-frightened at the pale faces of his
own confidants, and anon endeavoring to excite his own resolution, by
attempts to encourage theirs. It was a long and weary hour for all
parties. As it slowly passed away, Guise, he knew not wherefore, grew
anxious. He complained of the cold, and heaped billets of wood upon
the fire. He spoke of feeling sick, faint, and unnerved; and from his
silver sweetmeat-case he took a few bonbons, by way of breakfast. He
subsequently asked for some Damascus raisins, and conserve of roses;
but these, when supplied to him did not relieve him of an unaccountable
nervousness, which was suddenly increased, when the eye next to the
scar from which he derived his appellation of _Le Balafré_, began to be
suffused with tears. He indignantly wiped away the unwelcome suffusion,
and had quite recovered as Rivol, Secretary of State, entered, and
requested him to attend on the King, who awaited him in his own chamber.
Guise gayly flung his _bonbonnière_ across the council-table, and
laughingly bade the grave counsellors scramble for the scattered
sweets. He started up, overturned his chair in so doing, drew his thin
mantle around him, and with cap and gloves in hand, waved a farewell
to the statesmen present. He passed through two rooms, and closely
followed by various of the archers, reached the tapestried entrance to
the King’s cabinet. No one offered to raise the arras for him. Guise
lifted his own right arm to help himself at the same time looking
half-round at the archers who were near him. At that moment, a dagger
was buried in his breast, up to the very hilt. The blow was delivered
by Montsery, from behind. The Duke let fall his hand to the pommel
of his sword, when one assassin clung to his legs, a second, also
from behind, stabbed him in the neck; while a third passed his weapon
through the Duke’s ribs.
Guise’s first cry was, “Ho, friends!” His second, as Sarine ran him
through the lower part of the back, was, “Mercy, Jesus!” He struggled
faintly across the chamber, bleeding from a dozen wounds, in every one
of which sat death. The murderers hacked at him as he staggered, and
wildly yet feebly fought. All paused for a moment, when he had reached
the extreme end of the room, where he again attempted to raise his
sword; but in the act he rolled over, stone dead, at the foot of the
bed of Henri III.
At that moment the tapestry was raised, and the king, whispering “Is
it done?” approached the body, moodily remarking as he gazed upon it,
“He looks greater than he did when living.” Upon the person of the duke
was found a manuscript memorandum, in these words:--“To maintain a war
in France, I should require 700,000 livres per month.” This memorandum
served in the king’s mind as a justification of the murder just
committed by his orders. The body was then unceremoniously rolled up in
the Turkey carpet on which it had fallen, was covered with quick lime,
and flung into the Loire. Some maimed rites were previously performed
over it by Dourgin the royal chaplain, who could not mutter the _De
Profundis_ without a running and terrified commentary of “Christ!--the
awful sight!” Guise’s second cardinal-brother and the Archbishop of
Lyons were murdered on the following day; but the lesser victims were
forgotten in the fate which had fallen upon the more illustrious, yet
certainly more guilty personages.
The widow of Guise, soon after the dread event, gave birth to a son,
subsequently the Chevalier Louis de Guise. “The boy,” said the bereaved
lady, “came into the world with his hands clasped, as if praying for
vengeance on the assassins of his father.” Every male member of the
family whom the king could reach was now subjected to arrest. The young
heir of _Balafré_, Charles, now fourth Duke of Guise, was now placed in
close restriction in the Castle of Tours, where, sleeping or waking,
four living eyes unceasingly watched him--_voire même allant â la
garderobe_--but which eyes he managed to elude nevertheless.
In the meantime Rome excommunicated the murderer of her champion.
Paris put on mourning; officials were placed in the street to strip
and scourge even ladies who ventured to appear without some sign of
sorrow. Wax effigies of the king were brought into the churches,
and frantically stabbed by the priests at the altar. The priests
then solemnly paraded the streets, chanting as they went, “May God
extinguish the Valois!”
The whole city broke into insurrection, and the brother of Guise, the
Duke de Mayenne, placed himself at the head of the “league,” whose
object was the deposing of the king, and the transferring of the crown
to a child of Lorraine. In the contest which ensued, Valois and Navarre
united against the Guisards, and carried victory with them wherever
they raised their banners. The exultation of Henri III. was only
mitigated by the repeated Papal summonses received by him to repair to
Rome, and there answer for his crime.
Henri of Navarre induced him to rather think of gaining Paris than of
mollifying the Pope; and he was so occupied when the double vengeance
of the church and the house of Guise overtook him in the very moment of
victory.
The Duchess de Montpensier, sister of the slaughtered duke, had made no
secret of her intentions to have public revenge for the deed privately
committed, whereby she had lost a brother. There was precaution enough
taken that she should not approach the royal army or the king’s
quarters; but a woman and a priest rendered all precautions futile.
The somewhat gay duchess was on unusually intimate terms with a young
monk, named Jacques Clement. This good Brother was a fanatic zealot for
his church, and a rather too ardent admirer of the duchess, who turned
both sentiments to her own especial purpose. She whispered in his ears
a promise, to secure the fulfilment of which, he received with furious
haste, the knife which was placed in his hands by the handsomest
woman in France. It is said that knife is still preserved, a precious
treasure, at Rome.
However this may be, on the 1st of August, 1589, the young Brother,
with a weapon hid in the folds of his monkish gaberdine, and with a
letter in his hand, sought and obtained access to the king. He went
straightforward to his butcher’s work, and had scarcely passed beneath
the roof of the royal tent before he had buried the steel deep in the
monarch’s bosom. He turned to fly with hot haste to the lady from whom
he had received his commission; but a dozen swords and pikes thrust
life out of him ere he had made three steps in the direction of his
promised recompence.
She who had engaged herself to pay for the crime cared for neither
victim. She screamed indeed, but it was with a hysteric joy that
threatened to slay her, and which was only allayed by the thought that
the last King of the Valois race did not know that he had died by a
dagger directed by a sister of Guise.
In testimony of her exultation she distributed green scarfs, the
color of Lorraine, to the people of Paris. She brought up from the
provinces the mother of Clement, to whom was accorded the distinction
of a triumphal entry. Priests and people worshipped the mother of the
assassin as she passed wonderingly on her way; and they blasphemously
saluted her with the chanted words, “Blessed be the womb that bare him,
and the paps that gave him suck.” She was led to the seat of honor at
the table of Guise, and Rome sheltered the infamy of the assassin, and
revealed its own, by pronouncing his work to be a god-like act. By
authority of the Vatican, medals were struck in memory and honor of
the dead; but the Huguenots who read thereon the murderer’s profession
and name--_Frère Jacques Clement_--ingeniously discovered therein the
anagrammatic interpretation “_C’est l’enfer qui m’a crée_”--“It is hell
that created me.”
The last Valois, with his last breath, had named the Protestant Henri
of Navarre as his legal successor to the throne; but between Henri and
his inheritance there stood Rome and the Guise faction. Then ensued
the successive wars of the League, during which the heavy Mayenne
suffered successive defeats at the hands of Henri of the snowy plume.
While the contest was raging, the people trusted to the pulpits for
their intelligence from the scene of action. From those pulpits was
daily uttered more mendacity in one hour than finds expression in all
the horse-fairs of the United Kingdom in a year. When famine decimated
those who lived within the walls, the people were reduced to live
upon a paste made from human bones, and which they called “Madame de
Montpensier’s cake.”
Henri of Navarre, their deliverer, did not arrive before the gates
of Paris without trouble. In 1521, Charles of Guise, the young Duke,
had escaped most gallantly, in open day, from the Castle of Tours, by
sliding from the ramparts, down a rope, which simply blistered his
hands and made a rent in his hose. He was speedily accoutred and in the
field, with Spain in his rear to help him. Now, he was making a dash at
Henri’s person; and, anon, leaping from his camp-bed to escape him. At
other times he was idle, while his uncle Mayenne pursued the cherished
object of their house--that crown which was receding from them more
swiftly than ever. For the alert Bourbon, the slow and hard-drinking
Mayenne was no match. The latter thought once to catch the former in
his lady’s bower, but the wakeful lover was gayly galloping back to
his quarters before the trumpets of Mayenne had sounded to “boot and
saddle.” “Mayenne,” said the Pope, “sits longer at table than Henri
lies in bed.”
The gates of Paris were open to Henri on the 21st of March, 1591.
Old Cardinal Pellevi died of disgust and indignation, on hearing of
the fact. The Duchess of Montpensier, after tearing her hair, and
threatening to swoon, prudently concluded, with Henry IV., not only
her own peace, but that of her family. The chief members of the house
of Guise were admitted into places of great trust, to the injury
of more deserving individuals. The young Duke de Guise affected a
superabundant loyalty. In return, the King not only gave him the
government of several chief towns, but out of compliment to him forbade
the exercise of Protestant worship within the limits of the Duke’s
government! Such conduct was natural to a King, who to secure his
throne had abandoned his faith; who lightly said that he had no cannon
so powerful as the canon of the mass, and who was destitute of most
virtues save courage and good-nature. The latter was abused by those
on whom it was lavished; and the various assaults upon his life were
supposed to be directed by those very Guises, on whom he had showered
places, pensions, and pardons, which they were constantly needing and
continually deriding.
The young Duke of Guise enjoyed, among other appointments, that of
Governor of Marseilles. He was light-hearted, selfish, vain, and
cruel. He hanged his own old partisans in the city, as enemies to
the king; and he made his name for ever infamous by the seduction of
the beautiful and noble orphan-girl, Marcelle de Castellane, whom he
afterward basely abandoned, and left to die of hunger. He sent her
a few broad pieces by the hands of a lacquey; but the tardy charity
was spurned, and the poor victim died. He had little time to think of
her at the brilliant court of the first Bourbon, where he and those
of his house struggled to maintain a reputation which had now little
to support it, but the memories of the past--and many of those were
hardly worth appealing to. He was a mere fine gentleman, bold withal,
and therewith intriguing; ever hoping that the fortunes of his house
might once more turn and bring it near a throne, and in the meantime,
making himself remarkable for his vanity, his airs of greatness, and
his affectation. Brave as he was, he left his brothers, the cardinal
and chevalier, to draw their swords and settle the quarrels which were
constantly raging on disputed questions touching the assumed Majesty of
the House of Guise.
The streets of Paris formed the stage on which these bloody tragedies
were played, but they, and all other pretensions, were suppressed
by that irresistible putter-down of such nuisances--the Cardinal de
Richelieu. He used the sword of Guise as long as it was needed, but
when Charles became troublesome the Cardinal not only banished him, but
wounded the pride of his family by placing garrisons in the hitherto
sovereign duchy of Lorraine. When Cardinal Fleury subsequently annexed
Lorraine itself to the territory of France, the Guises thought the
world was at an end. The universe, however, survived the shock.
Duke Charles died in exile at Cune, near Sienne, in the year 1640. Of
his ten children by the Duchess de Joyeuse, he left five surviving. He
was succeeded by Henri, the eldest, who was bishop and cardinal. He had
been raised to the episcopate while yet in the arms of his wet-nurse;
and he was in frocks when on his long curls was placed the scarlet hat
of a cardinal. He was twenty years of age when he became Duke of Guise.
He at once flung away all he possessed of his religious profession--its
dress and titles, and walked abroad, spurs on his heels, a plume in his
cap, and a long sword and a bad heart between!
The whole life of this chivalrous scoundrel was a romance, no portion
of which reflects any credit on the hero. He had scarcely reached the
age of manhood, when he entered into a contract of marriage with the
beautiful Anne of Gonzaga. He signed the compact, not in ink, but
with his own blood, calling Heaven to witness, the while, that he
would never address a vow to any other lady. The breath of perjury had
scarcely passed his lips when he married the Countess of Bossu, and he
immediately abandoned _her_ to sun himself in the eyes of Mademoiselle
de Pons--an imperious mistress, who squandered the property he lavished
on her, and boxed the ex-cardinal’s ears, when he attempted, with
degrading humility, to remonstrate with her for bringing down ruin upon
his estate.
He was as disloyal to his King as to his “lady;” he tampered with
rebellion, was sentenced to death, and was pardoned. But a state of
decent tranquillity agreed ill with his constitution. To keep that and
his nerves from rusting, he one day drew his sword in the street, upon
the son of Coligny, whose presence seemed a reproach to him, and whom
he slew on the spot. He wiped his bloody rapier on his mantle, and
betook himself for a season to Rome, where he intrigued skilfully, but
fruitlessly, in order to obtain the tiara for the brother of Mazarin.
Apathy would now have descended upon him, but for a voice from the city
of Naples, which made his swelling heart beat with a violence that
almost threatened to kill.
Masaniello had just concluded his brief and mad career. The Neapolitans
were not, on that account, disposed to submit again to Spain. They were
casting about for a King, when Guise presented himself. This was in
the year 1647. He left France in a frail felucca, with a score of bold
adventurers wearing the colors of Lorraine, intertwined with “buff,” in
compliment to the Duke’s mistress. The Church blessed the enterprise.
The skiff sped unharmed through howling storms and thundering Spanish
fleets; and when the Duke stepped ashore at Naples, and mounted a
charger, the shouting populace who preceded him, burnt incense before
the new-comer, as if he had been a coming god.
For love and bravery, this Guise was unequalled. He conquered all his
foes, and made vows to all the ladies. In love he lost, however, all
the fruits of bravery. Naples was but a mock Sardanapalian court, when
the Spaniards at length mustered strongly enough to attack the new,
bold, but enervated King. They took him captive, and held him, during
four years, a prisoner in Spain. He gained liberty by a double lie, the
common coin of Guise. He promised to reveal to the Court of Madrid the
secrets of the Court of Paris; and bound himself by bond and oath never
to renew his attempt on Naples. His double knavery, however, brought
him no profit. At length, fortune seeming to disregard the greatness
of his once highly-favored house, this restless reprobate gradually
sunk into a mere court beau, passing his time in powdering his peruke,
defaming reputations, and paying profane praise to the patched and
painted ladies of the palace. He died before old age, like most of the
princes of his house: and in his fiftieth year this childless man left
his dignity and an evil name to his nephew, Louis Joseph.
The sixth Duke bore his greatness meekly and briefly. He was a
kind-hearted gentleman, whose career of unobtrusive usefulness was cut
short by small-pox in 1671. When he died, there lay in the next chamber
an infant in the cradle. This was his little son Joseph, not yet twelve
months old, and all unconscious of his loss, in a father; or of his
gain, in a somewhat dilapidated coronet. On his young brow that symbol
of his earthly rank rested during only four years. The little Noble
then fell a victim to the disease which had carried off his sire, and
made of himself a Duke--the last, the youngest, the most innocent, and
the happiest of the race.
During a greater portion of the career of the Dukes, priest and
swordsman in the family had stood side by side, each menacing to the
throne; the one in knightly armor, the other in the dread panoply
of the Church. Of the seven ducal chieftains of the house, there is
only one who can be said to have left behind him a reputation for
harmlessness; and perhaps that was because he lived at a time when he
had not the power to be offensive. The boy on the mule, in 1506, and
the child in the cradle, in 1676, are two pleasant extremes of a line
where all between is, indeed, fearfully attractive, but of that quality
also which might make not only men but angels weep.
It must be confessed that the Dukes of Guise played for a high prize;
and lost it. More than once, however, they were on the very point
of grasping the attractive but delusive prize. If they were so near
triumph, it was chiefly through the co-operation of their respective
brothers, the proud and able Cardinals. The Dukes were representatives
of brute force; the Cardinals, of that which is far stronger, power of
intellect. The former often spoiled their cause by being demonstrative.
The latter never trusted to words when silver served their purpose
equally well. When they _did_ speak, it was with effective brevity.
We read of a Lacedemonian who was fined for employing three words
to express what might have been as effectually stated in two. No
churchman of the house of Guise ever committed the fault of the
Lacedemonian.
Cardinal John of Lorraine was the brother of the first Duke Claude.
When the latter was a boy, riding his mule into France, John was the
young Bishop-coadjutor of Metz. He was little more than two years
old when he was first appointed to this responsible office. He was a
Cardinal before he was out of his teens; and in his own person was
possessed of twelve bishoprics and archbishoprics. Of these, however,
he modestly retained but three, namely, Toul, Narbonne, and Alby--as
they alone happened to return revenues worth acceptance. Not that he
was selfish, seeing that he subsequently applied for, and received the
Archbishopric of Rheims, which he kindly held for his nephew Charles,
who was titular thereof, at the experienced age of ten. His revenues
were enormous, and he was for ever in debt. He was one of the most
skilful negotiators of his time; but whether deputed to emperor or
pope, he was seldom able to commence his journey until he had put in
pledge three or four towns, in order to raise money to defray his
expenses. His zeal for what he understood as religion was manifested
during the short but bloody campaign against the Protestants of
Alsatia, where he accompanied his brother. At the side of the Cardinal,
on the field of battle, stood the Apostolic Commissary, and a staff of
priestly aides-de-camp. While some of these encouraged the orthodox
troops to charge the Huguenots, the principal personages kept their
hands raised to Heaven; and when the pennons of the army of Reformers
had all gone down before the double cross of Lorraine, the Cardinal and
his ecclesiastical staff rode to the church of St. Nicholas and sang
_Te Deum laudamus_.
The chivalrous Cardinal was another man in his residence of the Hotel
de Cluny. Of this monastery he made a mansion, in which a Sybarite
might have dwelt without complaining. It was embellished, decorated,
and furnished with a gorgeousness that had its source at once in his
blind prodigality, his taste for the arts, and his familiar patronage
of artists. The only thing not to be found in this celebrated mansion
was the example of a good life. But how _could_ this example be found
in a prelate who assumed and executed the office of instructing the
maids of honor in their delicate duties. Do Thou says it was an
occupation for which he was pre-eminently fitted; and Brantome pauses,
in his gay illustrations of the truth of this assertion, to remark with
indignation, that if the daughters of noble houses arrived at court,
endowed with every maiden virtue, Cardinal John was the man to despoil
them of their dowry.
He was, nevertheless, not deficient in tastes and pursuits of a refined
nature. He was learned himself, and he loved learning in others. His
purse, when there was anything in it, was at the service of poor
scholars and of sages with great purposes in view. He who deemed
the slaughter of Protestant peasants a thing to thank God for, had
something like a heart for _clever_ sneerers at Papistry and also for
Protestants of talent. Thus he pleaded the cause of the amphibious
Erasmus, extended his protection to the evangelical Clement Marot,
and laughed and drank with Rabelais, the caustic curé of Meudon. He
was, moreover, the boon companion of Francis I., a man far less worthy
of his intimacy than the equivocating Erasmus, the gentle Marot, or
roystering Rabelais, who painted the manners of the court and church of
his day, in his compound characters of Gargantua and Panurge.
He was a liberal giver, but he gave with an ostentation for which
there is no warrant in the gospel. At one period of his life he walked
abroad with a game-bag full of crowns slung from his neck. On passing
beggars he bestowed, without counting, a rich alms, requesting prayers
in return. He was known as the “game-bag Cardinal.” On one occasion,
when giving largesse to a blind mendicant in Rome, the latter was so
astonished at the amount of the gift, that, pointing to the giver, he
exclaimed, “If thou art not Jesus Christ, thou art John of Lorraine.”
He was bold in his gallantry. When sent by Francis I. to negotiate some
political business with the pope, he passed through Piedmont, where
he was for a while the guest of the Duke and Duchess of Savoy. The
duchess, on the cardinal being presented, gravely offered her hand (she
was a Portuguese princess) to be kissed. John of Lorraine, however,
would not stoop so low, and made for her lips. A struggle ensued, which
was maintained with rude persistance on one side, and with haughty and
offended vigor on the other, until her highness’s head, being firmly
grasped within his eminence’s arm, the cardinal kissed the ruffled
princess two or three times on the mouth, and then, with an exultant
laugh, released her.
The second cardinal of this branch, Charles of Lorraine, was brother
of the second duke. He was the greatest man of his family, and the
most powerful of his age. His ambition was to administer the finances
of France, and he did so during three reigns, with an annual excess
of expenditure over income, of two millions and a half. He was rather
dishonest than incapable. His enemies threatened to make him account;
he silenced them with the sound of the tocsin of St. Bartholomew, and
when the slaughter was over he merrily asked for the presence of the
accusers who had intended to make him refund.
He was an accomplished hypocrite, and at heart a religious reformer.
At last he acknowledged to the leaders of the reformatory movement,
whom he admitted to his familiarity, that the Reformation was necessary
and warrantable; and yet policy made of him the most savage enemy that
Protestantism ever had in France. He urged on the king to burn noble
heretics rather than the common people; and when Henri was touched
with compassion, in his dying moments, for some Protestant prisoners
capitally condemned, the cardinal told him that the feeling came of the
devil, and that it was better they should perish. And they perished.
He introduced the Inquisition into France, and was made Grand
Inquisitor at the moment the country was rejoicing for the recovery of
Calais from the English. And this was the man who, at the Council of
Trent, advocated the celebration of divine worship in the vernacular
tongue. He was the friend of liberty to the Gallican church, but he
took the other side on finding that liberal advocacy periled his
chances of being pope. The living pope used and abused him. “I am
scandalized,” said his holiness, “at finding you still in the enjoyment
of the revenues of so many sees.” “I would resign them all,” said the
cardinal, “for a single bishopric.” “Which bishopric?” asked the pope.
“Marry!” exclaimed Cardinal Charles, “the bishopric of Rome.”
He was as haughty as he was aspiring. The Guise had induced the weak
Anthony of Navarre to turn Romanist; but the cardinal did not treat
that king with more courtesy on that account. One frosty morning, not
only did the princely priest keep the mountain king tarrying at his
garden gate for an audience, but when he went down to his majesty, he
listened, all befurred as he was, to the shivering monarch who humbly
preferred his suit, cap in hand.
He was covetous and haughty, but he sometimes found his match. His
niece, Mary Stuart, had quarreled with Catherine de Medicis, whose
especial wrath had been excited by Mary’s phrase applied to Catherine,
of “The Florentine tradeswoman.” The Scottish Queen resolved, after
this quarrel, to repair to the North. The cardinal was at her side
when she was examining her jewels, previously to their being packed
up. He tenderly remarked that the sea was dangerous, the jewels
costly, and that his niece could not do better than leave them in his
keeping. “Good uncle,” said the vivacious Mary, “I and my jewels travel
together. If I trust one to the sea, I may the other; and therewith,
_adieu!_” The cardinal bit his lips and blessed her.
Ranke is puzzled where to find the principal author of the massacre of
St. Bartholomew. There is no difficulty in the matter. The Guises had
appealed to the chances of battle to overcome their chief adversaries
in the kingdom. But for every Huguenot father slain, there arose
as many filial avengers as he had sons. The causes of quarrel were
individual as well as general. A Huguenot had slain the second Duke,
and his widow was determined to be avenged. The Cardinal was wroth
with the King for retaining Protestant archers in his body-guard. The
archers took an unclean vengeance, and defiled the pulpit in the Chapel
Royal, wherefrom the Cardinal was accustomed to denounce the doctrine
of their teachers. His Eminence formed the confederacy by which it was
resolved to destroy the enemy at a blow. To the general causes, I need
not allude. The plot itself was formed in Oliver Clisson’s house, in
Paris, known as “the Hotel of Mercy.” But the representatives of Rome
and Spain, united with those of France, met upon the frontier, and
there made the final arrangements which were followed by such terrible
consequences. When the stupendous deed was being done, the Cardinal
was absent from France; but he fairly took upon himself the guilt,
when he conferred the hand of his illegitimate daughter Anne d’Arne on
the officer Besme whose dagger had given the _first_ mortal stab to
Coligny, the chief of the immolated victims of that dreadful day--and
Rome approved.
As a public controversialist he shone in his dispute with Beza. Of
his pride, we have an illustration in what is recorded of him in the
Council of Trent. The Spanish embassador had taken a place, at mass,
above that of the embassador from France. Thereupon, the reverend
Cardinal raised such a commotion in the cathedral, and dwelt so loudly
and strongly in expletives, that divine worship was suspended, and the
congregation broke up in most admired disorder.
So at the coronation, in the Abbey of St. Dennis, of the Queen of
Charles IX. The poor, frail, Austrian Princess Elizabeth, after being
for hours on her knees, declared her incapacity for remaining any
longer without some material support from food or wine. The Cardinal
declared that such an irreligious innovation was not to be thought of.
He stoutly opposed, well-fed man that he was, the supplying of any
refreshment to the sinking Queen; and it was only when he reflected
that her life might be imperiled that he consented to “the smallest
quantity of something very light,” being administered to her.
He was the only man of his family who was not possessed of the knightly
virtue of bravery. He was greatly afraid of being assassinated.
In council, he was uncourteous. Thus, he once accused the famous
Chancellor le Hospital of wishing to be “the cock of the assembly,” and
when the grave chancellor protested against such language, the Cardinal
qualified him as “an old ram.” It may be added that, if he feared the
dagger directed by private vengeance, he believed himself protected
by the guardianship of Heaven, which more than once, as he averred,
carried him off in clouds and thunder, when assassins were seeking him.
He was wily enough to have said this, in order to deter all attempts at
violence directed against himself.
He died edifyingly, kissed Catherine de Medicis, and was believed by
the latter, to mysteriously haunt her, long after his death. The real
footing on which these two personages stood has yet to be discovered by
curious inquiries.
The Cardinal-brother of the third Duke, Louis of Lorraine, loved good
living, and was enabled at an early age to indulge his propensities,
out of the rich revenues which he derived from his numerous
ecclesiastical preferments. He held half a dozen abbeys while he was
yet in his cradle; and he was a bishop at the mature age of eighteen.
Just before his death, in 1598, when he was about fifty years of age,
he resigned his magnificent church appointments, in favor of his nephew
and namesake, who was to be a future Cardinal at the side of the
fourth Duke. Louis was a man of ability and of wit. He chose a device
for his own shield of arms. It consisted of nine zeros, with this apt
motto: “Hoc per se nihil est; sed si minimum addideris, maximum erit,”
intending, it is said, to imply that man was nothing till grace was
given him. He was kindly-dispositioned, loved his ease, was proud of
his church, and had a passion for the bottle. That was his religion.
His private life was not marked by worse traits than those that
characterized his kinsmen in the priesthood. He showed his affection
for his mother after a truly filial fashion, bequeathing to her all his
estates, in trust, to pay his debts.
The third duke had a second cardinal-brother, known as the Cardinal de
Guise, who was murdered by Henri III. He was an intriguer; but as brave
as any knight of his family. It was long before the king could find men
willing to strike a priest; and when they _were_ found, they approached
him again and again, before they could summon nerve wherewith to smite
him. After all, this second murder at Blois was effected by stratagem.
The cardinal was requested to accompany a messenger to the royal
presence. He complied with some misgiving, but when he found himself in
a dark corridor with four frowning soldiers, he understood his doom;
requested a few moments respite to collect his thoughts; and then,
enveloping his head in his outer robe, bade them execute their bloody
commission. He was instantly slain, without offering resistance, or
uttering a word.
This cardinal was father of five illegitimate sons, of whom the most
celebrated was the Baron of Ancerville, or, as he proudly designated
himself, “Bastard of Guise.”
By the side of the son of Balafré, Charles, the fourth duke, there
stood the last cardinal-brother who was able to serve his house, and
whose character presents any circumstance of note. This cardinal, if
he loved anything more than the bottle, was fondest of a battle. He
characteristically lost his life by both. He was present at the siege
of St. Jean d’Angely, held by the Protestants in the year 1621. It was
on the 20th of May; and the sun was shining with a power not known to
our severe springs. The cardinal fought like a fiend, and swore with
more than fiendish capacity. The time was high noon, and he himself was
in the noontide of his wondrous vigor, some thirty years of age. He was
laying about him in the bloody _mêlée_ which occurred in the suburb,
when he paused for awhile, panting for breath and streaming with
perspiration. He called for a flask of red wine, which he had scarcely
quaffed when he was seized with raging fever, which carried him off
within a fortnight. He was so much more addicted to knightly than to
priestly pursuits, that, at the time of his death, a negotiation was
being carried on to procure from the pope permission for the cardinal
to give up to his lay-brother, the Duc de Chevreuse, all his benefices,
and to receive in return the duke’s governorship of Auvergne. He was
for ever in the saddle, and never more happy than when he saw another
before him with a resolute foe firmly seated therein. He lived the life
of a soldier of fortune, or knight-errant; and when peace temporarily
reigned, he rode over the country with a band of followers, in search
of adventures, and always found them at the point of their swords. He
left the altar to draw on his boots, gird his sword to his hip, and
provoke his cousin De Nevers to a duel, by striking him in the face.
The indignant young noble regretted that the profession of his insulter
covered the latter with impunity, and recommended him, at the same
time, to abandon it, and to give De Nevers satisfaction. “To the devil
I have sent it already!” said the exemplary cardinal, “when I flung off
my frock, and belted on my sword:” and the two kinsmen would have had
their weapons in each other’s throat, but for the royal officers, who
checked their Christian amusement.
This roystering cardinal, who was interred with more pomp than if he
had been a great saint, or a merely honest man, left five children.
Their mother was Charlotte des Escar. They were recognised as
legitimate, on allegation that their parents had been duly married, on
papal dispensation. He was the last of the cardinals, and was as good a
soldier as any of the knights.
Neither the pride nor the pretensions of the house expired with either
Dukes or Cardinals. There were members of the family whose arrogance
was all the greater because they were not of the direct line of
succession. Their great ambition in little things was satisfied with
the privilege granted to the ladies of Guise, namely, the one which
they held in common with royal princesses, at being presented at court
previous to their marriage. This ambition gained for them, however,
the hatred of the nobles and the princes of the Church, and at length
caused a miniature insurrection in the palace at Versailles.
The occasion was the grand ball given in honor of the nuptials of
Marie Antoinette and the Dauphin. Louis XV. had announced that he
would open the brilliant scene by dancing a _minuet_ with Mlle. de
Lorraine, sister of the Prince de Lambesc. The uproar that ensued was
terrific. The entire body of nobility protested against such marked
precedence being allowed to the lady in question. The Archbishop of
Rheims placed himself at the head of the opposing movement; and,
assembling the indignant peerage, this successor of the Apostles, in
company with his episcopal brother from Noyon, came to the solemnly
important resolution, that between the princes of the blood-royal and
_haute noblesse_ there could be no intermediate rank; and that Mlle. de
Lorraine, consequently, could not take precedence of the female members
of the aristocracy, who had been presented. A memorial was drawn up.
The entire nobility, old and new, signed it eagerly; and the King was
informed that if he did not rescind his determination, no lady would
dance at the ball after the _minuet_ in question had been performed.
The King exerted himself to overcome the opposition: but neither
bishops nor baronesses would give way. The latter, on the evening of
the ball, walked about the grand apartments in undress, expressed
loudly their resolution not to dance, and received archiepiscopal
benison for their pious obstinacy. The matter was finally arranged by
compromise, whereby the Dauphin and the Count d’Artois were to select
partners among the nobility, and not, as was _de rigueur_, according
to the law of _minuets_, among princesses of their own rank. The
hour for opening the famous ball was retarded in order to give the
female insurrectionists time to dress, and ultimately all went off _à
merveille!_
With the Prince de Lambesc above-named, the race of Guise disappeared
altogether from the soil of France. He was colonel of the cavalry
regiment, _Royal Allemand_, which in 1789 came into collision with the
people. The Prince was engaged, with his men, in dispersing a seditious
mob. He struck one of the most conspicuous of the rioters with the flat
of his sword. This blow, dealt by a Guise, was the first given in the
great Revolution, and it helped to deprive Louis XVI. of his crown. The
Prince de Lambesc was compelled to fly from the country, to escape the
indignation of the people. Nearly three centuries before, his great
ancestor, the boy of the mule, had entered the kingdom, and founded a
family which increased in numbers and power against the throne, and
against civil and religious liberty. And now, the sole survivor of the
many who had sprung from this branch of Lorraine, as proud, too, as the
greatest of his house, having raised his finger against the freedom of
the mob, was driven into exile, to seek refuge for a time, and a grave
for age, on the banks of the distant Danube.
When Cardinal Fleury annexed the Duchy of Lorraine to France, it
was by arrangement with Austria; according to which, Francis, Duke
of Lorraine, received in exchange for his Duchy, the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany and the hand of Maria Theresa. Their heirs form the imperial
house of Hapsburgh-Lorraine. Such of my readers as have visited Nancy,
the capital of old Lorraine, will remember there the round chapel
near what is left of the old palace of the old Dukes. This chapel
contains the tombs of the principal of the twenty-nine Dukes who ruled
sovereignly in Lorraine. The expense of supporting the service and
fabric, altar and priests, connected with this chapel, is sustained
entirely by Austria. It is the only remnant preserved of the Lorraine
sovereignty of the olden time. The priests and _employes_ in the
edifice speak of Hapsburgh-Lorraine as _their_ house, to which they
owe exclusive homage. When I heard expression given to this sentiment,
I was standing in front of the tomb of that famous etcher, old Jean
Callot. The latter was a native of Nancy; and I could almost fancy
that his merry-looking lip curled with scorn at the display of this rag
of pride in behalf of the house of Lorraine.
With the story of part of that house I fear I may have detained the
reader too long. I will tell more briefly the shifting fortunes of a
material house, the knightly edifice of Rambouillet.
THE RECORD OF RAMBOUILLET.
“Imagine that this castle were your court,
And that you lay, for pleasure, here a space,
Not of compulsion or necessity.”--KIT MARLOWE.
Rambouillet is an old château where feudal knights once lived like
little kings. In its gardens Euphuism reigned supreme. It is a palace,
in whose chambers monarchs have feasted, and at whose gates they have
asked, when fugitives, for water and a crust of bread. It commenced
its career as a cradle of knights; it is finishing it as an asylum for
the orphan children of warriors. The commencement and finale are not
unworthy of one another; but, between the two, there have been some
less appropriate disposals of this old chevalier’s residence. For a
short period it was something between Hampton Court and Rosherville.
In the very place where the canons of the Sainte Chapelle were
privileged to kiss the cheeks of the Duchess of Burgundy, the denizens
of the Faubourg St. Antoine could revel, if they could only pay for
their sport. Where the knightly D’Amaurys held their feudal state,
where King Francis followed the chase, and the Chevalier Florian
sang, and Penthièvre earned immortality by the practice of heavenly
virtues; where Louis enthroned Du Barry, and Napoleon presided over
councils, holding the destiny of thrones in the balance of his will,
there the sorriest mechanic had, with a few francs in his hand,
the right of entrance. The gayest _lorettes_ of the capital smoked
their _cigarettes_ where Julie D’Angennes fenced with love; and the
bower of queens and the refuge of an empress rang with echoes, born
of light-heartedness and lighter wine. Louis Napoleon has, however,
established a better order of things.
To a Norman chief, of knightly character, if not of knightly title,
and to the Norman tongue, _Rabouillet_, as it used to be written, or
the “Rabbit warren,” owes the name given to the palace, about thirteen
leagues from Paris, and to the village which clusters around it. The
former is now a quaint and confused pile, the chief tower of which
alone is now older than the days of Hugues Capet. Some authors describe
the range of buildings as taking the form of a horseshoe; but the hoof
would be indescribable to which a shoe so shaped could be fittingly
applied. The changes and additions have been as much without end as
without taste. In its present architectural entirety it wears as motley
an aspect as Cœur de Lion might, were he to walk-down Pall Mall with a
modern _paletót_ over his suit of complete steel.
The early masters of Rambouillet were a knightly, powerful but
uninteresting race. It is sufficient to record of the chivalric
D’Amaurys that they held it, to the satisfaction of few people but
themselves, from 1003 to 1317. Further record these sainted proprietors
require not. We will let them sleep on undisturbedly, their arms
crossed on their breast, in the peace of a well-merited oblivion.
_Requiescat!_
One relic of the knightly days, however, survived to the period of the
first French Revolution. In the domain of Rambouillet was the fief of
Montorgueil. It was held by the prior of St. Thomas d’Epernon, on the
following service: the good prior was bound to present himself yearly
at the gate of Rambouillet, bareheaded, with a garland on his brow, and
mounted on a piebald horse, touching whom it was bad service if the
animal had not four white feet.
The prior, fully armed like a knight, save that his white gloves were
of a delicate texture, carried a flask of wine at his saddle-bow. In
one hand he held a cake, to the making of which had gone a bushel of
flour--an equal measure of wheat was also the fee of the lord. The
officers of the latter examined narrowly into the completeness of the
service. If they pronounced it imperfect the prior of Epernon was
mulcted of the revenues of his fief for the year ensuing.
In later days the ceremony lost much of its meaning; but down to the
period of its extinction, the wine, the cake, and the garland, were
never wanting; and the maidens of Rambouillet were said to be more
exacting than the baronial knights themselves, from whom many of them
were descended. The festival was ever a joyous one, as became a feudal
lord, whose kitchen fireplace was of such dimensions that a horseman
might ride into it, and skim the pot as he stood in his stirrups.
It is a singular thing that scarcely a monarch has had anything to
do with the knightly residence of Rambouillet, but mischance has
befallen him. The kings were unjust to the knights, and the latter
found for the former a Nemesis. Francis I. was hunting in the woods of
Rambouillet when he received the news of the death of Henry VIII. that
knight-sovereign, with whom he had struggled on the Field of the Cloth
of Gold. With the news, he received a shock, which the decay sprung
from various excesses could not resist. He entered the chateau as the
guest of the Chevalier d’Angennes, in whose family the proprietorship
then resided. The chamber is still shown wherein he died, roaring in
agony, and leaving proof of its power over him, in the pillow, which,
in mingled rage and pain, he tore into strips with his teeth.
The French author, Leon Gozlau, has given a full account of the
extraordinary ceremonies which took place in honor of Francis after
his death. In front of the bed on which lay the body of the king,
says M. Gozlau, “was erected an altar covered with embroidered cloth;
on this stood two gold candlesticks, bearing two lights from candles
of the whitest wax. The cardinals, prelates, knights, gentlemen, and
officers, whose duty it was to keep watch, were stationed around the
_catafalque_, seated on chairs of cloth of gold. During the eleven
days that the ceremony lasted, the strictest etiquette of service was
observed about the king, as if he had been a living monarch in presence
of his court. His table was regularly laid out for dinner, by the
side of his bed. A cardinal blessed the food. A gentleman in waiting
presented the ewer to the figure of the dead king. A knight offered him
the cup mantling with wine: and another wiped his lips and fingers.
These functions, with many others, took place by the solemn and subdued
light of the funeral torches.”
The after ceremonies were quite as curious and extraordinarily
magnificent; but it is unnecessary to rest upon them. A king, in not
much better circumstances than Francis, just before his death, slept
in the castle for one night in the year 1588. It was a night in May,
and the knight proprietor Jean d’Angennes, was celebrating the marriage
of his daughter. The ceremony was interrupted by a loud knocking
at the castle gates. The wary Jean looked first at the clamorous
visitors through the wicket, whence he descried Henri III. flurried,
yet laughing, seated in an old carriage, around which mustered dusty
horsemen, grave cavaliers, and courtiers scantily attired. Some had
their points untrussed, and many a knight was without his boots. An
illustrious company, in fact; but there were not two nobles in their
united purses. Jean threw open his portals to a king and his knights
flying from De Guise. The latter had got possession of Paris, and Henri
and his friends had escaped in order to establish the regal authority
at Chartres. The two great adversaries met at Blois: and after the
assassination of Guise, the king, with his knights and courtiers,
gallopped gayly past Rambouillet on his return to Paris, to profit
by his own wickedness, and the folly of his trusty and well-beloved
cousin, the duke.
Not long before this murder was committed, in 1588, the Hotel Pisani
in Paris was made jubilant by the birth of that Catherine de Vivonnes,
who was at once both lovely and learned. She lived to found that
school of lingual purists whose doings are so pleasantly caricatured
in the _Précieuses Ridicules_ of Molière. Catherine espoused that
noble chevalier, Charles d’Angennes, Lord of Rambouillet, who was made
a marquis for her sake. The chevalier’s lady looked upon marriage
rather as a closing act of life than otherwise; but then _hers_ had
been a busy youth. In her second lustre she knew as many languages as
a _lustrum_ has years. Ere her fourth had expired, her refined spirit
and her active intellect were disgusted and weary with the continual
sameness and the golden emptiness of the court. She cared little to
render homage to a most Christian king who disregarded the precepts of
Christianity; or to be sullied by homage from a monarch, which could
not be rendered without insult to a virtuous woman. Young Catherine
preferred, in the summer eve, to lie under the shadow of her father’s
trees, which once reared a world of leafy splendor on the spot now
occupied by the Palais Royal. There she read works coined by great
minds. During the long winter evenings she lay in stately ceremony
upon her bed, an unseemly custom of the period, and there, surrounded
by chevaliers, wits, and philosophers, enjoyed and encouraged the
“cudgelling of brains.” At her suggestion the old hotel was destroyed,
and after her designs a new one built; and when, in place of the old
dark panelling, obscurely seen by casements that kept out the light,
she covered the walls of her reception-rooms with sky-blue velvet,
and welcomed the sun to shine upon them, universal France admiringly
pronounced her mad, incontinently caught the infection, and broke out
into an incurable disease of fancy and good taste.
The fruit of the union above spoken of was abundant, but the very jewel
in that crown of children, the goodliest arrow in the family quiver,
was that Julie d’Angennes who shattered the hearts of all the amorous
chevaliers of France, and whose fame has, perhaps, eclipsed that of
her mother. Her childhood was passed at the feet of the most eminent
men in France; not merely aristocratic knights, but as eminent wits
and philosophers. By the side of her cradle, Balzac enunciated his
polished periods, and Marot his tuneful rhymes, Voiture his conceits,
and Vaugelas his learning. She lay in the arms of Armand Duplessis,
_then_ almost as innocent as the little angel who unconsciously smiled
on that future ruthless Cardinal de Richelieu; and her young ear heard
the elevated measure of Corneille’s “Melite.” To enumerate the circles
which was wont to assemble within the Hôtel Rambouillet in Paris, or to
loiter in the gardens and hills of the country château, whose history
I am sketching, would occupy more space than can be devoted to such
purpose. The circle comprised parties who were hitherto respectively
exclusive. Knights met citizen wits, to the great edification of the
former; and Rambouillet afforded an asylum to the persecuted of all
parties. They who resisted Henry IV. found refuge within its hospitable
walls, and many nobles and chevaliers who survived the bloody
oppression of Richelieu, sought therein solace, and balm for their
lacerated souls.
Above all, Madame de Rambouillet effected the social congregation of
the two sexes. Women were brought to encounter male wits, sometimes
to conquer, always to improve them. The title to enter was, worth
joined with ability. The etiquette was pedantically strict, as may be
imagined by the case of Voiture, who, on one occasion, after conducting
Julie through a suite of rooms, kissed her hand on parting from her,
and was very near being expelled for ever from Rambouillet, as the
reward of his temerity. Voiture subsequently went to Africa. On his
return, he was not admitted to the illustrious circle, but on condition
that he narrated his adventures, and to these the delighted assembly
listened, all attired as gods and goddesses, and gravely addressing
each other as such. Madame de Rambouillet presided over all as Diana,
and the company did her abundant homage. This, it is true, was for the
nonce; but there was a permanent travesty notwithstanding. It was the
weak point of this assembly that not only was every member of it called
by a feigned, generally a Greek, name, but the same rule was applied
to most men and things beyond it; nay, the very oaths, for there were
little expletives occasionally fired off in ecstatic moments, were all
by the heathen gods. Thus, as a sample, France was _Greece_. Paris was
_Athens_; and the Place Royale was only known at Rambouillet as the
_Place Dorique_. The name of Madame de Rambouillet was _Arthemise_;
that of Mademoiselle de Scudery was _Aganippe_; and _Thessalonica_
was the purified cognomen of the Duchess de Tremouille. But out of
such childishness resulted great good, notwithstanding that Molière
laughed, and that the Academie derided Corneille and all others of the
innovating coterie. The times were coarse; things, whatever they might
be, were called by their names; ears polite experienced offence, and at
Rambouillet periphrasis was called upon to express what the language
otherwise conveyed offensively by the medium of a single word. The
idea was good, although it was abused. Of its quality some conjecture
may be formed by one or two brief examples; and I may add, by the way,
that the French Academy ended by adopting many of the terms which it at
first refused to acknowledge. Popularity had been given to much of the
remainder, and thus a great portion of the vocabulary of Rambouillet
has become idiomatic French. “Modeste,” “friponne,” and “secrète,” were
names given to the under-garments of ladies, which we now should not be
afraid to specify. The sun was the “amiable illuminator;” to “fulfil
the desire which the chair had to embrace you,” was simply to “sit
down.” Horses were “plushed coursers;” a carriage was “four cornices,”
and chairmen were “baptized mules.” A bed was the “old dreamer;” a hat,
the “buckler against weather;” to laugh was to “lose your gravity;”
dinner was the “meridional necessity;” the ear was the “organ, or the
gate of hearing;” and the “throne of modesty” was the polished phrase
for a fair young cheek. There is nothing very edifying in all this,
it is true; but the fashion set people thinking, and good ensued. Old
indelicacies disappeared, and the general, spoken language was refined.
If any greater mental purity ensued from the change, I can scarcely
give the credit of it to the party at Rambouillet, for, with all their
proclaimed refinement, their nicety was of the kind described in the
well-known maxim of the Dean of St. Patrick.
One of the most remarkable men in the circle of Rambouillet, was the
Marquis de Salles, Knight of St. Louis. He was the second son of the
Duke de Montausier, and subsequently inherited the title. At the period
of his father’s death, his mother found herself with little dower but
her title. She exerted herself, however, courageously. She instructed
her children herself, brought them up in strict Huguenot principles,
and afterward sent them to the Calvinistic college at Sedan, where the
young students were famous for the arguments which they maintained
against all comers--and they were many--who sought to convert them to
popery. At an early age he acquired the profession of arms, the only
vocation for a young and portionless noble; and he shed his blood
liberally for a king who had no thanks to offer to a protestant.
His wit, refinement, and gallant bearing, made him a welcome guest
at Rambouillet, where his famous attachment to Julie, who was three
years his senior, gave matter for conversation to the whole of France.
Courageous himself, he loved courage in others, and his love for Julie
d’Angennes, was fired by the rare bravery exhibited by her in tending
a dying brother, the infectious nature of whose disorder had made even
his hired nurses desert him. In the season of mourning, the whole
court, led by royalty, went and did homage to this pearl of sisters.
But no admiration fell so sweetly upon her ear as that whispered to
her by the young Montausier. One evidence of his chivalrous gallantry
is yet extant. It is in that renowned volume called the “Guirlande
de Julie,” of which he was the projector, and in the accomplishing
of which, knights, artists, and poets, lent their willing aid. It
is superb vellum tome. The frontispiece is the garland or wreath,
from which the volume takes its name. Each subsequent page presents
one single flower from this wreath (there are eighteen of them) with
verses in honor of Julie, composed by a dozen and a half of very
insipid poets. This volume was sold some years ago to Madame D’Uzes, a
descendant of the family, when its cost amounted to nearly one thousand
francs per page.
As everything was singular at Rambouillet, so of course was the wooing
of Julie and her knight. It was very “long a-doing,” and we doubt if in
the years of restrained ardor, of fabulous constancy, of reserve, and
sad yet pleasing anguish, the lover ever dared to kiss the hand of his
mistress, or even to speak of marriage, but by a diplomatic paraphrase.
The goddesses of Rambouillet entertained an eloquent horror of the
gross indelicacy of such unions, for which Molière has whipped them
with a light but cutting scourge. The lover, moreover, was a Huguenot.
What was he to do? Like a true knight he rushed to the field, was
the hero of two brilliant campaigns, and then wooed her as knight of
half-a-dozen new orders, marechal-du-camp, and Governor of Alsatia.
The nymph was still coy. The knight again buckled on his armor, and in
the mêlée at Dettingen was captured by the foe. After a two months’
detention, he was ransomed by his mother, for two thousand crowns. He
re-entered Rambouillet lieutenant-general of the armies of France, and
he asked for the recompense of his fourteen years of constancy and
patience. Julie was shocked, for she only thought how brief had been
the period of their acquaintance. At length the marquis made profession
of Romanism, and thereby purchased the double aid of the church and
the throne. The king, the queen, Cardinal Mazarin, and a host of less
influential members, besought her to relent, and the shy beauty at
length reluctantly surrendered. The marriage took place in 1645, and
Julie was then within sight of forty years of age. The young chevaliers
and wits had, you may be sure, much to say thereupon. The elder _beaux
esprit_ looked admiringly; but a world of whispered wickedness went on
among them, nevertheless.
Montausier, for he now was duke and knight of the Holy Ghost, became
the reigning sovereign over the literary circle at Rambouillet, during
the declining years of Julie’s mother. Catherine died in 1665, after
a long retirement, and almost forgotten by the sons of those whom she
once delighted to honor. The most delicate and the most difficult
public employment ever held by the duke, was that of governor to the
dauphin. This office he filled with singular ability. He selected
Bossuet and Huet to instruct the young prince in the theoretical wisdom
of books, but the practical teaching was imparted by himself. Many a
morning saw the governor and his pupil issue from the gilded gates of
Versailles to take a course of popular study among the cottages and
peasantry of the environs.
The heart of the true knight was shattered by the death of Julie in
1671, at the age of sixty-four. He survived her nineteen years. They
were passed in sorrow, but also in continual active usefulness; and
when, at length, in 1690, the grave of his beloved wife opened to
receive him, Flechier pronounced a fitting funeral oration over both.
The daughter and only surviving child of this distinguished pair
gave, with her hand, the lordship of Rambouillet to the Duc d’Uzes,
“Chevalier de l’ordre du Saint Esprit.” The knightly family of
D’Angennes had held it for three centuries. It was in 1706 destined to
become royal. Louis XIV. then purchased it for the Count of Toulouse,
legitimatized son of himself and Madame de Montespan. This count was
knight and Grand Admiral of France, at the age of five years. In 1704,
he had just completed his twenty-fifth year. He is famous for having
encountered the fleet commanded by Rook and Shovel, after the capture
of Gibraltar, and for having what the cautious Russian generals call,
“withdrawn out of range,” when he found himself on the point of being
utterly beaten. He behaved himself as bravely as any knight could have
done; but the government was not satisfied with him. Pontchartrain, the
Minister of Marine, recalled him, sent him to Rambouillet, and left him
there to shoot rabbits, and like Diocletian, raise cabbages.
His son and successor, who was the great Duke de Penthièvre, commenced
his knighthood early. He was even made Grand Admiral of France before
he knew salt water from fresh. He studied naval tactics as Uncle Toby
and the corporal fought their old battles--namely, with toy batteries.
In the duke’s case, it was, moreover, with little vessels and small
sailors all afloat in a miniature fish-pond, made to represent, for the
nonce, the mighty and boundless deep. This grand admiral never ventured
on the ocean, but he bore himself chivalrously on the bloody field of
Dettingen, and he won imperishable laurels by his valor at Fontenoy.
For such scenes and their glories, however, the _preux chevalier_ cared
but little. Ere the French _Te Deum_ was sung upon the last-named
field, he hastened back to his happy hearth at home. Rambouillet was
then the abiding-place of all the virtues. There the home-loving knight
read the Scriptures while the duchess sat at his side making garments
for the poor. There, the Chevalier Florian, his secretary and friend,
meditated those graceful rhymes and that harmonious prose, in which
human nature is in pretty masquerade, walking about like Watteau’s
figures, in vizors, brocades, high heels, and farthingales. When the
duchess died in child-birth, of her sixth child, her husband withdrew
to La Trappe where, among other ex-soldiers, he for weeks prayed and
slept upon the bare ground. Five out of his children died early. Among
them was the chivalrous but intemperate Prince de Lamballe, who died
soon after his union with the unhappy princess who fell a victim to
those fierce French revolutionists--who were ordinarily so amiable,
according to M. Louis Blanc, that they were never so delighted as when
they could rescue a human being from death.
It was by permission of the duke, who refused to sell his house,
that Louis XV. built in the adjacent forest the hunting-lodge of St.
Hubert. An assemblage of kings, courtiers, knights and ladies there
met, at whose doings the good saint would have blushed, could he have
witnessed them. One night the glittering crowd had galloped there for a
carouse, when discovery was made that the materials for supper had been
forgotten, or left behind at Versailles. “Let us go to Penthièvre!” was
the universal cry; but the king looked grave at the proposition. Hunger
and the universal opposition, however, overcame him. Forth the famished
revellers issued, and played a _reveillée_ on the gates of Rambouillet
loud enough to have startled the seven sleepers. “Penthièvre is
in bed!” said one. “He is conning his breviary!” sneered another.
“Gentlemen, he _is_, probably, at prayers,” said the king, who, like an
Athenian, could applaud the virtue which he failed to practise. “Let
us withdraw,” added the exemplary royal head of the order of the Holy
Ghost. “If we do,” remarked Madame du Barry, “I shall die of hunger;
let us knock again.” To the storm which now beset the gates, the latter
yielded; and as they swung open, they disclosed the duke, who, girt
in a white apron, and with a ladle in his hand, received his visiters
with the announcement that he was engaged in helping to make soup for
the poor. The monarch and his followers declared that no poor could
be more in need of soup than they were. They accordingly seized the
welcome supply, devoured it with the appetite of those for whom it was
intended, and paid the grave knight who was their host, in the false
coin of pointless jokes. How that host contrasted with his royal guest,
may be seen in the fact told of him, when a poor woman kissed his
hand, and asked a favor as he was passing in a religious procession.
“In order of religion before God,” said he, “I am your brother. In all
other cases, for ever your friend.” The Order of the Holy Ghost never
had a more enlightened member than he.
In 1785 Louis XVI. in some sort compelled him to part with Rambouillet
for sixteen million of francs. He retired to Eu, taking with him the
bodies of the dead he had loved when living. There were nine of that
silent company; and as the Duke passed with them on his sad and silent
way, the clouds wept over them, and the people crowded the long line of
road, paying their homage in honest tears.
Then came that revolutionary deluge which swept from Rambouillet the
head of the order of the Holy Ghost, and the entire chapter with him;
and which dragged from the mead and the dairy the queen and princesses,
whose pastime it was to milk the cows in fancy dresses. The Duke de
Penthièvre died of the Revolution, yet not through personal violence
offered to himself. The murder of his daughter-in-law, the Princess
de Lamballe, was the last fatal stroke; and he died forgiving her
assassins and his own.
During the first Republic there was nothing more warlike at Rambouillet
than the merino flocks which had been introduced by Louis XVI. for the
great benefit of his successors. A scene of some interest occurred
there in the last days of the empire.
On the 27th of March, 1814, the empress Maria Louisa with the King of
Rome in her arms, his silver-gray jacket bearing those ribboned emblems
of chivalry which may still be seen upon it at the Louvre, sought
shelter there, while she awaited the issue of the bloody struggle which
her own father was maintaining against her husband. The empress passed
three days at Rambouillet, solacing her majestic anguish by angling for
carp. Ultimately, the Emperor of Austria entered the hall where his
imperial son-in-law had made so many Knights of the Legion of Honor,
to carry off his daughter and the disinherited heir. As the three sat
that night together before the wood-fire, the Arch-Duchess Maria-Louisa
talked about the teeth of the ex-king of Rome, while two thousand
Austrian soldiers kept watch about the palace.
The gates had again to be open to a fugitive. On the last of the “three
glorious days” of July a poor, pale, palsied fugitive rushed into
the chateau, obtained, not easily, a glass of water and a crust, and
forthwith hurried on to meet captivity at last. This was the Prince
de Polignac. Two hours after he had left came the old monarch Charles
X., covered with dust, dropping tears like rain, bewildered with past
memories and present realities, and loudly begging for food for the two
“children of France,” the offspring of his favorite son, the Duke de
Berri. In his own palace a king of France was compelled to surrender
his own service of plate, before the village would sell him bread in
return. When refreshed therewith, he had strength to abdicate in favor
of his son, the Duke d’Angoulême, who at once resigned in favor of his
nephew the Duke de Bordeaux; and this done, the whole party passed by
easy stages into an inglorious exile. With them was extinguished the
Order of the Holy Ghost; and never since that day have the emblematic
dove and star been seen on the breast of any knight in France.
Louis Philippe would fain have appropriated Rambouillet to himself; but
the government assigned it to the nation, and let it to a phlegmatic
German, who had an ambition to sleep on the bed of kings, and could
afford to pay for the gratification of his fancy. It was on the
expiration of his lease that the house and grounds were made over to a
company of speculators, who sadly desecrated fair Julie’s throne. The
present sovereign of France has given it a worthy occupation. It is now
an asylum and a school for the children of the brave. It began as the
cradle of knights; and the orphans of those who were as brave as any
of the chevaliers of old now find a refuge at the old hearth of the
Knights of Amaury.
I can well conclude, that, by this time, my readers may be weary of
foreign scenes and incidents, as we are of real personages. May I
venture then, for the sake of variety, to ask them to accompany me “to
the well-trod stage, anon?” There I will treat, to the best of my poor
ability, of Stage Knights generally; and first, of the greatest of them
all--Sir John Falstaff.
SIR JOHN FALSTAFF.
“I accept that heart
Which courts my love in most familiar phrase.”--HEYWOOD.
Henry, Earl of Richmond, always creates a favorable impression on young
people who see him, for the first time, without knowing much about him,
previously, at the end of Shakespeare’s tragedy of Richard the Third.
This is a far higher degree of favor than he merited, for Henry was a
very indifferent personage indeed. On the other hand Sir John Falstaff
has had injustice done him by the actors; and of Shakespeare’s jolly
old _gentleman_ they have made what, down to Macklin’s times, they made
of Shylock, a mere mountebank.
In the very first scene, in the first part of Henry IV., when the
Prince and Sir John appear in company, the knight is, by far, a more
accomplished gentleman than the heir-apparent, for he speaks more
refinedly of phrase, and indeed seldom indulges in scurrilous epithets,
until provoked. Strong language is the result of his infirmity of
nature, not of vicious inclination. Lord Castlereagh was not accounted
the less a gentleman for using, as he _could_ do, very unsavory phrases
occasionally.
The Prince is the first to rail, while Sir John shows his breeding and,
I will add, his reading, by quoting poetry. But, if he is poetical,
still more is he philosophical. How gravely does he beseech Hal to
trouble him no more with vanity! And what a censure does the heavy
philosopher fling at the King’s son, when he tells the latter that he
was hurt to hear the wise remarks of a lord of the council touching
that son’s conduct! The fault of the knight is, that he is easily led
away into evil; a common weakness with good-natured people. It is only
since he held fellowship with the Prince, that the fat follower of the
latter had become knowing in evil, and Heaven help him, little better,
as he says, than one of the wicked. Nay, he has enough of orthodoxy
left to elicit praise, even from the editor of the _Record_. “O, if a
man were to be saved by merit,” he exclaims, “what hole in hell were
hot enough to hold him!”
He robs on the highway, it will be said. Well, let us not be too
ready to doubt his gentility on that account. There was many a noble
cut-purse in the grand gallery at Versailles, when it was most crowded;
and George Prince of Wales once nearly lost the diamond-hilt of his
sword, at one of his royal mother’s “drawing-rooms.” The offenders here
were but petty-larceny rascals, compared with Falstaff on the highway.
That he defrauded the King’s exchequer is, certainly, not to be denied.
But again, let us not be too hasty to condemn good men with little
foibles. Recollect that St. Francis de Sales very often cheated at
cards.
Robbery on the highway was, after all, only, as I may call it, a rag of
knighthood. Falstaff robbed in good company. It was his vocation. It
was the fashion. It was an aristocratic pastime. Young blood would have
it so; and Sir John was a boy with the boys. In more recent times, your
young noble, of small wit and too ample leisure, flings stale eggs at
unsuspecting citizens, makes a hell of his quarters, if he be military,
and breaks the necks of stage-managers.
Sir John was, doubtless, one of those of whom Gadshill speaks as doing
the robbing profession some grace for mere sport’s sake. “I am joined,”
says Gadshill, “with no foot land-rakers, no long-staff sixpenny
strikers, none of those mad mustachio, purple-hued, malt-worms, but
with nobility, and sanguinity; burgomasters, and great mongers.”
Indeed, it is matter of fact that, there were graver, if not greater
men than these among the noble thieves, “who would, if matters were
looked into, for their own credit-sake, make all whole.” There was one
at least who, for being a highway robber, made none the worse justice,
charged to administer halters to poorer thieves.
But let us return to our old friend. Poor Sir John, I doubt if he
would have gone robbing, even in the Prince’s company, only that he
was bewitched by his Royal Highness’s social qualities. But even
then, while patiently enduring all sorts of hard jokes, he is really
the Mentor of the party, and does not go to rob the travellers without
first seriously reminding the gentlemen of the road, that it was a
hanging matter. He would keep them from wrong, but as they are resolved
on evil commission he accompanies them. He has explained the law, and
he is not too proud to share the profits.
He is brave, too, despite all his detractors! When the Prince and
Poins, in disguise, set upon the gentle robbers, as they are sharing
their booty, Falstaff is the only one who is described as giving “a
blow or two,” before he imitates “the rest,” and runs away. When he
attacked the travellers he was content to fight his man; there were
four to four. And as to the imaginative description of the assault
given by Falstaff, I believe it to have been uttered in joke and gayety
of heart. I have implicit faith in the assertion, that he knew the
disguised parties as well as their mothers did. See how readily he
detects the Prince and Poins, when they are disguised as “drawers” at
the inn in Eastcheap. If Falstaff was right in the latter case, when
he told the Prince that he, Falstaff, was a gentleman, I think, too,
he had as sufficient authority for saying to Hal, “Thou _knowest_ I am
as valiant as Hercules.” I can not believe otherwise of a man whose
taste was so little vitiated that he could at once detect when there
was “lime” in his sack, and who no sooner hears that the state is in
danger, than he suggests to the young Prince that he _must_ to court.
His obesity may be suspected as not being the fruit of much temperance,
but there is a Cardinal Archbishop in England who is the fattest man in
the fifty-two counties, and why may we not conclude in both cases, that
it is as Falstaff says, and that sighing and grief blow up a man like a
bladder?
Then, only consider the reproof which Falstaff addresses to the Prince,
speaking in the character of King to that illustrious scapegrace.
Wisdom more austere, or graver condemnation of excess, could hardly be
uttered by the whole college of cardinals, at any time. The prince is
a mere plagiarist from the knight, and when he accuses the latter of
being given to licentious ways, with what respectful humility does the
old man plead guilty to his years, but “saving your reverence,” not to
the vices which are said to accompany them?
Not that he is perfect, or would boast of being so. “He _has had_,” he
says touchingly, “a true faith and a good conscience, but their date
is out.” How ill is he requited by the Prince, in whose service he has
lost these jewels, when his Highness remarks, before setting out to
the field, “I’ll procure this fat rogue a charge of foot, and I know
his death will be a charge of fourscore.” And this is said of one who
has forgotten what the inside of a church is like through keeping this
Prince’s villanous company; till when, he had been “as virtuously given
as a gentleman need be.” What he considers as the requisite practice of
a gentleman, is explained by Falstaff in his low estate, and not in the
spirit which moved him when he “lived well and in good compass.”
But there is a Nemesis at every man’s shoulder, and if Falstaff was
cavalierly careless enough to run up a score at the Boar’s Head, and
to accept even a present of Holland shirts, which he ungratefully
designates as “filthy dowlas,” the way in which he was _dunned_
must have been harsh to the feelings of a knight and a gentleman.
In reviewing his gallantries and his extravagances, we must not,
in justice to him, forget that he was a bachelor. If he degraded
himself, he inflicted misery on no Lady Falstaff at home. Heroes have
been buried, with whole nations for mourners, whose offences in this
worse respect have been forgotten. Not that I would apologise for the
knight’s familiarity with either the Hostess or that remarkably nice
young lady, Miss Dorothea Tearsheet. I do not know what the private
life of that Lord Chief Justice may have been who was so very merciless
in his censure upon the knight; but I do know that there have been
luminaries as brilliant who have hidden their lights in very noisome
places and who had not Falstaff’s excuse.
I am as little embarrassed touching Sir John’s character as a soldier,
as I am about his morals. I do not indeed like to hear him acknowledge
that he has “misused the King’s press most damnably,” or that he has
pocketed “three hundred and odd pounds” by illegally releasing a
hundred and fifty men. But at this very day practices much worse than
this are of constant observance in the Russian service, where officers
and officials, whose high-sounding names “exeunt in off,” rob the Czar
daily, and are decorated with the Order of St. Catherine.
In the field, I maintain that Falstaff is a hero. As for his catechism
on honor, so far from detracting from his reputation, it seems to me to
place him on an equality with that modern English hero who said that
his body trembled at the thought of the perils into which his spirited
soul was about to plunge him. Falstaff did not _court_ death. “God keep
lead out of me,” is his reasonable remark; “I need no more weight than
mine own bowels!” But the man who makes this prayer and comment was not
afraid to encounter death. “_I have led_ my ragamuffins where they are
peppered.” He went then at their head. That there was hot work in front
of him is proved by what follows. “There’s but three of my hundred and
fifty left alive; and they are for the town’s end, to beg during life!”
A hundred and forty-seven men killed out of a hundred and fifty-one;
of the four who survived, three are illustriously mutilated; while the
bold soul who led them on is alone unscathed! Why, it reminds us of
Windham and the Redan. It is Thermopylæ, with Leonidas surviving to
tell his own story.
His discretion is not to be taken as disproving his valor. He fought
Douglas, remember, and did not run away from him. He found the Scot too
much for him, it is true; and quietly dropped down, as if dead. What
then? When the Muscovite general fell back so hurriedly from Eupatoria,
how did he describe the movement? “Having accomplished,” he said, “all
that was expected, the Russians _withdrew out of range_.” So, Sir John,
with respect to Douglas.
Nor would _some_ Muscovite officers and gentlemen object to another
action of Falstaff’s. The knight it will be remembered with regret,
stabs the body of Hotspur, as the gallant Northumbrian lies dead, or
wounded, upon the field. Now, by this we may see that Russia is not
only some four centuries behind us in civilization. The barbarous
act of Falstaff was committed a score of times over on the field of
Inkerman. Many a gallant, breathing, but helpless English soldier,
received the mortal thrust which they could not parry, from the
hands of the Chevalier Ivan Falstaff, who fought under the doubtful
inspiration of St. Sergius. And, moreover, there were men in authority
there who virtually remarked to these heroes what Prince Henry does to
Sir John,
“If a lie may do thee grace,
I’ll gild it with the happiest terms I have.”
That _our_ Falstaff bore himself with credit on the field, is made
clear in spite of the incident of Hotspur. I do not pause to point out
the bearing of Morton’s answer, when Northumberland asks him, “Didst
thou come from Shrewsbury?”--“I _ran_ from Shrewsbury, my noble lord,”
is the reply; confessing that he ran from a foe, among whom Falstaff
was a leader: I am more content to rest on the verdict of so dignified
yet unwilling a witness as the Lord Chief Justice. It is quite
conclusive. “Your day’s service at Shrewsbury,” says my lord, “hath a
little gilded over your night’s exploit at Gadshill.” Nothing can be
more satisfactory. The bravery of Falstaff was the talk of the town.
When peace has come, or that Sir John has received permission to return
home, on urgent private affairs, he enters a little into dissipation,
it is true. He is not, however, guilty of such excess as to materially
injure his health; otherwise his page would not have brought him so
satisfactory a message from his doctor. He may, perhaps, be also open
to the charge of being too easily taken by such white bait as he might
find in the muslin of Eastcheap. Heroes, however, have usually very
inflammable hearts. When Nelson was ashore, he immediately fell in love.
In spite of a trifle of rioting, the overflowing of animal spirits,
Falstaff is governed by the laws of good society. Jokes are fired at
him incessantly, but he takes them with good-humor, and repays them
with interest. “I am not only witty in myself,” he says, “but the
cause that wit is in other men.” Gregoire and La Bruyere expressly
define the great rule of conversation to be that, while you exhibit
your own powers, you should endeavor to elicit and encourage those of
your companions. What they put down as a canon, Sir John had already,
and long before, put in excellent practice. He had wit enough to foil
the Chief Justice, but he left to his lordship ample opportunity to
exhibit his own ability; and then the compliment to the great judicial
dignitary, that he was not yet clean past his youth, although he had
in him some relish of the saltness of time--this, combined with the
benevolent recommendation that his lordship would have a reverend care
of his health, robs the latter personage of any prejudice he might
have entertained against the knight. Indeed, it would be difficult
to conceive how the religiously-minded Lord Chief Justice could have
entertained prejudice against a gallant old gentleman who had lost his
voice with “hollaing” (his men to the charge), “and singing of anthems.”
Brave! there can be no question touching his bravery. And if he does
really rust a little at home, and impose a little upon the weakness of
the Hostess and other ladies, whom he weekly woos to marry, and who
find his gallantry and saucy promises irresistible; he is ever ready
for service. He does not look for unlimited absence from scenes of
danger. If he led his company of three hundred and a half to death, and
comes out scot-free himself, he is by no means prepared to hang about
town, inactive for the remainder of the campaign. When he is appointed
on perilous enterprise with Prince John of Lancaster, he simply
remarks, with a complacency which is doubtless warranted by truth,
“There is not a dangerous action can peep out his head, but I am thrust
upon it. Well, I can not last for ever;” and, with this remark buckled
on to some satirical wit which he points at the Lord Chief Justice, he
sets forth cheerily on his mission, the gout in his toe, and in his
purse not more than seven groats and twopence. He has a rouse and a
riot at the Boar’s Head before he starts; but nothing more disreputable
seems to have occurred than one might hear of at a modern club, before
some old naval lion is hiccupped on to deeds of daring. Besides, the
knight is no hypocrite; and he will not be accounted virtuous, like
many of his contemporaries, by “making courtesy and saying nothing.”
Not, on the other hand, that even in his moments of jolly relaxation,
he would be unseemly noisy. He can troll a merry catch, but, as he says
to a vulgarly roystering blade, “Pistol, I would be quiet.” It has been
thought unseemly that he should quarrel with and even roughly chastise
the “ancient” with whom he had been on such very intimate terms. But
such things happen in the best society. At the famous Reform Club
dinner, Sir James gave permission to Sir Charles to go and make war;
but, since that time, Sir Charles, with words, instead of rapiers, has
been poking his iron into the ribs of Sir James, after the fashion of
Falstaff and Pistol.
And so, as I have said, Sir John girds him for the battle. If he did
in his youth, hear the chimes at midnight, in company with Master
Shallow, the lean, but light-living barrister of Clement’s Inn, he did
not waste his vigor. So great indeed is his renown for this, and for
the bravery which accompanies it, that no sooner does the doughty Sir
John Colville of the Dale meet him in single combat, than Colville at
once surrenders. The very idea of such a hero being face to face with
him impels him to give up his sword at once. “I think you are Sir John
Falstaff, and in that thought yield me.” Was ever greater compliment
paid to mortal hero?
Of this achievement Prince John most ungenerously says, that it was
more the effect of Colville’s courtesy than Falstaff’s deserving. But,
as the latter remarks, the young sober-blooded boy of a prince does
not love the knight; and “that’s no marvel,” exclaims Falstaff, “he
drinks no wine.” The teetotaler of those days disparaged the deeds of
a man who increased the sum of his country’s glory. He was like a sour
Anglo-Quaker, sneering down the merit of a Crimean soldier. We do not,
however, go so far as Falstaff in his enthusiasm, when he exclaims
that skill in the weapon is nothing without sack. There is something
in the remark, nevertheless, as there is when Sir John subsequently
says in reference to his wits suffering by coming in dull contact with
obtuse Shallow. “It is certain,” says he, “that either wise bearing
or ignorant carriage is caught, as men take diseases, one of another;
_therefore_ let men take care of their company.” Victor Hugo has
manifestly condescended to plagiarize this sentiment, and has said in
one of his most remarkable works, that “On devient vieux à force de
regarder les vieux.”
And, to come to a conclusion, how unworthily is this gallant soldier,
merry companion, and profound philosopher, treated at last by an
old associate, Prince Hal, when king. Counting on the sacredness of
friendship, Sir John had borrowed from Master Shallow a thousand
pounds. He depended upon being able to repay it out of the new
monarch’s liberality, but when he salutes the sovereign--very
inopportunely, I confess--the latter, with a cold-hearted and shameless
ingratitude, declares that he does not know the never-to-be-forgotten
speaker. King Henry V. does indeed promise--
“For competence of life, I will allow you;
That lack of moans enforce yon not to evil;”
and departs, after intimating that the knight must not reside within
ten miles of court, and that royal favor will be restored to the
banished man, if merit authorize it.
“Be it your charge, my lord, to see performed the tenor of our word,”
says the King to the Chief Justice; and Falstaff, though sorely wounded
in feelings, is still not without hope. But see what a royal word,
or what _this_ royal word is! The Monarch has no sooner passed on
his way, than the Chief Justice fulfils its meaning, by ordering Sir
John Falstaff and all his company to be close-confined in the Fleet!
The great dignitary does this with as much hurried glee as we may
conjecture Lord Campbell would have had, in rendering the same service
to Miss Agnes Strickland, when the latter accused the judge of stealing
her story of Queen Eleanor of Provence.
However this may be, the royal ingratitude broke the proud heart in the
bosom of Sir John. He took to his bed, and never smiled again. “The
King has killed his heart,” is the bold assertion of Dame Quickly, at
a time when such an assertion might have cost her her liberty, if not
her life. How edifying too was his end! He did not “babble o’ green
fields.” Mr. Collier has proved this, to the satisfaction of all Exeter
Hall, who would deem such light talk trifling. But he died arguing
against “the whore of Babylon,” which should make him find favor even
with Dr. Cumming, for it is a proof of the knight’s Protestantism--and
“Would I were with him,” exclaims honest lieutenant Bardolph, with
more earnestness than reverence--“Would I were with him, wheresome’er
he is; either in heaven or in hell.” If this has a profane ring in
it, let us think of the small education and the hard life of him who
uttered it. There was more profanity and terrible blasphemy to boot,
in the assertion of Prince Menschikoff, after the death of the Czar
Nicholas, namely, “that his late august master might be seen in the
skies blessing his armies on their way to victory!” Decidedly, I prefer
Bardolph to Menschikoff, and Falstaff to both.
I am sorry that Queen Elizabeth had the bad taste to request
Shakespeare to represent “Falstaff in love.” The result is only an
Adelphi farce in five acts; in which the author, after all, has made
the knight far more respectable than that sorry fool, Ford. The
“Wives” themselves are not much stronger in virtue than Dorothea of
Eastcheap, unless Sir John himself was mistaken in them. Of Mrs. Ford,
who holds her husband’s purse-strings, he says, “I can construe the
action of her familiar style,” and he tells us what that manner was,
pretty distinctly. When he writes to Mrs. Page, he notices a common
liking which exists in both, in the words, “You love sack, and so
do I.” The “Wives,” for mere mischief’s sake, we will say, tempted
the gallant old soldier. In their presence he had left off swearing,
praised woman’s modesty, and gave such orderly and well-behaved reproof
to all uncomeliness, that Mrs. Page thought, perhaps, that drinking
sack, and, in company with Mrs. Ford, talking familiarly with him,
would not tempt him to turn gallant toward them. This consequence
_did_ follow; and then the sprightly Wives, in place of bidding their
ridiculous husbands cudgel him, come to the conclusion that “the best
way was to entertain him with hope,” till his wickedly raised fire
should have “melted him in his own grease.” A dangerous process,
ladies, depend upon it!
Then, what a sorry cur is that Master Ford who puts Falstaff upon the
way to seduce his own wife! Had other end come of it than what did
result, is there a jury even in Gotham, that would have awarded Ford
a farthing’s-worth of separation. Falstaff is infinitely more refined
than Ford or Page. Neither of these noodles could have paid such
sparkling compliments as the knight pays to the lady. “Let the court
of France show me such another! I see how thine eyes would emulate the
diamond; thou hast the right-arched bent of the brow, that becomes the
ship-tire, the tire-valiant, or any tire of Venetian admittance!” Why
this is a prose Anacreontic! And if the speaker of it could offend
once, he did not merit to be allured again by hope to a greater
punishment than he had endured for his first offence.
For one of the great characteristics of Falstaff is his own sense
of seemliness. When he was nearly drowned by being tossed from the
buck-basket into the river, his prevalent and uneasy idea was, how
disgusting he should look if he were to swell--a mountain of mummy!
The Mantelini of Mr. Dickens borrowed from Falstaff this aversion to a
“demmed damp body.” It is _not_ pleasant!
Once again, Sir John, though he could err, yet he was ashamed of his
offence. Otherwise, would he have confessed, as he did, when recounting
how the mock fairies had tormented him, “I was three or four times in
the thought they were not fairies, but the _guiltiness of my mind_,
the sudden surprise of my powers drove the grossness of the foppery
into a received belief.” How exquisitely is this said! How does it
raise the knight above the broad farce of most of the other characters!
How infinitely superior is he to the two dolts of husbands who, after
hearing the confession of guilty intention against the honor of their
wives, invite him to spend a jolly evening in company with themselves
and the ladies. And so they--
“Every one go home,
And laugh this sport o’er by a wintry fire,
Sir John and all.”
This may be accounted too gross for probability; but worse than this
is in the memory of our yet surviving fathers. There was, within such
a memory, a case tried before Sir Elijah Impey, in which Talleyrand
was the defendant, against whom a husband brought an action, the great
statesman having robbed him of his wife. The action was brought to the
ordinary issue; and a few weeks subsequently, plaintiff, defendant,
judge, and lady, dined together in the Prince’s residence at Paris.
Of Stage Falstaffs, Quin, according to all accounts, must have been the
best, provided only that he had a sufficiency of claret in him, and
the house an overflowing audience. Charles Kemble, I verily believe,
must have been the worst of stage Falstaffs. At least, having seen him
in the character, I can conscientiously assert that I can not imagine
a poorer Sir John. He dressed the character well; but as for its
“flavor,” it was as if you had the two oyster-shells, _minus_ the fat
and juicy oyster. What a galaxy of actors have shined or essayed to
shine in this joyous but difficult part! In Charles the Second’s days,
Cartwright and Lacy, by their acting in the first part of Henry IV.,
made Shakespeare popular, when the fashion at Court was against him.
Betterton acted the same part in 1700, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the
Haymarket. Four years later, he played the Knight in the “Merry Wives;”
and in 1730, at Drury Lane, he and Mills took the part alternately,
and set dire dissension among the play-goers, as to their respective
merits.
Popular as Betterton was in this character, after he had grown too
stout for younger heroes, his manner of playing it was not original;
and his imitation was at second-hand. Ben Jonson had seen it played
in Dublin by Baker, a stone-mason. He was so pleased with the
representation, that he described the manner of it, on his return to
London, to Betterton, who, docile and modest as usual, acknowledged
that the mason’s conception was better than his own, and adopted the
Irish actor’s manner, accordingly.
Chetwood does not tell us how Baker played, but he shows us how he
studied, namely in the streets, while overlooking the men who worked
under him. “One day, two of his men who were newly come to him, and
were strangers to his habits, observing his countenance, motion,
gesture, and his talking to himself, imagined their master was mad.
Baker, seeing them neglect their work to stare at him, bid them, in
a hasty manner, mind their business. The fellows went to work again,
but still with an eye to their master. The part Baker was rehearsing
was Falstaff; and when he came to the scene where Sir Walter Blunt was
supposed to be lying dead on the stage, gave a look at one of his new
paviors, and with his eye fixed upon him, muttered loud enough to be
heard, ‘Who have we here? Sir Walter Blunt! There’s honor for you.’ The
fellow who was stooping, rose on the instant, and with the help of his
companion, bound poor Baker hand and foot, and assisted by other people
no wiser than themselves, they carried him home in that condition, with
a great mob at their heels.”
Estcourt’s Falstaff was flat and trifling, yet with a certain
waggishness. That of Harper was droll, but low and coarse. The Falstaff
of Evans seems to have been in the amorous scenes, as offensive as
Dowton in Major Sturgeon; and the humor was misplaced. Accordingly,
when we read in old Anthony Aston, that “Betterton wanted the waggery
of Estcourt, the drollery of Harper, and the lasciviousness of Jack
Evans,” we are disposed to imagine that his Falstaff was none the worse
for this trial of wants.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the character did not lack brilliant
actors. In the first part of Henry IV., Mills played the character,
at Drury, in 1716. Booth had previously played it for one night, in
presence of Queen Anne. Bullock filled Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre,
with it, in 1721. Quin, in 1738, used to play the character in the two
parts of Henry IV. on successive nights, and eight years later his
Falstaff attracted crowds to “the Garden.” Barry played it against him
at Drury, in 1743 and 1747; but Barry was dull and void of impulse as
a school-boy repeating his task. In 1762, the part, at Drury, fell
to Yates, for whom the piece was brought out, with the character of
Hotspur omitted! To give more prominence to our knight, a scene was
left out. The public did not approve of the plan, for in the same year
Love, celebrated by Churchill for his humor, made his first appearance
at Drury, as Sir John, when Holland, the baker of Chiswick, played
Hotspur, with well-bred warmth. I will add, that though Quin drew
immense houses, yet when Harper, some years previously, played the
same part at Drury, with Booth in Hotspur, Wilks as the Prince, and
Cibber as Glendower, the combined excellence drew as great houses for
a much longer period. So that Harper’s Falstaff, although inferior to
Quin’s, was, as was remarked, more seen, yet less admired by the town.
Shuter played it almost too “jollily” at the Garden, in 1774. But all
other Falstaffs were extinguished for a time, when Henderson, although
not physically qualified for the part, astonished the town with his
“old boy of the castle,” in 1777 at the Haymarket, and delighted them
two years later, at Covent Garden. At the latter house, eight years
subsequently, Ryder played it respectably, to Lewis’s Prince of Wales;
and in 1791, when the Drury Lane company were playing at the Haymarket,
Palmer represented Falstaff, and John Kemble mis-represented Hotspur.
King tried the knight at the same “little house,” in 1792, but King,
clever as he was, was physically incapable of representing Falstaff,
and he soon ceased to pretend to do so. The next representative was the
worst the world had yet seen--namely, Fawcett, who first attempted it
at the Garden, in 1795. Blisset appeared in it in 1803, and disappeared
also. From this time no new actor tried the Sir John, in the first
part of Henry IV., till 1824, when Charles Kemble made the Ghost of
Shakespeare very uneasy, by executing a part for which he was totally
unfit. He persevered, however, but the success of Elliston in the
part, two years later, settled the respective merits of two performers,
to the advantage of Robert William, as effectually as Grisi showed the
town that there was but one Norma, by playing it the night after the
fatal attempt made on the Druidess, by Jenny Lind.
The succession of actors who represented Falstaff, in the second part
of Henry IV., was as brilliant as that of the line of representatives
above noticed. Ten years after Betterton and Mills, in 1720, we have
Harper, and it is somewhat singular that when Mills resigned Falstaff
to Harper, he took the part of the King. Hulett, two years subsequently
played it at Covent Garden; and, after another two years, Quin made
Drury ecstatic with his fun. He held the part without a real rival,
and fifteen years later, in 1749, he was as attractive as ever in this
portion of the knight’s character, at Covent Garden. Shuter succeeded
him in the part at this theatre, in 1755; but in 1758, all London, that
is the play-goers of London, might be seen hurrying once more to Drury,
to witness lively Woodward’s _very_ old Falstaff played to Garrick’s
King. The Garden can not be said to have found a superior means of
attraction, when Shuter again represented Sir John, at the Garden, in
1761, on which occasion the parts of Shallow and Silence were omitted!
The object, however, was to shorten the piece, and the main attraction
was in the coronation pageant, at the conclusion, in honor of the then
young King and Queen, who were well worthy of the honor thus paid to
them.
Love and Holland, who played Falstaff and Hotspur, at Drury Lane, in
1762, played the Knight and the Prince of Wales, at the same house, two
years subsequently. Nine years after this, the Garden found a Prince in
Mrs. Lessingham, Shuter played Falstaff to her, but the travesty of the
former character was only in a slight degree less incongruous than that
made by Mrs. Glover, in the present century, who once, if not twice,
played the fat knight, for her own benefit. For the next eight or nine
years, the best Falstaff possessed by London was Henderson. He played
the part first at Drury, and afterward at Covent Garden. Since Quin,
there had been no better representative of Sir John; and even Palmer,
in 1788, could not bring the town from its allegiance to “admirable
Henderson.”
The Falstaffs of the present century, in the second part of this
historical play, have not achieved a greater triumph than Henderson.
Cooke, who played the obese cavalier, in 1804, was not equal to the
part; and Fawcett, in 1821, when the play was revived, with another
coronation pageant in honor of George IV., was farther from success
than Cooke. The managers at this period were wiser than those who “got
up” the play at the period of the accession of George III., for they
retained Shallow and Silence, and never were the illustrious two so
inimitably represented as, on this occasion, by Farren and Emery.
The chief Falstaffs of the “Merry Wives of Windsor” are Betterton
(1704), Hulett (1732), Quin (1734), Delane, the young Irish actor
(1743), of whom Garrick was foolish enough to be jealous; Shuter
(1758), Henderson, who first played it at the Haymarket in 1777, and
Lee Lewis in 1784. Bartley, Phelps, and a clever provincial actor, now
in London, named Bartlett, have also played this character with great
effect. The Falstaff of the last-named actor is particularly good.
I have said that Quin was the greatest of Falstaffs, but the _greatest_
in the physical acceptation of the term, was undoubtedly Stephen
Kemble. This actor was born almost upon the boards. His clever, but not
very gentle-tempered mother, had just concluded her performance of Anne
Bullen, in a barn, or something like it, at Kingstown, Herefordshire
(1758), when Stephen was born, about the period when, according to the
action of the play, the Princess Elizabeth is supposed to first see
the light. Stephen when he had grown to manhood, weighed as much as
all his sisters and brothers put together; and on the 7th of October,
1802, he made his appearance at Drury, in the character of Falstaff.
This was nearly twenty years after he had made his _début_ in London,
at Covent Garden, in Othello. Bannister junior prefaced his performance
of the companion of Prince Hal, by some humorous lines, joking on the
heaviness of the actor. As Pope played Hotspur, I should fancy, if Pope
then was anything like what he was some fifteen or sixteen years later,
that Hotspur was even heavier than Sir John. The lines alluded to were
accounted witty; and I will conclude my record of the principal actors
who have represented the knight, by reproducing them.
A Falstaff here to-night, by nature made,
Lends to your fav’rite bard his pond’rous aid;
No man in buckram, he! no stuffing gear,
No feather bed, nor e’en a pillow here!
But all good honest flesh and blood, and bone,
And weighing, more or less, some thirty stone.
Upon the northern coast by chance we caught him,
And hither, in a broad-wheeled wagon, brought him:
For in a chaise the varlet ne’er could enter,
And no mail-coach on such a fare would venture.
Blessed with unwieldiness, at least his size
Will favor find in every critic’s eyes.
And should his humor and his mimic art
Bear due proportion to his outward part,
As once was said of Macklin in the Jew,
“This is the very Falstaff Shakespeare drew.”
To you, with diffidence, he bids me say,
Should you approve, you may command his stay,
To lie and swagger here another day.
If not, to better men he’ll leave his sack,
And go, as ballast, in a collier back.
In concluding this section of my gossiping record, I will add that
the supposition of Shakespeare having intended to represent Sir
John Oldcastle under the title of Sir John Falstaff, is _merely_ a
supposition. It has never been satisfactorily made out. Far otherwise
is the case with that gallant Welsh man-at-arms, _Fluellin_. The
original of this character was a David Gam of Brecknock, who having
killed a cousin with an unpronounceable name, in the High Street of
Brecknock, avoided the possibly unpleasant consequences by joining the
Lancastrian party. _Gam_ was merely a nickname, having reference to an
obliquity of vision in the doughty and disputative David. The real name
was Llewellyn; and if Shakespeare disguised the appellation, it was
from notions of delicacy, probably, as the descendants of the hero were
well known and respected at the English court in Shakespeare’s time.
Jones, in his “History of Brecknockshire,” identifies the personage in
question in this way: “I have called Fluellin a burlesque character,
because his pribbles and prabbles, which were generally out-heroded,
sound ludicrously to an English as well as a Welsh ear; yet, after all,
Llewellyn is a brave soldier and an honest fellow. He is admitted into
a considerable degree of intimacy with the King, and stands high in
his good opinion, which is a strong presumptive proof, notwithstanding
Shakespeare, the better to conceal his object, describes the death of
Sir David Gam, that he intended David Llewellyn by his portrait of the
testy Welshman, for there was no other person of that country in the
English army, who could have been supposed to be upon such terms of
familiarity with the King.” It is singular that the descendants of the
Welsh knight subsequently dropped the proud old name with more l’s in
it than syllables, and adopted the monosyllabic _soubriquet_. Squinting
David, who fought so well at Agincourt, would have knocked down any
man who would have dared to address him personally as “Gam,” that is,
“game,” or “cock-eyed.” His posterity proved less susceptible; and Mr.
Jones says of them, in a burst of melancholy over fallen greatness:
“At different periods between the years 1550 and 1700, I have seen
the descendants of the hero of Agincourt (who lived like a wolf and
died like a lion) in the possession of every acre of ground in the
county of Brecon; at the commencement of the eighteenth century, I
find one of them common bellman of the town of Brecknock, and before
the conclusion, two others, supported by the inhabitants of the parish
where they reside; and even the name of Gam is, in the legitimate line,
extinct.” Mr. Jones might have comforted himself by remembering that
as the Gams went out, the Kembles came in, and that the illustrious
Sarah dignified by her birth the garret of that “Shoulder of Mutton”
public-house, which stood in the street where chivalrous but squinting
Davy had slain his cousin with the unpronounceable name.
John Kemble occasionally took some unwarrantable liberties with
Shakespeare. When he produced the “Merry Wives of Windsor” at Covent
Garden, in April, 1804 (in which he played Ford to Cooke’s Falstaff),
he deprived Sir Hugh Evans of his knightly title, out of sheer
ignorance, or culpable carelessness. Blanchard was announced for
“Hugh Evans,” without the _Sir_. Hawkins, quoting Fuller, says that
“anciently in England, there were more Sirs than Knights;” and as I
have noticed in another page, the monosyllabic Sir was common to both
clergymen and knights. To the first, however, only by courtesy, when
they had attained their degree of B. A. In a “New Trick to cheat the
Devil,” Anne says to her sire, “Nay, sir;” to which the father replies--
“Sir me no sirs! I am no knight nor churchman.”
But John Kemble was complimentary to Shakespeare, compared with poor
Frederick Reynolds, who turned the “Merry Wives of Windsor” into an
opera, in 1824; and although Dowton did not sing Falstaff, as Lablache
subsequently did, the two wives, represented by Miss Stephens and Miss
Cubitt, warbled, instead of being merry in prose, and gave popularity
to “I know a bank.” At the best, Fenton is but an indifferent part,
but Braham was made to render it one marked especially by nonsense.
Greenwood had painted a scene representing Windsor under _a glowing
summer sky_, under which _Fenton_ (Braham) entered, and remarked, very
like Shakespeare: “How I love this spot where dear Anne Page has often
met me and confessed her love! Ha! I think the _sky is overcast_--the
wind, too, blows like an approaching storm. Well, let it blow on! I
am prepared to brave its fury.” Whereupon the orchestra commenced the
symphony, and Mr. Braham took a turn up the stage, according to the
then approved plan, before he commenced his famous air of “Blow, blow,
thou _winter_ wind!” And the fun-anent Falstaff and the Fords was kept
waiting for nonsense like this!
While on the subject of the chivalrous originals of the mock knights of
the Stage, I may be permitted to mention here, that Jonson’s Bobadil
was popularly said to have been named after, if not founded upon,
a knight in the army of the Duke of Alva, engaged in subduing the
Netherlands beneath the despotism of Philip II. According to Strada,
after the victory at Giesen, near Mons, in 1570, Alva sent Captain
Bobadilla to Spain, to inform Philip of the triumph to his arms. “The
ostentation of the message, and still more of the person who bore it,
was the origin of the name being applied to any vain-glorious boaster.”
The Bobadilla family was an illustrious one, and can hardly be supposed
to have furnished a member who, in any wise, resembles Jonson’s
swashbuckler. On the other hand, there was Boabdil, the last sultan of
Granada, who had indeed borne himself lustily, in his early days, in
the field, but who at last cried like a child at losing that Granada
which he was not man enough to defend. But it would be injustice even
to the son of Muley Abel Hassan, to imagine that Jonson only took his
name to distinguish therewith the knight of huge words and weapons who
lodged with Oliver Cob the Water-bearer.
The few other Stage Knights whom I have to name, I will introduce them
to the reader in the next chapter.
STAGE KNIGHTS.
“The stage and actors are not so contemptful
As every innovating puritan,
And ignorant swearer, out of jealous envy,
Would have the world imagine.”--GEORGE CHAPMAN.
The Commonwealth had no admiration for the stage, and no toleration
for actors. When theatricals looked up again, the stage took its
revenge, and seldom represented a puritan who was not a knave. There
is an instance of this in the old play, entitled “The Puritan, or the
Widow of Watling Street.” “Wilt steal me thy master’s chain?” quoth
Captain Idle to Nicholas St. Antlings, the puritan serving-man. “Steal
my master’s chain!” quoth Nicholas; “no, it shall ne’er be said that
Nicholas St. Antlings committed bird-lime. Anything else that I can
do,” adds the casuist in a serge jerkin, “had it been to rob, I would
ha’ done it; but I must not steal, that’s the word, the literal, _Thou
shalt not steal_; and would you wish me to steal then?” “No, faith,”
answers Pyeboard, the scholar; “that were too much;--but wilt thou
nim it from him?” To which honest St. Nicholas, so anxious to observe
the letter of the law, so careless about its spirit, remarks, with
alacrity, “_That_, I will!”
I have said in another page, that ridicule was especially showered
down upon some of those whom Oliver delighted to honor. As late as the
era of Sir George Etherege, we find “one of Oliver’s knights” figuring
as the buffoon of that delicate gentleman’s comedy, “The Comical
Revenge.” It is hardly creditable to the times, or to the prevailing
taste, that the theatre in Lincoln’s-inn Fields cleared one thousand
pounds, in less than a month, by this comedy; and that the company
gained more reputation by it, than by any preceding piece represented
on the same stage. The plot is soon told. Two very fine and not very
profligate gentlemen, Lord Beaufort and Colonel Bruce, are in love
with a tolerably-refined lady, Graciana. The lord wins the lady, and
the philosophical soldier accepts a certain Aurelia, who has the
singular merit of being in love with the Colonel. The under-plot has
“Oliver’s knight” for its hero. The latter is a Sir Nicholas Cully who
is cheated out of a promissory note for one thousand pounds, by two
gentlemen-sharpers, Wheadle and Palmer. Sir Nicholas is partly saved by
the gay, rather than moral, Sir Frederick Frolick. The latter recovers
the note, but he passes off his mistress on Sir Nicholas as his sister,
and induces him to marry her. The only difference between the sharpers
and the “Knight baronet,” Sir Frederick, is this:--Wheadle had dressed
up _his_ mistress, Grace, as Widow Rich; and Sir Nicholas had engaged
to marry her, under certain penalties, forced on him by Wheadle and his
friend. Sir Frederick, at the conclusion, marries the Widow, to oblige
a lady who is fond of him, and the curtain falls upon the customary
indecent jokes, and the following uneasy and metrical maxim:--
“On what small accidents depends our Fate,
While Chance, not Prudence, makes us fortunate.”
What the two Bettertons made of Lord Beaufort and Graciana, I do not
pretend to say, but Nokes is said to have been “screamingly farcical,”
to adopt an equivalent modern phrase, in Sir Nicholas Cully. His
successor, Norris, fell short of the great original in broad humor, but
Nokes himself was surpassed by Dogget, who played “Oliver’s Knight”
with all the comic effect which he imparted to the then low comedy
part of Shylock. It is inexplicable to me how any actor would ever
have extracted a laugh from the audience at anything he had to say, or
chose to do, when enacting the “Cavalier of the Commonwealth.” There is
not a humorous speech, nor a witty remark, nor a comic situation for
the knight to profit by. In 1664, however, people could laugh heartily
at seeing one of the Protector’s knights swindled, and beaten on the
stage. The knight is represented as a thirsty drunkard, “all the drier
for the last night’s wetting,” with a more eager desire to attack the
ladies of cavaliers than cavaliers themselves, and no reluctance to
cheat any man who will undertake to throw a main with him at dice. He
has, however, great reluctance to pay his losses, when he unconsciously
falls into the hands of a greater knave than himself, and bodily
declares--
“I had been a madman to play at such a rate,
If I had ever intended to pay.”
He had less boldness in accepting the results of such a declaration,
and in meeting his antagonist at the end of a rapier. He is brought
to the sticking-point, just as Acres is, by an assurance that his
adversary is an arrant coward. The scene of “the Field” is worth
quoting in part, inasmuch as it is not only an illustration of the
spirit of chivalry, as imputed to Oliver’s knights by cavalier-poets,
but also as it will, perhaps, serve to show that when Sheridan sat
down at his table in Orchard Street, Portman Square, to bring Acres
and Beverley together in mortal combat, he probably had a copy of
Etherege’s play before--or the memory of it strong within--him.
Wheadle and Cully are on the stage:--
_W._ What makes you so serious?
_C._ I am sorry I did not provide for both our safeties.
_W._ How so?
_C._ Colonel Hanson is my neighbor, and very good friend. I might
have acquainted him with the business, and got him, with a file of
musketeers, to secure us all.
_W._ But this would not secure your honor. What would the world have
judged.
_C._ Let the world have judged what it would! Have we not had many
precedents of late? and the world knows not what to judge.
It may be observed here, that Sir Nicholas may be supposed to be
alluding to such men as Hans Behr, who was much addicted to firing
printed broadsides at his adversaries, who advertised him as
“_poltroon_” in return. There are some placards having reference to
this matter, in the British Museum, which admirably display the caution
of the wordsmen and the spirit of the swordsmen of that day. But to
resume. Cully, observing that his adversary has not arrived, suggests
that his own duty has been fulfilled, and that he “will be going,” the
more particularly, says the knight, as “the air is so bleak, I can no
longer endure it.”
_W._ Have a little patience. Methinks I see two making toward us in
the next close.
_C._ Where? Where? ’Tis them!
_W._ Bear up bravely, now, like a man.
_C._ I protest I am the worst dissembler, now, in cases of this nature.
_W._ _Allons!_ Look like a man of resolution. Whither, whither go you?
_C._ But to the next house to make my will, for fear of the worst.
Tell them I’ll be here again, presently.
The provident knight is, however, detained, and on Palmer and that
gentleman’s second appearing, the swords are measured, “and all strip
but Cully, who fumbles with his doublet.”
_P._ Come, sir! are you ready for this sport?
_C._ By-and-by, sir. I will not rend the buttons from my doublet for
no man’s pleasure.
And so “Oliver’s Knight” continues to procrastinate; he can not be
either pricked or pinked into action; and at length, pleading that his
conscience will not let him fight in a wrong cause, he purchases a
whole skin, at the price of a promissory note for a thousand pounds.
I have said that there is no comic situation for the actor who
represents Sir Nicholas, but the scene from which the above passages
are taken may, perhaps, be an exception to the rule. That Sheridan has
profited by it, will be clear to any reader who will take the trouble
to compare this scene with the fighting scene in the “Rivals.” The
latter is far richer in humor, and while we care very little what
becomes of Sir Nicholas, we should regret that any harm should befall
poor Acres--although he prefers fighting at forty paces, would stand
sidewise to be shot at, feels that he would be horribly afraid if he
were alone, and confesses that valor oozes out at the palms of his
hands when his adversary appears in sight, with pistols for two.
Sir Nicholas is in spirits again when making love to one whom he
considers a woman of rank and fortune. No cavalier could then vie
with him in finery. “I protest,” he says, “I was at least at sixteen
brokers, before I could put myself exactly in the fashion.” But with
all this, he is a craven again when he is called upon to enter and
address her who awaits the wooing with impatience. “Come!” he exclaims,
“I will go to the tavern and swallow two whole quarts of wine
instantly; and when I am drunk, ride on a drawer’s back, to visit her.”
Wheadle suggests that “some less frolic will do, to begin with.”--“I
will cut three drawers over the pate, then,” says the knight, “and
go with a tavern-lanthorn before me at noonday;”--just as very mad
gallants were wont to do.
The liquor has not the effect of rendering Oliver’s knight decent,
for in proposing the health of “my lord’s sister,” he does it in the
elegant form of “Here’s a brimmer to her then, and all the fleas about
her;” offers to break the windows to show his spirit, and in the lady’s
very presence exclaims, “Hither am I come to be drunk, that you may see
me drunk, and here’s a health to your flannel petticoat.” The latter
_gentillesse_ is by way of proof of the knight’s quality, for it was
of the very essence of polite manners, when a spirited gentleman drank
to a spirited lady, to strain the wine through what the Chesterfields
and Mrs. Chapones of that day, if such were to be found, would not have
blushed to call “their smocks.”
But enough of the way in which the stage represented “one of Oliver’s
knights.” He is not worse than the courtiers and gentlemen by whom he
is swindled out of his money and into a wife. Nay, nearly the last
sentence put into his mouth is, at least, a complimentary testimony
to the side of which Sir Nicholas is but an unworthy member. “If I
discover this,” he remarks, “I am lost. I shall be ridiculous even to
our own party.”--The reader will, probably, not require to be reminded
that before Etherege drew Cully, Jonson had depicted Sogliardo, and
that the latter, in the very spirit of Oliver’s knight, remarks:--“I do
not like the humor of challenge; it may be accepted.”
The stage, from about the middle of the seventeenth century to nearly
the middle of the succeeding century, was uncommonly busy with knights
as heroes of new plays. The piece which brought most money to the
theatrical treasury, after the “Comical Revenge,” was the “Sir Martin
Mar-all,” an adaptation by Dryden, from the “Etourdi” of Molière. Such
adaptations were in fashion, and the heroes of the French author were
invariably knighted on their promotion to the English stage. Such was
the case with “Sir Solomon, or the Cautious Coxcomb,” adapted by
Carill, from Molière’s “Ecole des Femmes.” The same course was adopted
by Mrs. Behn when she transferred Molière’s “Malade Imaginaire” to the
stage at Dorset Gardens, and transformed _Argon_ into _Sir Patient
Fancy_. One of the characters in this intolerably indecent play
instructs the city knight’s lady how to divide her time according to
the fashion set by “the quality.” “From eight to twelve,” he says, “you
ought to employ in dressing. Till two, at dinner. Till five, in visits.
Till seven, at the play. Till nine, in the park; and at ten, to supper
with your lover.”
In the “Sir Barnaby Whig, or No Wit like a Woman’s,” one of D’Urfey’s
comedies, and produced in 1681, we have again a hero who is described
as one of Oliver’s knights. The play is avowedly a party piece, and the
author, in his prologue, remarks,
“That he shall know both parties now, he glories;
By hisses, Whigs; and by their claps, the Tories.”
The audience at the “Theatre Royal,” in the days of Charles II., was
made especially merry by this poor jest. Sir Barnaby is represented as
a Cromwellian fanatic, who will not drink the King’s health; is in an
agony of terror at hearing that an army of twenty thousand men is about
to sweep every rebel from the land; turns traitor; sings a comic song
against the Roundheads; is saluted as Rabbi Achitophel; offers to turn
Roman Catholic or Mohammedan; and is finally consigned to Newgate.
Mrs. Behn, in the same year, had _her_ political knight as well as
D’Urfey. In this lady’s more than usually licentious play, the “City
Heiress,” performed at Dorset Gardens, she has a Sir Timothy Treat-all
for her comic hero. She boasts in her introduction that her play is
political, loyal, true Tory all over; and as “Whiggism has become
a jest,” she makes a caricature of Sir Timothy, an old, seditious,
Oliverian knight, who keeps open house for commonwealth-men and
true-blue Protestants. He is contrasted with two Tory knights, Sir
Anthony and Sir Charles Meriwill, and a Tory gentleman, named Wilding.
The old Whig knight, however, is by far the least disreputable fellow
of the lot. The Tory knights and their friends are rogues, perjurers,
and something worse. When they are not on the stage, Mrs. Behn is not
afraid to tell what they are about, and _that_ in the very plainest
language. “D--n the City!” exclaims the courtly Sir Charles. “Ay, ay!”
adds his uncle, Sir Anthony, “and _all_ the Whigs, Charles, d--n all
the Whigs!”--And in such wise did Mrs. Afra Behn take vengeance upon
political enemies, to the infinite delight of loyal audiences. How the
Whig knights ever kept their own against the assaults made on them in
plays, prologues, and epilogues, is, as Mr. Slick says, “a caution!”
It is a fact, however, that these political plays were far more highly
relished than those which merely satirized passing social follies.
Audiences roared at the dull jokes against the Oliverian knights, but
they had no relish for the rhyme-loving Sir Hercules Buffoon, of Lacy.
For one stage knight we may be said to be indebted to Charles II.
himself. It was from a hint from him that Crowne wrote his “Sir Courtly
Nice,” produced at the Theatre Royal shortly after the death of
Charles. Sir Courtly alludes to the death of one, and the accession of
a new, king, in very flattering terms:--
“What nation upon earth, besides our own,
But by a loss like ours had been undone?
Ten ages scarce such royal worth display
As England lost and found in one strange day.”
Of all the comedies with knights for their heroes, this one of Sir
Courtly Nice retained a place longest on the stage. The hero was
originally played by handsome, but hapless Will Mountfort. Cibber
played it at the Haymarket in Queen Anne’s time, 1706, and again at
Drury Lane, and before George I. at Hampton Court. Foote and Cibber,
jun., and Woodward, were there presentatives of the gallant knight, and
under George II. Foote played it, for the first time, at Drury Lane,
and the younger Cibber at Covent Garden, in 1746, and Woodward, at
the latter house, in 1751. The last-named actor was long the favorite
representative of the gentlemanly knight, retaining the character as
his own for full a quarter of a century, and being succeeded, but not
surpassed in it, by sparkling Lewis, at Covent Garden, in 1781.
The satire in this piece against the Puritans is of a more refined
character than in any other play of the period; and the contrast
between the rash and ardent cavalier and the cautious Puritan is very
fairly drawn. “Suppose I see not many vices,” says the Roundhead,
Testimony, “morality is not the thing. The heathens had morality; and,
forsooth, would you have your footman or your coachman to be no better
than Seneca?” This is really complimentary to the Cromwellians; and
there is but a good-natured dash of satire in the answer of Testimony,
when asked what time of day it may be, that--“Truly, I do believe it is
about four. I can not say it positively, for I would not tell a lie for
the whole world.”
I find little worthy of notice in other dramatic pieces having knights
for their heroes. Southeran produced one entitled, “Sir Anthony Love”
at the Theatre Royal in 1691, for the purpose of showing off Mrs.
Mountfort as an errant lady in male attire.
In the eighteenth century, the knights gave name to a few historical
pieces not worth recording. The only exceptions are scarcely worthy of
more notice. Dodsley’s “Sir John Cockle at Court” made our ancestors,
of George the Second’s time, laugh at the sequel of the “King and the
Miller of Mansfield;” and “Sir Roger de Coverley” was made the hero
of a pantomime at Covent Garden in 1746. By this time, however, the
fashion was extinct of satirizing living politicians under knightly
names. To detail the few exceptions to the rule would only fatigue the
perhaps already wearied reader.
To what a low condition knight and squire could fall may be seen in the
Sir Joseph Wittol and Captain Bluffe, in Congreve’s comedy, the “Old
Batchelor.” The only redeeming point about this disreputable pair is,
that, cowards and bullies as they are, they have both read a little.
The Captain has dipped into history, and he remarks that “Hannibal was
a pretty fellow in his day, it must be granted; but, alas, sir! were
he alive now, he would be nothing; nothing on the earth.” Sir Joseph,
the knight, _in comitatu Bucks_, has also indulged in a little reading,
but that of a lighter sort than the Captain’s. When the gallant Captain
affects not to be frightened at the aspect of Sharper, and exclaims, “I
am prepared for him now, and he shall find he might have safer roused a
sleeping lion,” the knight remarks, “Egad, if he should hear the lion
roar, he’d cudgel him into an ass, and his primitive braying. Don’t
you remember the story in Æsop’s Fables, Bully? Egad, there are good
morals to be picked out of Æsop’s Fables, let me tell you that; and
‘Reynard the Fox’ too;” to which the deboshed Captain can only reply,
“D--n your morals!” as though he despised fiction when compared with
history.
Some of the stage knights are wonderfully great boasters, yet
exceedingly dull fellows. I do not know that in the mouth of any one
of them there is put so spirited a remark as the great Huniades made
to Ulderick, Count of Sicily. The latter asked for a conference with
the great governor of Hungary. Huniades bade him come to the Hungarian
camp. The offended Ulderick, in a great chafe, replied that it was
beneath him to do such a thing, seeing that he was descended from
a long line of princely ancestors; whereas Huniades was the first
of his family who had ever been raised to honor. The Hungarian very
handsomely remarked, “I do not compare myself with your ancestors;
but _with you_!” This has always appeared to me as highly dramatic
in spirit. There is nothing half so spirited in the knightly pieces
brought on the stage during the reign of George III., and which caused
infinite delight to very easily-pleased audiences. It is well known
that the good-natured Sovereign of England, although unassuming in
his domestic character, was exceedingly fond of display in public
ceremonies. He used to arrange the paraphernalia of an installation of
the Garter with all the energy and care of an anxious stage-manager.
The people generally were as anxious to have an idea of the reality.
On one occasion, in the preceding reign, they so nearly forced their
way into the banqueting-room, where the knights were holding festival,
that the troops fired over their heads in order to frighten them into
dispersing. Under George III. they were more content to view these
splendors through a dramatic lens.
In 1771, accordingly, the splendors of the then late installation of
the Garter were reproduced on the stage, in a masque, called “The
Institution of the Garter, or Arthur’s Round Table Restored.” The show
was as good as the piece was bad. The former was got up to profit the
managers, the latter to flatter or do homage to the King and Queen.
It was at once cumbersome and comic. A trio of spirits opened the
delectable entertainment by summoning other spirits from every nook
and corner of the skies, the moon’s horns included, to the work of
escorting the car of the Male Genius of England, the husband probably
of Britannia, down to earth. Nothing can exceed the alacrity with which
the spirits and bards of the empyreal heaven obey the summons. They
descend with the car of the Genius, singing a heavy chorus, ponderous
as the chariot they help to “waft down,”--in which, not the chariot,
but the chorus, there is the assurance that
“The bliss that spotless patriots feel
Is kindred to the bliss above,”--
so that we may hope, though we can not feel certain, that there are
some few persons here below, who are not unconscious of an ante-past of
heaven.
The Genius is a civil and polished personage, who with due remembrance
to metropolitan fogs, very courteously apologizes to the spirits, that
he has been the cause of bringing them down
“To this grosser atmosphere awhile.”
After such celestial compliments as these, he despatches them to shed
heavenly influences over Windsor, while he remains to hold a little
colloquy with the Druids, “Britain’s old philosophers,” as he calls
them. He adds an assertion that may, probably, have startled the
Society of Antiquaries of that day, namely, that the aforesaid Druids--
“Still enamored of their ancient haunts,
Unseen of mortal eyes, do hover round
Their ruined altars and their sacred oaks,”
which may account for that loose heterodoxy which marked the period
when Druids exercised these unseen influences.
The Genius requests the Druids to have the kindness to repair to
Windsor, where the order is in the act of being founded by Edward, and
there direct his choice in the selection of members. This is a very
heathenish idea, but Druids and Bards are alike delighted at it; for,
as the Genius remarks, Edward’s perspicuity, his intellectual eyes,
needed charming
“from the mists
It haply hath contracted from a long
Unebbing current of prosperity.”
The heathen priests are flaming patriots, and express their eagerness
to leave Heaven for England, seeing that the new order may be the means
to propagate
“The sovereignty of England, and erect
Her monarchs into judges of mankind.”
As this expressed end has not been accomplished, and the order has not
propagated the sovereignty of England, we may logically conclude that
the Druids themselves hardly knew much of the subject upon which they
were singing to their tuneless harps. Meanwhile, the first Bard, in a
bass song, petitions the south gales to blow very mildly, and bring
blue skies and sweet smells to the installation.
The ceremony of the installation then opens to the view when all the
knights have been created, except the King’s son, Edward the Black
Prince, who really was not created knight when the order was founded.
How far the Druids have succeeded in influencing the choice of the
King, there is no possibility of knowing. No one utters a word, save
royal father and son: and the commonplace prose which they deliver does
not give us a very exalted idea of the Druidic inspiration. The old
sages themselves, however, are perfectly satisfied with the result;
and in a noisy chorus, they make an assertion which might well have
frightened the Archbishop of Canterbury--had he cared about the matter.
After vaticinating that the name of the Prince should roll down through
the tide of ages, they add, that glory shall fire him, and virtue
inspire him,
“Till blessed and blessing,
Power possessing,
From earth to heaven he lifts his soul,”--
a feat which one would like to see put upon canvass by a Pre-Raphaelite.
While the Knights are supposed to be preparing to pass to the hall,
the scene takes us to the front of the castle, where crowds of liege
and loyal people are assembled. First Citizen, “very like a whale
indeed,” sings a comic song, which, as a specimen of the homage offered
to monarch and consort, more than fourscore years ago, is worth
transcribing--for both its imagery and syntax:--
“Oh, the glorious installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the King and Queen:
Such a scene!
Valor he, sir;
Virtue she, sir;
Which our hearts will ever win.
Sweet her face is,
With such graces
Show what goodness dwells within.
“Oh, the glorious installation!
Happy nation!
You shall see the noble knights:
Charming sights!
Feathers wagging,
Velvet dragging,
Trailing, sailing, on the ground;
Loud in talking,
Proud in walking,
Nodding, ogling, smirking round.”
The banquet over, and more comic business, as dreary as the song above
quoted, being concluded, King Edward walks forth into the garden for
refreshment--and there the Genius of England takes him by the hand.
Edward, we are sorry to say, knows so little of this Genius, that
he boldly asks him, “What art thou, stranger?” We should, only with
reluctance, trouble our readers with all this unrecognised Genius says
in reply to the royal inquirer, but one passage may be transcribed to
show what the popular spirit was thought to be in the last century.
“Know that those actions which are great and good,
Receive a nobler sanction from the free
And universal voices from all mankind,
Which is the voice of Heaven, than from the highest,
The most illustrious act of royal power.”
This maxim of the Genius of England further shows that the individual
in question not only passed off prose for blank verse, but stole the
phrase of “Vox populi vox Dei,” and tried to render it unrecognisable
by indefinite extension.
That the sentiment is not very much to the taste of the Monarch may
be conjectured from the fact that he sulkily lets it pass without any
comment, and very naturally falls asleep of being talked-at by so
heavily-pinioned a Genius. The latter avails himself of the opportunity
to exhibit to the slumbering Monarch a vision of the future of England,
down to the era of George and Charlotte. The spectacle soothes him
still less than the speech, though oppressive ecstacy may be sweet, and
Edward springs into wakefulness, and loudly exclaiming that
“This is too much for human strength to bear,”
the loquacious Genius flies at him again with some remarkable
figures of speech, to which the worn-out Edward answers nothing. The
Genius, unwilling to attribute his taciturnity to rudeness, finds a
satisfactory solution in the conclusion that
“Astonishment seals up his lips.”
The founder of the “Garter” will not provoke the eloquence of the
heavenly visiter by unsealing the lips which astonishment is supposed
to have sealed up, and the remainder of the piece is left to Genius and
chorus, who unite in a musical asseveration, to the effect that the
reigning Sovereign of England is
“The great miracle on earth, a patriot king,”
and so terminates, amid the most vociferous plaudits, the scenic story
of the Garter, enacted in celebration of the great installation of 1771.
The real installation was, by far, a more cheerful matter than its
theatrical counterfeit. It took place on the 25th of July. At this
ceremony the King raised to the dignity of Knights of the illustrious
order, his sons the Prince of Wales and the Bishop of Osnaburg,
his brother the Duke of Cumberland, with the Queen’s brother, the
Duke of Mecklenburgh, and Prince Henry of Brunswick, the Dukes of
Marlborough and Grafton, and the Earls of Gower and Albermarle. The
festival occupied the entire day. Four mortal hours in the morning
were consumed in making the Knights, after which Sovereign and chapter
dined together in St. George’s Hall. While the banquet was progressing,
Queen Charlotte sat in a gallery, looking on. She was brilliantly
surrounded, and had at her right side the pretty Princess Royal, and
the infant Prince Ernest at her left. One of her Majesty’s brothers
stood by each royal child. On the right of the canopy under which the
King dined, was a long table, at which were seated all the Knights, in
full view of the occupants of raised seats and a gallery in front. At
the end of the first course, the good-natured Monarch was determined
to make a Knight Bachelor of some deserving individual present, and he
rendered good Mr. Dessac (clerk of the check, belonging to the band
of Gentlemen Pensioners) supremely happy by selecting _him_. As soon
as the other courses had been served, and the banquet was concluded,
which was not till between six and seven o’clock, the whole of the
cavaliers and company separated in haste, hurrying to their respective
rooms or hotels, to dress for the ball which was to be held in the
Great Guard-Room. When all the guests were there assembled, the
King and Queen entered the apartment about nine o’clock. Whereupon
the Duke of Gloucester danced a couple of minuets with a brace of
duchesses--Grafton and Marlborough. The minuets were continued till
eleven o’clock. No one seemed to tire of the stately, graceful dance,
and it was only during the hour that followed, that any young lady,
as anxious as the elegant American belle, who told Mr. Oliphant at
Minnesota that “she longed to shake the knots out of her legs,” had a
chance of indulging in her liveliness. During one hour--from eleven to
midnight--country dances were accomplished. I say accomplished, for
only three were danced--and each set procured twenty minutes of very
active exercise. Midnight had scarcely been tolled out by the castle
clock when the festive throng separated--and thus closed one of the
most brilliant installations that Windsor had ever seen, since Edward
first became the founder of the order. If there was any drawback to the
gratification which the King felt on this occasion, it was at beholding
Wilkes and his daughter conspicuously seated among the spectators in
the courtyard; whither the man whom the King hated had penetrated by
means of a ticket from Lord Tankerville. It was at this period that
Mr. Fox revived, for a few court-days, the fashion of appearing at the
drawing-room in red-heeled shoes. To the public, these matters were
far more comic than the comic portion of the “Installation,” in which
(setting aside the Edward III. of Aikin, and the Genius of England,
played by Reddish) King enacted Sir Dingle, a court fool knighted;
Parsons, Nat Needle; and Weston, Roger. Never was foolish knight played
by an actor so chivalrous of aspect as King.
I will avail myself of this opportunity to state that at solemn
ceremonies, like that above named, four of our kings of England were
knighted by their own subjects. These were Edward III., Henry VI. and
VII., and Edward VI. The latter was dubbed by the Lord Protector,
who was himself empowered to perform the act by letters patent,
under the great seal. At a very early period, priests, or prelates
rather, sometimes conferred the honor on great public occasions. The
Westminster Synod deprived them of this privilege in 1102.
It has been said that English knights wearing foreign orders, without
permission of their own sovereign, are no more knights in reality than
those stage knights of whom I have been treating. This, however, is
questionable, if so great an authority as Coke be not in error. That
great lawyer declares that a knight, by whomsoever created, can sue
and be sued by his knightly title, and that such is not the case with
persons holding other foreign titles, similar to those of the English
peerage. Let me add that, among other old customs, it was once common
in our armies for knighthood to be conferred previous to a battle, to
arouse courage, rather than afterward, as is the case now--after the
action, in order to reward valor. Even this fashion is more reasonable
than that of the Czar, who claps stars and crosses of chivalry on the
bosoms of beaten generals, to make them pass in Muscovy for conquerors.
In connection with the stage, knights have figured sometimes before, as
well as behind the curtain. Of all the contests ever maintained, there
was never, in its way a fiercer than that which took place between Sir
William Rawlings, and young Tom Dibdin. The son of “tuneful Charlie,”
born in 1771, and held at the font, as the “Lady’s Magazine” used to
say, by Garrick, was not above four years of age when he played Cupid
to Mrs. Siddons’ Venus, in Shakespeare’s Jubilee. It was hardly to be
expected that after this and a course of attendance as choir-boy at
St. Paul’s, he would settle down quietly to learn upholstery. This
_was_ expected of him by his very unreasonable relatives, who bound him
apprentice to the city knight, Sir William Rawlings, a then fashionable
upholsterer in Moorfields. The boy was dull as the mahogany he had to
polish, and the knight could never make him half so bright in business
matters. “Tom Dibdin,” thus used to remark the city cavalier--“Tom
Dibdin is the stupidest hound on earth!” The knight, however, changed
his mind when his apprentice, grown up to man’s estate, produced
“The Cabinet.” Sir William probably thought that the opera was the
upholstery business set to music. But before this point was reached,
dire was the struggle between the knight and the page, who would not
“turn over a new leaf.” When work was over, the boy was accustomed
to follow it up with a turn at the play--generally in the gallery of
the Royalty Theatre. On one of these occasions the knight followed
him thither, dragged him out, gave him a sound thrashing, and, next
morning, brought him before that awfully squinting official, John
Wilkes. The struggle ended in a drawn battle, and Tom abandoned trade:
and instead of turning out patent bedsteads, turned out the “English
Fleet,” and became the father of “Mother Goose.” He would have shown
less of his relationship to the family of that name, had he stuck to
his tools; in the latter case he might have taken his seat as Lord
Mayor, in a chair made by himself, and in those stirring times he might
have become as good a knight as his master.
As it was, the refuse of knighthood had a hard time of it. He was
actor of all work, wrote thousands of songs, which he sold as cheap
as chips, and composed four pieces for Astley’s Theatre, for which he
received fourteen pounds--hardly the price of a couple of arm-chairs.
How he flourished and fell after this, may be seen in his biography.
He had fortune within his grasp at one time, but he lost his hold
when he became proprietor of a theatre. The ex-apprentice of the old
knight-upholder could not furnish his own house with audiences, and the
angry knight himself might have been appeased could his spirit have
seen the condition into which “poor Tom” had fallen just previous to
his death, some twenty years ago.
But I fear I have said more than enough about stage knights; may I
add some short gossip touching real knights with stage ladies? Before
doing so, I may just notice that the wedded wife of a _bona fide_
knight once acted on the English boards under the chivalric name--and a
time-honored one it is in Yorkshire--of her husband, Slingsby. Dame, or
Lady Slingsby, who had been formerly a Mrs. Lee, was a favorite actress
in the days of James II. She belonged to the Theatre Royal, resided
in St. James’s parish, and was buried in Pancras church-yard in March
1693-4. In the list of the Slingsbys, baronets, of Scriven, given in
Harborough’s “History of Knaresborough,” Sir Henry Slingsby, who died
in 1692, is the only one of whose marriage no notice is taken. But to
our stage ladies and gallant lovers.
STAGE LADIES AND THE ROMANCE OF HISTORY.
“Our happy love may have a secret church,
Under the church, as Faith’s was under Paul’s,
Where we may carry on our sweet devotion,
And the cathedral marriage keep its state,
And all its decencies and ceremonies.”
CROWNE, _The Married Beau_.
After the loose fashion of Master Crowne’s Married Beau, it was no
uncommon thing for gallants once to woo the mimic ladies of the scene.
From the time that ladies first appeared upon the stage, they seem to
have exercised a powerful attraction upon the cavaliers. Under date
of the 18th October, 1666, Evelyn says in his Diary: “This night was
acted my Lord Broghill’s tragedy, ‘Mustapha,’ before their majesties
at court, at which I was present, very seldom going to the public
theatres, for many reasons, now, as they are abused to an atheistical
liberty, foul and undecent women now (and never till now) permitted to
appear and act, who, inflaming several young noblemen and gallants,
became their misses, and to some their wives; witness the Earl of
Oxford, Sir R. Howard, Prince Rupert, the Earl of Dorset, and another
greater person than any of them, who fell into their snares, to the
reproach of their noble families, and ruin of both body and soul. I was
invited by my Lord Chamberlain to see this tragedy, exceedingly well
written, though in my mind I did not approve of any such pastime in a
time of such judgments and calamities.”
A year and a half earlier than the date of the above entry, namely,
April 3, 1665, Pepys notices the same play, with some allusions to
the ladies: “To a play at the Duke’s of my Lord Orrery’s, called
‘Mustapha,’ which being not good, made Betterton’s part and Ianthe’s
but ordinary too. All the pleasure of the play was, the king and
my Lady Castlemaine were there; and pretty witty Nell of the
King’s House, and the younger Marshall sat next us, which pleased
me mightily.” The play, however, is not so poor a one as Pepys
describes it, and the cast was excellent. Betterton played Solyman the
Magnificent. Mustapha and Zanga, the sons of Solyman, were played by
Harris and Smith; and Young made a capital Cardinal. Mrs. Betterton
was the Roxalana; and Mrs. Davies, one of those ladies who, like her
sisters, the two Marshalls, Hughes and Nelly, exercised the fatal
attraction over young noblemen and gallants, deplored by Evelyn, was
the magnificent Queen of Hungary. Mustapha continued to be the favorite
play until the theatre closed, when the plague began to spread. Pepys’s
“Ianthe” was Mrs. Betterton, of whom he says, on the 22d October, 1662,
“the players do tell me that Betterton is not married to Ianthe, as
they say; but also that he is a very sober, serious man, studious and
humble, following of his studies, and is rich already with what he gets
and saves.” Betterton, however, married the lady, Miss Saunderson,
in 1663. She had been famous for her Ianthe in Davenant’s “Siege of
Rhodes;” and she played Shakespeare’s heroines with great effect. Pepys
rightly designates the author of the play, Lord Orrery. Lord Broghill
was made Earl of Orrery, five years before Evelyn saw his play. I may
add that Mustapha has appeared in half-a-dozen different versions on
the stage. Probably the worst of these was Mallet’s; the latter author
created great amusement by one of his passages, in which he said:--
“_Future_ sultans
_Have_ shunned the marriage tie;”--
a confusion of tenses which has been compared with a similar error in
the sermons of so correct a writer as Blair (vol. v., third edition,
page 224), “in _future_ periods the light _dawned_ more and more.”
Although Evelyn, in 1666, says that “never till now” were women
admitted to assume characters on the stage, he is not quite correct in
his assertion. There were actresses full thirty years previous to that
period. Thus, in 1632, the “Court Beggar” was acted at the Cockpit.
In the last act, Lady Strangelove says:--“If you have a short speech
or two, the boy’s a pretty actor, and his mother can play her part:
women-actors now grow in request.” Our ancestors wisely followed a
foreign fashion when they ceased to employ boys in female characters.
Prynne says, in 1633, “They have now their female players in Italy
and other foreign parts;” and in Michaelmas 1629, they had French
women-actors in a play personated at Blackfriars, to which there was
a great resort. Geneste quotes Freshwater as writing thus of French
actresses in Paris, in 1629: “Yet the women are the best actors; they
play their own parts, a thing much desired in England.”
In Davenant’s patent for opening Lincoln’s-inn Fields, in 1661,
permission was given for the engaging of women as actresses, on the
ground that the employment of men in such parts had given great
offence. I more particularly notice this matter, because it was a
knight who first opened a theatre with a regular female _troupe_
added to the usual number of male actors. Sir William’s ladies were
Mrs. Davenport, Mrs. Saunderson, Mrs. Davies, Mrs. Long, Mrs. Gibbs,
Mrs. Norris, Mrs. Holden, and Mrs. Jennings. The first four were Sir
William’s principal actresses, and these were boarded in the knight’s
own dwelling-house. Their title of “Mistress” does not necessarily
imply that they were married ladies, but rather that they were old
enough to be so.
This knight, too, was the first who introduced scenery on the stage. I
will add (_par parenthèse_) that it was a priest who first suggested
the levelling of the pit with the stage, for the purpose of masquerades
and balls.
Prynne was not among those who fancied that morality would profit
by the introduction of actresses. He had his misgivings as to the
effects likely to be produced on the susceptible young gallants of
his day. Touching the appearance of the French actresses at the
Blackfriars Theatre, noticed above, he calls it “an impudent, shameful,
un-womanish, graceless, if not more than w----ish attempt.” The fashion
was, undoubtedly, first set by the court, and by no less a person than
a queen. Anne of Denmark, wife of James I., acted a part in a pastoral.
They who remember some of the incidents of the training she gave her
son, the princely knight young Henry, will hardly think that Anne gave
dignity to the occupation she temporarily assumed.
Mrs. Saunderson is said to have been the first regularly-engaged
actress who opened her lips on the English stage. Had she and her
compeers only half the charms which report ascribed to them, they
must have afforded far more pleasure to audience and spectators than
the “beautiful woman-actor,” Stephen Hamerton Hart, with his womanly
dignity; Burt, with his odious female sprightliness; or Goffe, who was
as hearty and bustling as old Mrs. Davenport. King Charles himself and
his cavaliers, too, must have been especially delighted when they were
no longer kept waiting for the commencement of a play, on the ground
that the _Queen_ was not yet shaved.
It is curious that there were some people not near so strait-laced
as Prynne, who considered that public virtue would suffer shipwreck
if actresses were permitted to establish themselves in the general
favor. The opposite party, of course, went to an opposite extreme;
and in 1672, not only were “Philaster,” and Killigrew’s “Parson’s
Wedding,” played _entirely_ by women, but one of the “Miss” Marshalls,
gay daughter of a Presbyterian minister, on both occasions spoke
the prologue and epilogue in male attire. “Philaster” is simply an
absurd piece, which was rendered popular by Hart and Nell Gwyn;
but with respect to Killigrew’s piece, it is so disgusting, from
the commencement to the finale, that I can hardly fancy how any
individuals, barely alive to their humanity, could be brought to utter
and enact the turpitudes which Killigrew set down for them, or that an
audience could be kept from fleeing from the house before the first act
was over.
But the gallants could endure anything rather than a return to such
effects as are alluded to by a contemporary writer, who, by way of
introducing a female Desdemona, said in his prologue--
“Our women are defective and so sized
You’d think they were some of the guard disguised;
For, to speak truth, men act that are between
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen;
With brow so large, and nerve so uncompliant,
When you call _Desdemona_--enter _Giant_.”
Half a century elapsed before knight or gentleman took an actress from
the stage, for the purpose of making her his wife. The squires, in
this case, had precedence of the knights; and the antiquary, Martin
Folkyes, led the way by espousing Lucretia Bradshaw, the uncorrupted
amid corruption, and the original Corinna in the “Confederacy,” Dorinda
in the “Beaux Stratagem,” and Arabella Zeal in the “Fair Quaker of
Deal.” This marriage took place in 1713, and there was not a happier
hearth in England than that of the antiquary and the actress. A knight
of the Garter followed, with an earl’s coronet, and in 1735 the great
Lord Peterborough acknowledged his marriage with that daughter of sweet
sounds, Anastasia Robinson. This example at once flattered, provoked,
and stimulated the ladies, one of whom, the daughter of Earl de
Waldegrave, Lady Henrietta Herbert, married young Beard the actor. This
was thought “low,” and another knight’s daughter was less censured for
marrying her father’s footman. The “Beggars’ Opera” gave two coronets
to two Pollys. Lavinia Fenton (Betswick), the original Polly at
Lincoln’s Inn, in 1728, became Duchess of Bolton a few years later; and
in 1813, no less a man than Lord Thurlow married Mary Catherine Bolton,
who was scarcely an inferior _Polly_ to the original lady, who gave up
_Polly_ to become a Bolton.
The squires once more took their turn when Sheridan married Miss
Lindley; but before the last century closed, Miss Farren gave her hand
to “the proudest earl in England,” the Earl of Derby, Knight of the
Bath. In 1807, knight and squire took two ladies from the stage. In
that year Mr. Heathcote married the beautiful Miss Searle; and Earl
Craven married Louisa Brunton. We have still among us five ex-actresses
who married men of the degree of noble, knight, or squire. These are
Miss Stephens, the widowed Countess of Essex; Miss Foote, the widowed
Countess of Harrington; Miss O’Neill the widow of Sir William Beecher,
Bart.; Mrs. Nisbett, the relict of the bold Sir Felix Boothby; and Miss
M. Tree, whose late husband, Mr. Bradshaw, was at one time M. P. for
Canterbury.
There is something romantic in the lives of all these ladies, but most
in that of “Lizzy Farren,” and as the life of that lady of a Knight
of the Bath has something in common with the career of a celebrated
legal knight and judge, I will take some of its incidents as the chief
points in the following sketch, which is a supplementary chapter to the
Romance of History, and perhaps not the least interesting one in such a
series.
If gayety consists in noise, then was the market-place of Salisbury,
toward the close of Christmas Eve, 1769, extremely joyous and glad. In
the centre, on a raised stage, his Worship the Mayor was inaugurating
the holyday-time, by having a bout at single-stick with an itinerant
exhibitor of the art of self-defence from London. The “professor” had
been soliciting the magisterial permission to set up his stage in the
market-place, and he had not only received full license, but the chief
magistrate himself condescended to take a stick and try his strength
with the professor.
It was an edifying sight, and bumpkins and burgesses enjoyed it
consumedly. The professional fencer allowed his adversary to count
many “hits” out of pure gratitude. But he had some self-respect,
and in order that his reputation might not suffer in the estimation
of the spectators, he wound up the “set-to” by dealing a stroke on
the right-worshipful skull, which made the mayor imagine that chaos
was come again, and that all about him was dancing confusedly into
annihilation.
“I am afraid I have accidentally hurt your worship’s head,” said the
wickedly sympathizing single-stick player.
“H’m!” murmured the fallen great man, with a ghastly smile, and Iris’s
seven hues upon his cheek, “don’t mention it: there’s nothing in it!”
“I am truly rejoiced,” replied the professor to his assistant, with a
wink of the eye, “that his worship has not lost his senses.”
“Oh, ay!” exclaimed the rough aide, “he’s about as wise as ever he was.”
The single-stick player looked like Pizarro, who, when he _did_ kill
a friend occasionally--“his custom i’ th’ afternoon”--always went to
the funeral in a mourning suit and a droop of the eye--intended for
sympathy. In the meantime the mayor, who had been fancying himself in a
balloon, and that he was being whirled away from his native town, began
to think that the balloon was settling to earth again, and that the
representation of chaos had been indefinitely deferred. He continued,
however, holding on by the rail, as if the balloon was yet unsteady,
and he only complained of a drumming in the ears.
At that moment the not-to-be-mistaken sound of a real drum fell in
harsh accompaniment upon his singing-ears, and it had one good effect,
that of bringing back the magistrate and the man. Both looked through
the rather shaken windows of the one body, and indignation speedily
lighted up from within.
The sound came from the suburb of Fisherton, but it swelled insultingly
nearer and nearer, as though announcing that it was about to be beaten
in the borough, despite the lack of magisterial sanction. The great
depository of authority began to gaze in speechless horror, as the
bearer of the noisy instrument made his appearance in the market-place
at the head of a small procession, which was at once seen to consist of
a party of strolling actors.
The drummer was a thick-set man, with nothing healthy looking about him
but his nose, and that looked _too_ healthy. He was the low comedian,
and was naturally endowed to assume that distinctive line.
He was followed by three or four couple of “the ladies and gentlemen
of the company,” of some of whom it might be said, that shoes were
things they did not much stand upon. They had a shabby genteel air
about them, looked hungry and happy; and one or two wore one hand in
the pocket, upon an economizing principle in reference to gloves. The
light comedian cut jokes with the spectators, and was soon invited to
the consequence he aimed at--an invitation to “take a glass of wine.”
The women were more tawdry-looking than the men, but they wore a
light-hearted, romping aspect--all, except the young lady who played
Ophelia and Columbine, who carried a baby, and looked as if she had not
been asleep since it was born, which was probably the case.
The _cortège_ was closed by a fine, gentleman-like man, who led by
the hand a little girl some ten years old. No one could look for
a moment at them, without at once feeling assured that there was
something in them which placed them above the fellows with whom they
consorted. They were father and daughter. _He_ manager; _she_ a species
of infant phenomenon. In his face were to be traced the furrows of
disappointment, and in his eye the gleam of hope. _Her_ face was
as faces of the young should ever be, full of enjoyment, love, and
feeling. The last two were especially there for the father, whose hand
she held, and into whose face she looked, ever and anon, with a smile
which never failed to be repaid in similar currency.
The refined air of the father, and the graceful bearing of the modest
daughter, won commendations from all beholders. He was an ex-surgeon
of Cork, who had given up his profession in order to follow the stage.
People set him down as insane, and so he was, but it was an insanity
which made a countess of his daughter. His name was Farren, and his
child, pet daughter of a pretty mother, was the inimitable Lizzy.
If the mayor could have read into history, he would have knelt down
and kissed Lizzy Farren’s shoe-buckles. As he could not so read, he
only saw in the sire a vagabond, and in the child a mountebank. On the
former he hurled down the whole weight of his magisterial wrath. It
was in vain that the manager declared he was on his way to solicit the
mayor’s license to act in Salisbury. That official gentleman declared
that it was an infraction of the law to pass from the suburb of
Fisherton into the borough of Salisbury before the mayor’s permission
had been previously signified.
“And that permission I will never give,” said his worship. “We are
a godly people here, and have no taste for rascal-players. As his
majesty’s representative, I am bound to encourage no amusements that
are not respectable.”
“But our young king,” interrupted Mr. Farren, “is himself a great
patron of the theatre.”
This was worse than a heavy blow at single-stick; and the mayor was the
more wrath as he had no argument ready to meet it. After looking angry
for a moment, a bright thought struck him.
“Ay, ay, sir! You will not, I hope, teach a mayor either fact or duty.
We know, sir, what the king (God bless him!) patronizes. His majesty
does not patronize strollers. He goes regularly to an _established_
church, sir, and to an _established_ theatre; and so, sir, I, as mayor,
support only establishments. Good heavens! what would become of the
throne and the altar, if a Mayor of Sarum were to do otherwise?”
As Mr. Farren did not well know, he could not readily tell; and as he
stood mute, the mayor continued to pour down upon the player and his
vocation, a shower of obloquy. At every allusion which he made to his
predilection for amusements that were respectable and instructive,
the single-stick player and his man drew themselves up, cried “_Hear!
hear!_” and looked down upon the actors with an air of burlesque
contempt. The actors, men and women, returned the look with a burst of
uncontrollable laughter. The mayor took this for deliberate insult,
aimed at himself and at what he chose to patronize. His protégés looked
the more proud, and became louder than ever in their self-applauding
“_Hear! hear!_” The players, the while, shrieked with laughter. Even
Mr. Farren and Lizzy could not refrain from risibility, for the
stick-player and his man were really members of the company. The former
was Mr. Frederick Fitzmontague, who was great in _Hamlet_. His man was
the ruffian in melodramas, and the clown in pantomimes, and as he did
a little private business of his own by accepting an engagement from a
religious society, during the dull season of the year, to preach on the
highways against theatricals, Mr. Osmond Brontere was usually known by
the cognomen of Missionary Jack.
The magisterial refusal to license this wandering company to play in
Salisbury, was followed by altercation; and altercation by riot. The
multitude took part with the actors, and they hooted the mayor; and
the latter, viewing poor Farren as the cause and guilty mover of all
that had occurred, summarily ordered his arrest; and, in spite of all
remonstrance, resistance, or loudly-expressed disgust, the manager
was ultimately lodged in the cage. The mob, then, satisfied at having
had a little excitement, and caring nothing more about the matter, at
length separated, and repaired to their respective homes. They went all
the quicker that the rain had begun to descend in torrents; and they
took little notice of poor Lizzy, who went home in the dusk, weeping
bitterly, and led by the hands of the matronly Ophelia and Missionary
Jack.
Ere morning dawned, a change had come over the scene. The rain had
ceased. A hard frost had set in. All Salisbury looked as if it were
built upon a frozen lake. The market-place itself was a _mer de
glace_. Christmas-day was scarcely visible when a boy of early habits,
standing at the door of an upholsterer’s shop, which bore above it
the name of Burroughs, fancied he saw something moving with stealthy
pace across the market-place; and he amused himself by watching it
through the gloom. It was developed, after a while, into the figure
of a thinly-clad girl, bearing in her arms a bowl of hot milk. She
trod cautiously, and looked, now down at her feet, now across the wide
square, to measure the distance she had yet to go. Each little foot
was put forward with hesitation, and so slowly was progress made, that
there was good chance of the boiling milk being frozen, before it had
been carried half-way to its destination.
The girl was Lizzy Farren, and in the bowl, which between her arms
looked as graceful as urn clasped by Arcadian nymph, lay the chief
portion of a breakfast destined, on this sad Christmas morning, for her
captive sire in the cage.
“She’ll be down!” said young Burroughs, as he saw her partially slip.
Lizzy, however, recovered herself; but so alarmed was she at her
situation, so terrified when she measured the distance she had to
accomplish by that which she had already traversed, that she fairly
stood still near the centre of the market-place, and wept aloud over
the hot bowl and her cold position. It was then that the young knight
recognised the crisis when he was authorized to interfere. He made a
run from the door, shot one leg in advance, drew the other quickly
after him, and went sliding, with express-train speed, close up to
Lizzy’s feet. _She_ no sooner saw the direful prospect of collision
than she shrieked with an energy which roused all the rooks in the
close.
“Hold hard!” exclaimed the merry-faced boy; “hold hard! that’s myself,
you Lizzy, and the milk. Hold hard!” he continued, as he half held her
up, half held on to her. “Hold hard! or we shall all be down together.”
“Oh, where do you come from? and how do you know my name is Lizzy?”
“Well! Mr. Fitzmontague lodges in our house, and he told us all about
you, last night. And he said, as sure as could be, you would be awake
before anybody in Salisbury. And sure enough, here you are, almost
before daylight.”
By the help of the young cavalier, the distressed damsel was relieved
from her perplexity. Young Burroughs offered to carry the bowl, which
she stoutly refused. “No one,” she said, “shall carry my father’s
breakfast to him, but myself, on such a morning.” And so, her
deliverer walked tenderly by her side, holding her cautiously up, nor
ceased from his care, until Lizzy and her burden had safely reached
the cage. Through the bars of the small window, Farren had watched her
coming; and he hailed her arrival with a “God bless you, my own child!”
“Oh, papa!” said Lizzy, weeping again, and embracing the bowl as warmly
as if it had been her father himself; “oh, papa! what would mamma and
my little sisters, and all our friends in Liverpool say, if they knew
how we are beginning our Christmas day?”
“Things unknown are unfelt, my darling. We will tell them nothing about
it, till Fortune gilds over the memory of it. But what do you bring,
Lizzy?--or rather, why do I ask? It is my breakfast; and Lizzy herself
has had none.”
A pretty altercation ensued; but Lizzy gained her point; and not one
drop would she taste till her sire had commenced the repast. Aided by
young Burroughs, she held the lip of the bowl through the bars of the
cage; and the little English maiden smiled, for the first time since
yesterday, at beholding her sire imbibe the quickening draught. It
was not till three years after that Barry and his wife played Evander
and Euphrasia in the Grecian Daughter, or Farren would have drawn a
parallel suitable to the occasion. He was not so well up in history as
in theatricals; and on the stage, history has a terrible time of it.
Witness this very tragedy in which Murphy has made Evander, King of
Sicily, and confounded Dionysius the elder, with his younger namesake.
To be sure, pleasant Palmer, who played the character, was about as
wise as Murphy.
When the primitive breakfast was concluded, Lizzy stood sad and silent;
and the father sadly and silently looked down at her; while young
Burroughs leaned against the wall, as sad and silent as either of them.
And so a weary two hours passed; at the end of which, a town-constable
appeared, accompanied by a clerical gentleman, and empowered to give
liberty to the captive. When the constable told the manager that his
liberation was owing to the intercession made in his behalf, by the
Reverend Mr. Snodgrass, who had just arrived in Salisbury, Lizzy
clapped her hands with agitation, for she saw that the clerical
interceder was no other than Missionary Jack. “Oh, Mr. Brontere,” said
the curious girl, when they had all reached home together, “how did you
ever manage it?”
“Well!” said the enterprising actor, with a laugh; “I called on his
worship, to inquire what Christmas charities might be acceptable; and
if there were any prisoners whom my humble means might liberate. He
named your papa, and the company have paid what was necessary. His
worship was not inexorable, particularly as I incidentally told him his
Majesty patronized, the other day, an itinerant company at Datchet. As
for _how_ I did it. I rather think I am irresistible in the dress in
which poor Will Havard, only two years ago, played ‘Old Adam.’ A little
ingenuity, as you see, has made it look very like a rector’s costume;
and, besides,” said Missionary Jack, “I sometimes think that nature
intended me for the church.”
* * * * *
Three years had elapsed. On the Christmas eve of 1772, all the
play-going people of Wakefield were in a state of pleasant excitement,
at the promise made in bills posted over the town announcing the
immediate appearance of the “Young Queen of Columbines.” All the young
bachelors of the town were besieging the box-office. In those days
there were not only theatres in provincial towns, but people really
went to them. Amid the applicants, was a sprightly-looking articled
clerk, who, having achieved his object, had stopped for a moment at the
stage-door to read the programme of the forthcoming pantomime. While
thus engaged the Columbine Queen, the most fairy-looking of youthful
figures, brilliant as spring, and light as gossamer, sweet fifteen,
with a look of being a year or two more, tripped into the street, on
her way home from rehearsal. Eighty years ago the gallantry of country
towns, with respect to pretty actresses, was much like that which
characterizes German localities now. It was of a rudely enthusiastic
quality. Accordingly, the fairy-looking Columbine had hardly proceeded
a dozen yards, when she had twice as many offers made her of arms,
whereon to find support over the slippery pavement. It was an
old-fashioned winter in Wakefield, and Columbine’s suitors had as many
falls in the course of their assiduities, as though they had been so
many “Lovers” in the pantomime, and the wand of Harlequin was tripping
them up as they skipped along. Columbine got skilfully rid of them all
in time, except one; and _he_ became at last so unwelcomely intrusive,
that the articled clerk, who was the very champion of distressed
damsels, and had been a watcher of what was going on, went up to the
young lady, took her arm in his, without any ceremony, and bade her
persecutor proceed any further, at his peril. The gentleman took the
hint, and left knight and lady to continue their way unmolested. They
no sooner saw themselves alone, when, looking into each other’s faces,
they laughed a merry laugh of recognition, and it would be difficult
to say which was the merrier--Miss Farren or Mr. Burroughs, the young
actress and the incipient lawyer.
When boxing-night came, there was a crowded house, and Lizzy created
a _furore_. Like Carlotta Grisi, she could sing as well as dance, and
there was a bright intellect, to boot, pervading all she did. On the
night in question, she sang between the acts; and young Burroughs,
ever watchful, especially marked the effect of her singing upon a
very ecstatic amateur who was seated next to him. “What a treasure,”
said the amateur, “would this girl be in Liverpool!” “Well,” remarked
Burroughs, “I am ready to accept an engagement for her. State your
terms. Thirty shillings a-week, I presume, will not quite exhaust your
treasury.” “I will certainly,” said the stranger, “tell our manager,
Younger, of the prize which is to be acquired so cheaply; and the
affair need not be delayed; for Younger is at the Swan, and will be
down here to-night, to see the pantomime.”
In five minutes, Burroughs was sitting face-to-face with Younger at
the inn, urging him to go at once, not to see Columbine dance, but to
hear her sing. “I wonder,” said the manager, “if your young friend is
the child of the Cork surgeon who married the daughter of Wright, the
Liverpool brewer. If so, she’s clever; besides, why----”
“Why she’ll make your fortune,” said the lawyer’s clerk. “She is the
grand-daughter of your Liverpool brewer, sings like a nightingale, and
is worth five pounds a week to you at least. Come and hear her.”
Younger walked leisurely down, as if he was in no particular want
of talent; but he was so pleased with what he did hear that when the
songstress came off the stage, Burroughs went round and exultingly
announced that he had procured an engagement for her at Liverpool,
at two pounds ten per week; and to find her own satin shoes and silk
stockings. In prospect of such a Potosi, the Columbine danced that
night as boundingly as if Dan Mercury had lent her the very pinions
from his heels.
“Mr. Burroughs,” said Lizzy, as he was escorting her and her mother
home, “this is the second Christmas you have made happy for us. I hope
you may live to be Lord Chief Justice.”
“Thank you, Lizzy, that is about as likely as that Liverpool will make
of the Wakefield Columbine a countess.”
* * * * *
A few years had again passed away since the Christmas week which
succeeded that spent at Wakefield, and which saw Lizzy Farren the only
_Rosetta_ which Liverpool cared to listen to, and it was now the same
joyous season, but the locality was Chester.
There was a custom then prevailing among actors, which exists nowhere
now, except in some of the small towns in Germany. Thus, not very long
ago, at Ischl, in Austria, I was surprised to see a very pretty actress
enter my own room at the inn, and putting a play-bill into my hand,
solicit my presence at her benefit. This was a common practice in the
north of England till Tate Wilkinson put an end to it, as derogatory
to the profession. The custom, however, had not been checked at the
time and in the locality to which I have alluded. On the Christmas
eve of the period in question, Lizzy Farren was herself engaged in
distributing her bills, and asking patronage for her benefit, which
was to take place on the following Twelfth Night. As appropriate to
the occasion she had chosen Shakespeare’s comedy of that name, and was
to play _Viola_, a part for which Younger, who loved her heartily, had
given her especial instruction.
Miss Farren had not been very successful in her “touting.” She had been
unlucky in the two families at whose houses she had ventured to knock.
The first was that of an ex-proprietor of a religious periodical, who
had a horror of the stage, but who had a so much greater horror of
Romanism, that, like the Scottish clergy of the time, he would have
gone every night to the play during Passion week, only to show his
abhorrence of popery. This pious scoundrel had grown rich by swindling
his editors and supporting any question which paid best. His household
he kept for years, by inserting advertisements in his journal for
which he was paid in kind. He was a slimy, sneaking, mendacious
knave, who would have advocated atheism if he could have procured a
dozen additional subscribers by it. His lady was the quintessence of
vulgarity and malignity. She wore diamonds on her wig, venom in her
heart, and very-much-abused English at the end of her tongue.
Poor Lizzy, rebuffed here, rang at the garden-gate of Mrs. Penury
Beaugawg. She was a lady of sentiment who drank, a lady of simplicity
who rouged, a lady of affected honesty who lived beyond her income, and
toadied or bullied her relations into paying her debts. Mrs. Penury
Beaugawg would have graciously accepted orders for a private box; but a
patronage which cost her anything, was a vulgarity which her gentle and
generous spirit could not comprehend.
Lizzy was standing dispirited in the road at the front of the house,
when a horseman rode slowly up; and Lizzy, not at all abashed at
practising an old but not agreeable custom, raised a bill to his hand
as he came close to her, and solicited half-a-crown, the regular
admission-price to the boxes.
“Lizzy!” cried the horseman, “you shall have such a house at Chester,
as the old town has not seen since the night Garrick was here, and
played _Richard_ and _Lord Chalkstone_.”
The equestrian was Mr. Burroughs, then in training for the bar, and as
willing to help Miss Farren now as he was to aid her and her bowl of
milk across the market-place at Salisbury. The incipient barrister kept
his word. The Chester theatre was crammed to the ceiling; and, as Lizzy
said, Mr. Burroughs was her Christmas angel, the thought of whom was
always associated in her mind with plumbs, currants, holly----
“And mistletoe,” said the budding counsellor, with a look at which both
laughed merrily and honestly.
On the Christmas eve of 1776, Miss Farren was seated in Colman’s parlor
in London, looking at him while he read two letters of introduction;
one from Burroughs, the other from Younger; and both in high praise of
the young bearer, for whom they were especially written. My limits will
only allow me to say that Lizzy was engaged for the next summer-season
at the Haymarket, where she appeared on June 9, 1777, in “She Stoops
to Conquer.” She was _Miss Hardcastle_, and Edwin made his first
appearance in London with her, in the same piece. Colman would have
brought out Henderson too, if he could have managed it. That dignified
gentleman, however, insisted on reserving his _début_ for _Shylock_,
on the 11th of the same month. And what a joyous season did Lizzy make
of it for our then youthful grandfathers. How they admired her double
talent in _Miss Hardcastle_! How ecstatic were they with her _Maria_,
in the “Citizen!” How ravishedly did they listen to her _Rosetta_! How
they laughed at her _Miss Tittup_, in “Bon Ton!” and how they extolled
her playfulness and dignity as _Rosina_, of which she was the original
representative, in the “Barber of Seville!” It may be remarked that
Colman omitted the most comic scene in the piece, _that_ wherein the
Count is disguised as a drunken trooper--as injurious to morality!
When, in the following year, she played Lady Townley, she was declared
the first, and she was then almost the youngest of living actresses.
And when she joined the Drury Lane company in the succeeding season,
the principal parts were divided between herself, Miss Walpole, Miss P.
Hopkins, and _Perdita_ Robinson. Not one of this body was then quite
twenty years of age! Is not this a case wherein to exclaim--
“O mihi præteritos referat si Jupiter annos?”
Just twenty years did she adorn our stage; ultimately taking leave of
it at Drury Lane, in April, 1797, in the character of Lady Teazle.
Before that time, however, she had been prominent in the Christmas
private plays at the Duke of Richmond’s, in which the Earl of Derby,
Lord Henry Fitzgerald, and the Honorable Mrs. Dormer acted with her;
and that rising barrister, Mr. Burroughs, looking constantly at the
judicial bench as his own proper stage, was among the most admiring
of the audience. It was there that was formed that attachment which
ultimately made of her, a month after she had retired from the stage,
Countess of Derby, and subsequently mother of a future countess, who
still wears her coronet.
Not long after this period, and following on her presentation at
Court, where she was received with marked kindly condescension by
Queen Charlotte, the countess was walking in the marriage procession
of the Princess Royal and the Duke of Wurtemberg; her foot caught in
the carpeting, and she would have fallen to the ground, but for the
ready arms, once more extended to support her, of Mr. Burroughs, now an
eminent man indeed.
Many years had been added to the roll of time, when a carriage,
containing a lady was on its way to Windsor. It suddenly came to a
stop, by the breaking of an axle-tree. In the midst of the distress
which ensued to the occupier, a second carriage approached, bearing a
goodnatured-looking gentleman, who at once offered his services. The
lady, recognising an old friend, accepted the offer with alacrity. As
the two drove off together in the gentleman’s carriage toward Windsor,
the owner of it remarked that he had almost expected to find her
in distress on the road; for it was Christmas Eve, and he had been
thinking of old times.
“How many years is it, my lady countess,” said he, “since I stood at my
father’s shop-door in Salisbury, watching your perilous passage over
the market-place, with a bowl of milk?”
“Not so long at all events,” she answered with a smile, “but that I
recollect my poor father would have lost his breakfast, but for your
assistance.”
“The time is not long for memory,” replied the Judge, “nor is Salisbury
as far from Windsor as Dan from Beersheba; yet how wide the distance
between the breakfast at the cage-door at Salisbury, and the Christmas
dinner to which we are both proceeding, in the palace of the king!”
“The earl is already there,” added the countess, “and he will be
happier than the king himself to welcome the legal knight who has done
such willing service to the Lady of the Knight of the Bath.”
To those whose power and privilege it is to create such knights, we
will now direct our attention, and see how kings themselves behaved in
_their_ character as knights.
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
FROM THE NORMANS TO THE STUARTS.
“Un roi abstrait n’est ni père, ni fils, ni frère, ni parent, ni
chevalier, ami. Qu’est il donc? _Roi_, même quand il dort.”--DIDEROT.
If we judge some of our kings by the strict laws of chivalry, we shall
find that they were but sorry knights after all. They may have been
terrible in battle; but they were ill-mannerly in ladies’ bower.
William the Conqueror, for instance, had none of the tender sentiment
of chivalry; in other words he showed little gentleness in his bearing
toward women. It is said by Ingerius, that after Matilda of Flanders
had refused his hand, on the ground that she would not have a bastard
for a husband, he waylaid her as she was returning from mass in one of
the streets of Bruges, dragged her out from among her ladies, pommelled
her brutally, and finally rolled her in the mud. A little family
difference arose in consequence; but as it was less bitter than family
quarrels usually are, a reconciliation took place, and Matilda gave
her hand to the knight who had so terribly bruised her with his arm.
She loved him, she said, because he had shown more than the courage of
common knights, by daring to beat her within sight of her father’s own
palace. But all’s well that ends well; they were not only a handsome
but a happy couple, and Matilda was head of the household at the
Conqueror’s hearth. The general’s wife was _there_ the general.
How William bore himself in fight is too well known to need
recapitulating here. He probably never knew fear but once, and that was
at the sounds of a tumult in the street, which reached his ears as he
was being crowned. Then, indeed, “’tis true this god did shake,” for
the first and only time. His successor, who was knighted by Archbishop
Lanfranc, was in the field as good a knight as he, and generous to an
adversary, although he was never so to any mortal besides. But Rufus
was nothing of a knight in his bearing toward ladies. His taste with
regard to the fair sex was of the worst sort; and the court of this
royal and reprobate bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and
knighthood, to Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or
rather the knights of his time and country, with having introduced into
England the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according
to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately
for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. The chivalrous
magnanimity of Rufus is exemplified in the circumstance of his having,
in disguise, attacked a cavalier, from whom he received so sound a
beating, that he was at length compelled to avow himself in order to
induce his conqueror to spare his life. The terrified victor made an
apology, in the very spirit of the French knight of the Holy Ghost to
a dying cavalier of the Golden Spur, whom he had mortally wounded in
mistake: “I beg a thousand pardons,” said the polite Frenchman, “but I
really took you for somebody else.” So William’s vanquisher began to
excuse himself for having nearly battered the king’s skull to a jelly,
with his battle-axe, on the ground of his having been unacquainted
with his rank. “Never heed the matter,” said the king, “you are a good
fellow, and shall, henceforth, be a follower of mine.” Many similar
instances might be cited. Further, Rufus was highly popular with all
men-at-arms; the knights reverenced him as the very flower of chivalry,
and I am glad that the opprobrium of having slain him in the New Forest
no longer attaches itself to a knight, although I am sorry an attempt
has been made to fix it upon the church. No one now believes that Sir
Walter Tyrrel was the author of the crime, and chivalry is acquitted of
the charge against one of its members of having slain the flaxen-haired
but rubicund-nosed king.
Henry Beauclerc was more of a scholar than a knight, without, however,
being so very much of the first. The English-born prince was far less
chivalrous of spirit than his former brother Robert; that is, if not
less brave, he was less generous, especially to a foe. When he was
besieged on St. Michael’s Mount by Robert, and reduced to such straits
that he was near dying of thirst, Robert supplied him with water; an
act for which Rufus called the doer of it a fool; but as poor Robert
nobly remarked, the quarrel between him and their brother was not of
such importance that he should be made to perish of thirst. “We may
have occasion,” said he, “for a brother hereafter; but where shall we
find one, if we now destroy this?” Henry would hardly have imitated
conduct so chivalrously generous. He was more knightly in love, and
it is recorded to his honor, that he married Matilda, daughter of
Malcolm, King of Scotland, for pure love, and not for “filthy lucre,”
preferring to have her without a marriage portion, than to wait till
one could be provided for her. This would have been praiseworthy enough
had Henry not been, subsequently, like many other persons who marry in
haste--for ever looking for pecuniary assistance from other resources
than his own. He especially lacked too what was enjoined on every
knight, a love of truth. His own promises were violated with alacrity,
when the violation brought profit. He wanted, too, the common virtue
of fidelity, which men of knightly rank were supposed to possess above
all others. The fact that fifteen illegitimate children survived him,
speaks little for his respect for either of his consorts, Matilda of
Scotland, or Adelicia of Louvain. Generally speaking, however, the
character of the royal scholar may be described in any terms, according
to the view in which it is taken. With some historians, he is all
virtue, with others all vice.
Stephen had more of the knightly character about him. He was an
accomplished swordsman, and loved the sound of battle as became the
spirit of the times, which considered the king as the first knight
in the land. He had as little regard as Henry for a sense of justice
when disposed to seize upon that to which he had no right, but he was
incontestably brave, as he was indefensibly rash. Stephen received the
spurs of knighthood from his uncle, Henry I., previous to the battle
of Tinchebray; and in that fray he so bore himself as to show that he
was worthy of the honor that had been conferred upon him. But Stephen
was as faithless to his marriage vow as many other belted knights, and
Matilda of Boulogne had to mourn over the faithlessness of one who had
sworn to be faithful. It is said, too, of this king that he always went
into battle terribly arrayed. This was in the spirit of those birds
that raise their crests to affright their enemies.
Henry II., like his brother kings, we can only consider in his
character of knight. In this character he is almost unexceptionable,
which is more than can be said of him generally as king or as man. He
was brave and generous, two chief characteristics of knighthood. He
it was who abolished that burdensome and unprofitable feudal military
service, which brought the barons or military tenants into the field,
for forty days. The camp consequently abounded in unskilful and
disorderly men. Henry accordingly introduced the practice of commuting
their military service for money, by levying scutages from his baronies
and knights-fees, or so much for every shield or bearer of it that
_should_ attend but had purchased exemption.
Henry II., not only loved knightly practice himself, but he loved
to see his sons exercising knight-errantry, and wandering about in
disguise from court to court, displaying their prowess in tournaments,
and carrying off prizes from all adversaries. To the stories of these
adventures of his by no means exemplary sons he would listen with
delight. He was himself, however, a sire who set but indifferent
example to his children; and his two sons, of whom fair Rosamond
was the mother, were brought up and educated with his children by
Eleanor. He received much knightly service and true affection from his
illegitimate children. William, Earl of Salisbury, is known by his
chivalric surname of “Longsword,” but Geoffrey, Bishop of Lincoln, the
second son of Henry and Rosamond, was not the less a knight for being
a bishop before he was twenty. It was this prelate who, at the head
of an armed force put down the first great northern insurrection. He
was on his triumphant way back, at the head of one hundred and forty
knights, when he was met by his royal sire, who embraced him warmly,
exclaiming the while, “Thou alone art my legitimate son, the rest are
all bastards.” That he himself could endure much was evinced when he
submitted to correction at the shrine of Becket. He was flagellated
by the prelates, abbots, bishop, and eighty monks; and the first
refreshment he took after the long penance, was some water in which
a portion of Becket’s blood was mingled. His claim to be considered
chivalrous never suffered, in the mind of the church at least, because
of this humiliating submission.
But in the dissensions which led to this humiliation, the church
incurred perhaps more disgrace than the king. Nothing could possibly
be more disgraceful than the conduct of the pope and the diplomacy
of the Roman government throughout the continuation of the quarrel
between Becket and the king. Double-dealing, atrocious deceit, and an
unblushing disregard for truth, marked every act of him who was looked
upon as the spiritual head of Christendom. Comparing Becket with the
king, it is impossible to avoid coming to the conclusion that, in many
of the requirements of knighthood, he was superior to the sovereign.
His death, that is the way in which he met it, was sublime. Throughout
the great quarrel, of which that death was a consequence, Becket
never, like Henry, in his moments of defeat and discouragement, gave
way to such impotent manifestations of rage as were shown by his royal
antagonist. The latter forgot the dignity, not only of knight, but
of manhood, when he was seen casting his cap violently to the earth,
flinging away his belt, tearing his clothes from his body, and dragging
the silk coverlet from his bed, on which, in presence of his captains,
he rolled himself like a maniac, grasping the mattress in his mouth,
and gnawing the wool and the horsehair which he drew out with his teeth.
Richard I. has a brilliant reputation as a knight, and if valor
were the only virtue required, he would not be undeserving of the
pre-eminence which is claimed for him. But this was his sole virtue.
Of the other qualifications for, or qualities of chivalry, he knew
nothing, or little cared for them. He was faithless in love; regardless
of his pledged word; cruel, extravagant, dishonest; and not even always
brave, when away from the clamor and excitements of war. But John
lacked the one rough quality of Richard, and was not even brave--that
is to say, he was not distinguishedly brave. When he stole away
Isabella of Angoulême from her first lover, Sir Hugh de Lusignan, it
was not done with the dashing gallantry of Young Lochinvar. John,
in fact, was a shabby and recreant knight; and when stout Sir Hugh
challenged him to single combat, because of his crime of abduction,
John offered to accept it by deputy, and to fight also by deputy. Sir
Hugh knew the craven prince thoroughly, and truly enough remarked that
the deputy would be a mere assassin, and he would have nothing to do
with either principal or representative. John kept the lady; and, if
there be any persons curious to see how niggardly he kept her, they
are referred to the duly-published chronicles wherein there are full
details.
Henry III. was the most pacifically-minded of the kings of England who
had hitherto reigned. He had little of the knight about him, except the
courtesy, and he could occasionally forget even that. Devotion to the
fair, too, may fairly be reckoned among his knightly qualities; but he
lacked the crowning virtue of fidelity. He wooed many, was rejected
by several, and jilted the few who believed in him. He exhibited, it
must be allowed, a chivalrous generosity in at last marrying Eleanor
of Castile, without dowry; but he was not the more true to her on that
account. Mild as he was by nature, he was the especial favorite of the
most warlike of the orders of knighthood--the Templars. They mourned
for him when dead, as though he had been the very flower of chivalry,
and the most approved master of their order. They buried him, too, with
a pomp which must have drawn largely even on their well-lined purses,
and the Knights of the Temple deposited the king in the tomb of the
most pious of monarchs--Edward the Confessor. It is difficult to say
why the Templars had such love for the weak king, for he was not an
encourager of knightly associations and observations. At the same time
he may be said to have lowered the estimation in which knighthood had
been held, by making the honor itself cheap, and sometimes even less
than that--unwelcome. Henry III. issued a writ in the twenty-ninth
year of his reign, summoning tenants in chief to come and receive
knighthood at his hands: and tenants of mesne lords to be knighted by
whomsoever they pleased. It may be believed that this last permission
was abused, for soon after this period “it became an established
principle of our law that no subject can confer knighthood except by
the king’s authority.” So says Hallam. The most extraordinary law or
custom of this reign with respect to chivalry was, that any man who
possessed an annual income of fifteen pounds derived from land, was to
be _compelled_ to receive the honor of knighthood.
The successor of Henry, Edward I., was of a far more knightly quality.
Faithful in love, intrepid in battle, generous to the needy, and
courteous to all--except when his temper was crossed--he may pass
muster as a very respectable knight. He was active and strong, and,
with one hand on the back of his steed, could vault, at a single bound,
into the saddle. Few men cared less for finery. He was even reproved
on one occasion by a bishop, for being dressed beneath his dignity of
either king or knight. “Father,” said Edward, “what could I do more in
royal robes than in this plain gaberdine?”
Edward would have acted little in the spirit of a true knight if he had
really acted toward the Bards, according to the cruel fashion recorded
in history. I am inclined to believe with Davies, in his “Mythology
of the Druids,” that this king has been calumniated in this respect.
“There is not the name,” says Davies, “of a single bard upon record
who suffered either by his hand or by his orders. His real act was
the removal of that patronage, under which the bards had, hitherto,
cherished the heathenish superstition of their ancestors, to the
disgrace of our native princes.” This king showed a feeling common
with many knights, that however indifferently they might look living,
in rusty armor or faded mantle, they should wear a decent and comely
covering when dead. Thus he ordered that every year his tomb should be
opened, and his remains covered with a new cere-cloth or pall. It was a
pride akin to that of Mrs. Oldfield’s, in the days of our grandmothers,
who was buried in a Brussels lace head-dress, a Holland shift with
tucker and double ruffles of the same lace, and a pair of new kid
gloves. The same weakness of nature marked both the tragedy-queen and
the actual king; and it marks many more than they. There was more
humility, however, in the second Duke Richard of Normandy, who was far
more chivalrous than Edward I., and who ordered his body to be buried
at the church-door, where passengers might tread upon it, and the
spouts from the roof discharge their water upon it.
It was in the religious spirit of chivalry that Edward I. expelled
the Jews. One curious result is said to have followed. Report alleges
that many of the Jewish families fled into Scotland, where “they have
propagated ever since in great numbers; witness the aversion this
nation has above others to hog’s flesh.”
Of the unfortunate Edward II., it may be said that he was an
indifferent knight, who gave the honors of chivalry to very indifferent
persons, and committed great outrages on knightly orders themselves.
In the annals of knighthood he is remembered as the monarch who
abolished the Order of Knights Templars in England. He treated the
luckless chevaliers with far more generosity than Henry VIII. observed
toward the ejected monks and abbots. He allowed two shillings per day
to the deprived master of the Temple, and fourpence each daily to
the other knights for their support, out of their former confiscated
property. Edward himself loved carousing and hunting, more than any
other pastime. There were other pleasures, indeed, in which he greatly
delighted, and these are well catalogued in one of Gaveston’s speeches
in Marlowe’s tragedy, called by this king’s name:--
“I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits,
Musicians, that with touching of a string,
May draw the pliant king which way I please;
Music and poetry are his delight,
Therefore I’ll have Italian masks by night,
Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing slaves;
And in the day, when he shall walk abroad,
Like sylvan nymphs my pages shall be clad;
My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
Shall with their goats’ feet dance the antic lay.
Sometimes a lovely boy, in Dian’s shape,
With hair that gilds the water as it glides
Coronets of pearl about his naked arms,
And in his sportive hands an olive-tree,
To hide those parts which men delight to see,
Shall bathe him in a spring; and there hard by
One, like Actæon, peeping through the grove,
Shall by the angry goddess be transformed,
And running in the likeness of a hart,
By yelping hounds pulled down, shall seem to die;
Such things as these best please his majesty.”
How dearly he paid for indulgence in such pleasures, and how meekly he
accepted his fierce destiny or retribution, need not be detailed here.
Whatever may be thought of the character of Edward II. himself, his
chivalry wrought little good for the realm. The crown of England
during his reign was weaker; and as the knight-historian, Sir J.
Davies, remarks in his History of Ireland, “suffered more dishonor in
both kingdoms than at any time since the Norman Conquest.” There were
few such honest knights, too, in that reign, as in that of the third
Edward, when Sir Thomas Rookesby, an eminent law-knight and judge,
was wont to say that he “would eat in wooden dishes, but would pay
gold and silver for his meat.” In this speech a blow was dealt at the
extravagant people who in order “to eat off plate,” made no scruple of
cheating their butcher.
In Edward III. we have a king who is more closely connected with
knightly associations in our memory than any other sovereign of
England. He it was who, by reviving or reconstructing the ancient
order, founded by Richard I., of “The Blue Thong”--a leather knee-band,
worn by certain of the English crusaders--formed that brilliant Order
of the Garter, which has been conferred on so few who are deserving,
and on so many whose claims were not so great as their “pretensions.”
How far gallantry to the Countess of Salisbury had to do with the
renewing of the Order of the Blue Thong, under the name of the Garter,
is still an unsettled rather than a disputed point. Froissart’s account
is: “You have all heard how passionately King Edward was smitten with
the charms of the noble Lady Katherine, Countess of Salisbury. Out of
affection to the said lady, and his desire to see her, he proclaimed
a great feast, in August, 1343. He commanded all his own lords and
knights should be there without fail, and he expressly ordered the Earl
of Salisbury to bring his lady, his wife, with as many young ladies
as she could collect to attend her. The Earl very cheerfully complied
with the king’s request, for he thought no evil, and his good lady
dared not to say nay. She came, however, much against her will, for she
guessed the reason which made the king so earnest for her attendance,
but was afraid to discover it to her husband, intending by her conduct
to make the king change his opinion.... All the ladies and damsels
who assisted at the first convocation of the Order of the Garter came
superbly dressed, excepting the Countess of Salisbury, who attended
the festival, dressed as plainly as possible; she did not wish the king
to admire her, for she had no intention to obey him in anything evil,
that might tend to the dishonor of her dear lord.” The repetition of
the word _evil_ here, has probably nothing to do with the motto of the
Garter, but I may notice that when Froissart calls the above festival
a convocation of the order, he is in error, for, the first _chapter_
of the Garter was held at Windsor, on St. George’s Day, 1344. At this
chapter Queen Philippa was present in the robes of the order; for every
knight’s lady in the olden time shared in the knightly honors of her
lord.
How Edward bore himself in tournament and battle we all know. Both
historians and poets have rejoiced to exhibit this chivalrous monarch
as a lover, and he is even more interesting as a knight in love than
as one in war, and moreover as the account of him in the former
character reveals some other incidents of knightly life, I will
borrow Froissart’s historical picture of Edward in a lady’s bower,
and contrast therewith the picture of the same monarch in the same
circumstances, as depicted by the hands of a poet. It is only necessary
to premise that the lady who was the object of Edward’s homage was
Katherine de Granson, daughter of a handsome, penniless knight, and a
rich Wiltshire heiress named Sibyl. “Katherine the fair,” says Miss
Strickland, “was the only child of this couple, and was richly endowed
with her mother’s wealth and her father’s beauty. She bestowed _both_
on the brave Earl of Salisbury”--who, if he was ugly as he was valiant,
must have been grateful for the gift of the beauty of William de
Granson.
When Edward wooed the countess, the earl was a prisoner in France,
and the lady’s castle of Wark had just been relieved from siege laid
against it by an army of Scots. “The moment the countess heard the
king’s approach she ordered all the gates to be thrown open, and
went out to meet him most richly dressed, insomuch that no one could
look at her, but with wonder and admiration at her noble deportment
and affability of behavior. When she came near King Edward she made
her obeisance to the ground, and gave him thanks for coming to her
assistance, and then conducted him into the castle, to entertain and
honor him, as she was very capable of doing. Every one was delighted
with her; but the king could not take his eyes from her; so that a
spark of fine love struck upon his heart, which lasted for a long
time, for he did not believe that the whole world produced another
such a lady, so worthy of being beloved. Thus they entered the castle,
hand in hand. The countess led him first to the hall, and then to the
best chamber which was very richly furnished as belonging to so fine
a lady. King Edward kept his eyes so fixed upon the countess that the
gentle lady was quite abashed. After he had sufficiently examined his
apartment, he retired to a window, and leaning on it, fell into a
profound revery.
“The countess left him, to order dinner to be made ready, and the
table set, and the hall ornamented and set out; likewise to welcome
the knights and lords who accompanied the king. When she had given
all the orders to her servants she thought needful, she returned with
a cheerful countenance to King Edward and said: ‘Dear sir, what are
you musing on? Such meditation is not proper for you, saving your
grace! You ought rather to be in high spirits, having freed England
from her enemy without loss of blood.’ The king replied, ‘Oh, dear
lady, you must know since I have been in this castle, some thoughts
have oppressed my mind that I was not before aware of, so that it
behooves me to reflect. Being uncertain what may be the event, I can
not withdraw my attention.’ ‘Dear sir,’ answered the lady, ‘you ought
to be of good cheer, and feast with your friends to give them more
pleasure, and leave off pondering, for God has been very bountiful to
you in your undertakings, so that you are the most feared and renowned
prince in Christendom. If the king of Scotland have vexed you by the
mischief he hath done in your kingdom, you will speedily be able to
make reprisals in his dominions. Therefore, come, if it please you,
into the hall to your knights, for your dinner will soon be served.’
‘Oh, sweet lady,’ said King Edward, ‘there be other things which touch
my heart and lie heavy there, than what you talk of. For in good truth,
your beauteous mien, and the perfection of your face and behavior have
wholly overcome me, and so deeply impress my heart, that my happiness
wholly depends on meeting a return to my flame, which no denial from
you can ever extinguish.’ ‘Oh, my dear lord,’ replied the countess,
‘do not amuse yourself by laughing at me with trying to tempt me; for
I can not believe you are in earnest as to what you have just said. Is
it likely that so gallant and noble a prince, as you are, would ever
think of dishonoring either me or my husband, a valiant knight, who
has served you so faithfully, and who now lies in a doleful prison on
your account? Certainly, sir, this would not redound to your glory, nor
would you be the better if you could have your wayward will.’
“The virtuous lady then quitted the king, who was astonished at
her words. She went into the hall to hasten dinner; afterward she
approached the king’s chamber, attended by all the knights, and said
to him, ‘My lord king, your knights are all waiting for you, to wash
their hands, for they, as well as yourself, have fasted too long.’ King
Edward left his apartment, and came to the hall, where, after he had
washed his hands, he seated himself with his knights at the dinner,
as did the lady also; but the king ate very little, and was the whole
time pensive, casting his eyes, whenever he had the opportunity, on
the countess. Such behavior surprised his friends, for they were not
accustomed to it, never having seen the like before in the king. They
supposed it was his chagrin at the departure of the Scots without a
battle. The king remained at the castle the whole day, without knowing
what to do with himself. Thus did he pass that day and a sleepless
night, debating the matter within his own heart. At daybreak he rose,
drew out his whole army, exercised his camp, and made ready to follow
the Scots. Upon taking leave of the countess he said, ‘My dear lady,
God preserve you safe till I return; and I pray that you will think
well of what I have said, and have the goodness to give me a different
answer.’ ‘My gracious liege,’ replied the countess, ‘God of his
infinite goodness preserve you, and drive from your noble heart such
villanous thoughts, for I am, and ever shall be, willing to serve you,
but only in what is consistent with my honor and with yours.’ The king
left her, quite astonished at her answers.” He was, in fact, a very
villanous personage in these matters, and looked for as much submission
from those ladies on whom he cast his eyes, as the Czar Nicholas did
from the loyal ladies whom that “copper captain” delighted to favor.
An unknown poet, of the period between 1590 and 1600, in an historical
play entitled “Edward III.” has reproduced this incident, and worked
it up for the stage--with some touches which are probably warranted
by facts, and which, for that reason alone, render the passage worth
transcribing.
_Edward_ (_solus_). She is grown more fairer far, since I came hither.
Her voice more silver ev’ry word than other,
Her wit more fluent; what a strange discourse
Unfolded she of David and his Scots!
Even thus, quoth she, he spoke; and then _spake broad
With epithets and accent of the Scot;
But somewhat better than the Scot could speak_:
And then, quoth she, and answered then herself;
For who could speak like her? but she herself
Breathes from the wall an angel note from heaven
Of sweet defiance to her barbarous foes--
When she could talk of peace, methinks her tongue
Commanded war to prison; when of war,
It wakened Cæsar from his Roman grave,
To hear war beautified by her discourse.
Wisdom is foolishness, but in her tongue;
Beauty is slander, but in her fair face;
There is no summer, but in her cheerful looks;
Nor frosty winter, but in her disdain.
I can not blame the Scots that did besiege her,
For she is all the treasure of our land;
But call them cowards that they ran away,
Having so rich and fair a cause to stay.
* * * * *
_Countess._ Sorry am I to see my liege so sad;
What may thy subject do to drive from thee
This gloomy consort, sullen Melancholy?
_Edward._ Ah, Lady! I am blunt and can not straw
The flowers of solace in a ground of shame.
Since I came hither, Countess, I am wronged.
_Countess._ Now, God forbid that any in my house
Should think my sov’reign wrong! Thrice gentle king,
Acquaint me with your cause of discontent.
_Edward._ How near then shall I be to remedy?
_Countess._ As near, my liege, as all my woman’s power
Can pawn itself to buy thy remedy.
_Edward._ If thou speak’st true, then have I my redress.
Engage thy power to redeem my joys,
And I am joyful, Countess; else I die.
_Countess._ I will, my liege.
_Edward._ Swear, Countess, that thou wilt.
_Countess._ By Heaven, I will!
_Edward._ Then take thyself a little way aside,
And tell thyself a king doth dote on thee.
Say that within thy power it doth lie
To make him happy; and that thou hast sworn
To give him all the joy within thy power.
Do this, and tell him, when I shall be happy.
_Countess._ All this is done, my thrice-dread sovereign.
That power of love that I have power to give
Thou hast, with all devout obedience.
Employ me how thou wilt, in proof thereof.
_Edward._ Thou hear’st me say that I do dote on thee.
_Countess._ If on my beauty, take it, if thou canst.
Though little, I do prize it ten times less;
If on my virtue, take it, if thou canst;
For virtue’s store, by giving, doth augment.
Be it on what it will that I can give,
And thou canst take away, inherit it.
_Edward._ It is thy beauty that I would enjoy.
_Countess._ Oh! were it painted, I would wipe it off,
And dispossess myself to give it thee.
But, sov’reign, it is soldered to my life.
Take one and both; for, like an humble shadow,
It haunts the sunshine of my summer’s life.
_Edward._ But thou mayst lend it me in sport withal.
_Countess._ As easy may my intellectual soul
Be lent away, and yet my body live,
As lend my body (palace to my soul)
Away from her, and yet retain my soul.
My body is her bower, her court, her abbey,
And she an angel, pure, divine, unspotted.
If I should lend her house, my lord, to thee,
I kill my poor soul, and my poor soul me.
_Edward._ Didst thou not swear to give me what I would?
_Countess._ I did, my liege; so what you would I could.
_Edward._ I wish no more of thee than thou mayst give.
Nor beg I do not, but I rather buy;
That is thy love; and for that love of thine,
In rich exchange I tender to thee mine.
_Countess._ But that your lips were sacred, my good lord,
You would profane the holy name of love.
That love you offer me, you can not give;
For Cæsar owes that tribute to his queen.
That love you beg of me I can not give;
For Sarah owes that duty to her lord.
He that doth clip or counterfeit your stamp
Shall die, my lord; and shall your sacred self
Commit high treason ’gainst the King of Heav’n,
To stamp his image in forbidden metal,
Forgetting your allegiance and your oath?
In violating marriage’ sacred law
You break a greater honor than yourself.
_To be a king_ is of a younger house
Than _to be married_; your progenitor,
Sole-reigning Adam on the universe,
By God was honored for a married man,
But not by Him anointed for a king.
It is a penalty to break your statutes,
Though not enacted with your highness’ hand;
How much more to infringe the holy act
Made by the mouth of God, sealed with his hand?
I know my sovereign in my husband’s love
Doth but to try the wife of Salisbury,
Whether she will hear a wanton’s tale or no;
Lest, being guilty therein, by my stay,
From that, not from my liege, I turn away.
The countess, naturally, has the best of the argument, and shames the
king. In this pleasant light is she presented by both chronicler and
poet, and the lady, chiefly to honor whom the Order of the Garter was
constructed upon the basis of the Order of the Blue Thong, was worthy
of all the distinctive homage that could be rendered to her by knight
or king.
Richard II., so fond of parade and pleasure, so refined and
intellectual, so affable at first, so despotic and absolute at last,
till he was superseded and then slain, is among the most melancholy of
knights and sovereigns. He was not heroic, for he was easily elevated
and easily depressed. He turned deadly pale on hearing, in Ireland, of
the landing of Henry Bolingbroke in England, and that the Archbishop
of Canterbury had preached in favor of the usurper. He was eminently
courageous, sang a roundelay as well as any minstrel, and often made
the roundelays he sung. He looked little like a knight indeed when he
traversed part of Wales to Conway, disguised as a Franciscan friar; or
flying from castle to castle, having sorry lodging and little food. It
was in the dress and cowl of a monk that the once chivalrous Richard
surrendered himself to his cousin. In the army of that cousin, sent
to take Richard and his few faithful knights and squires who refused
to detach his device from their coats, was “Sir Henry Percy” (the
_Hotspur_ of Shakespeare), “whom they held to be the best knight in
England.”
It was by persuasion of Hotspur’s father that Richard left Conway for
Flint, where he was made prisoner, and afterward conveyed to Chester,
the English knights of the opposite faction behaving to him with
most unchivalric rudeness. The unsceptred monarch was first taken to
Pickering, one of the most beautiful spots in England, defaced by
scenes of the greatest crimes, of which place knights and nobles were
the masters. Thence he passed on to Leeds and Knaresborough Castle,
where the king’s chamber is still pointed out to visiters. Finally, he
was carried to “bloody Pomfret”--“fatal and ominous to noble peers.”
Never, it is said, did man look less like a knight than the unhappy
king, when he appeared before the drawbridge of Pontefract Castle.
Majestic still he was in feature, but the majesty was depressed by such
profound melancholy, that few could look upon the weeping king without
themselves shedding tears. If the picture of him at this juncture might
be metrically given in outline, the following sketch might feebly
render it:--
Who enters now that gate,
With dignity upon his pallid brow?
Who is the man that, bending to his fate,
Comes hither now?
A man of wo he seems,
Whom Sadness deep hath long marked for her own.
Hath such a form as that indulged in dreams
Upon a throne?
Have smiles e’er wreathed that face?
Face now so stamped with every line that’s sad;
Was joy e’er known those quivering lips to grace,
That heart to glad?
Who is this shadow’s shade?
This type of withered majesty? this thing?
Can it be true that knightly form decayed
Was once a king?
Son of a noble sire,
And of his father’s virtues too, the heir;
Those eyes so dim once rivalled the sun’s fire;
None were more fair.
Gallant, and light of heart,
The rock-born eagle was less bold than he;
Formed upon earth to play each graceful part
Enchantingly.
His joys were early crushed;
His mind perverted by most ruthless men;
Hope, like a short-lived rose, a moment blushed,
And withered then.
His virtues were his own;
His vices forced upon him, against his will;
His weaker faults were of his age alone--
That age of ill.
In him thou seest the truth,
How tyrannous and all-usurping night,
Heedless of means, will, acting without ruth,
Triumph o’er Right.
Nor is this lesson sad
Void of instruction to the wary sent.
Learn from it with thy portion to be glad,
Meek and content.
And be, where’er thy path,
Whate’er the trials life may to thee bring,
Grateful that Heaven has not, in its wrath,
Made thee a king!
Of the chivalrous spirit of Henry IV. no one entertains a doubt, and
yet he once refused to accept a challenge. The challenger was the Duke
of Orleans, who had been Henry’s sworn friend, accomplice in some of
his deeds, and who, failing to realize all the advantages he expected,
urged Henry to meet him in the marches of Guienne, with a hundred
knights on each side. Henry fenced with the challenge rather than with
the challenger, but when the latter called him rebel, usurper, and
murderer, he gave his former friend the lie, in no very gentle terms,
as regarded the charge of being accessory to the death of Richard.
The little flower, the Forget-me-not, owes some of its popularity to
Henry, who, previous to his being king, and when in exile, chose it for
his symbol, wore it in gold on his collar, and added to it by way of
device, the words “Souvenez de moi.” It is worthy of observation that,
after Henry’s death, his widow, Joanna of Navarre, continued to be
recognised as a lady of the Garter, receiving presents from Henry V. as
such, and being in attendance on high festivals, in robes of the order,
the gift of the new king.
That new king requires no advocacy as a knight. The simple word
“Agincourt” is sufficient. His wooing of Katherine of Valois is also
characteristic of the gallant, if not the amorous knight. At the
betrothal of the illustrious couple, Henry presented to the lady his
own favorite knight, Sir Louis de Robsart, as her personal attendant,
to watch for ever over her safety; but this queen’s knight was simply
the queen’s keeper, and his chief mission was to take care that the
lady was not stolen from him, between the day of betrothal and that of
the royal nuptials.
Although the reign of Henry V. formed a period of glory for knighthood,
the victories obtained by the chivalrous combatants were effected
at such a cost, that toward the close of the reign, there were not
men enough in England qualified to competently carry on its civil
business. It was still worse under Henry VI. When peace with France
was negotiating, the Cardinal of Winchester represented to the French
government that, during a struggle of a quarter of a century, there
had been more men, of both countries, slain in these wars, for the
title and claim to the crown of France, than there were then existing
in the two nations. It was shocking, the Cardinal said, to think of so
much Christian blood having been shed;--and there were not very many
Christian knights left to cry “hear, hear,” to such an assertion.
Least cavalier of any of the kings who had hitherto reigned was
Henry VI., but there was chivalry enough for two in the heart of his
admirable wife, the most heroic, perhaps, of English queens, Margaret
of Anjou. How unlike was the destiny of this ill-matched pair to that
of their successors Edward IV. and his wife Elizabeth Woodville! This
king assumed one privilege of knighthood, by loving whom he pleased,
and marrying whom he loved. He was the first king of England who
married with a simple lady, that is, one not of princely blood. He did
not prosper much the more for it, for his reign was one of a rather
splendid misery, in which the luxurious king was faithful to no one,
neither to the friends who upheld his cause, nor to Mistress Shore, who
helped him to render his cause unworthy. Passing over Edward V., we may
notice that there was much more of the knightly character in Richard
III., than in the fourth Edward. Richard would be better appreciated
if we judged him according to the spirit of the times in which he
was born, and not by the standard of our own. A braver monarch never
fronted an English force; and if heavy crimes can justly be laid to his
account, it should not be forgotten, that amid the bloody struggles
which he had to maintain, from the day almost of his accession, he had
leisure to put in force more than one enactment by which English people
profit, down even to the present period.
I have elsewhere remarked that many of us originally take our idea of
Henry VII. from the dashing Richmond who opens the fifth act of Richard
III. in panoply and high spirits. None of Shakespeare’s characters make
a more knight-like appearance than he. The fact, nevertheless, is that
Henry was anything but chivalrous in mien or carriage. His mother was
married, it was said, when only nine years old; and it is added that
Henry was born in the year following the marriage. It is certain that
the lady was not in her teens, and to this circumstance, Turner is
inclined to attribute the feebleness of Henry’s constitution.
If he could not so well defend himself by the sword as poets and Tudor
historians have declared he could, he at least knew how to do so by
the strong arm of the law. It was in his reign that benefit of clergy
was taken from lay persons murdering their lord, master, or sovereign
immediate.
It is as certain that, in some parts of the island at least, the
chivalry of Richard, who was never nearly so black as he has been
painted, was more appreciated than the cautiousness of his successful
rival. In the northern counties, says Bacon, “the memory of King
Richard was so strong, that it lay like lees in the bottom of men’s
hearts, and if the vessel was but stirred, it would come up.”
The _gallant_ sentiment of chivalry was really strongly impressed on
the popular mind at this period. I may cite as an instance, that not
only was Perkin Warbeck, who may be called an adventurous knight who
has not had due justice rendered to him, familiarly spoken of by the
name of “the White Rose;” but that if we may believe Bacon, the name
was continued in common speech to his wife, in compliment to her true
beauty.
Henry has been much censured for a vice from which all knights were
bound, like friars, to be free. But there were chevaliers in his reign
who were as fond of money as he. Sir William Stanley was one of them.
At the period of his execution, there was found in his castle of Holt,
a more than modest temporary provision for a poor knight. In ready
money alone, there were forty thousand marks--to say nothing of plate,
jewelry, household furniture, and live stock, all in abundance, and of
the first quality. “And for his revenue in land and fee, it was three
thousand pounds sterling a year of old rent, great matter in those
times. The great spoil of Bosworth field came almost wholly into this
man’s hands, to his infinite enriching.”
Bacon classes Henry VII., Louis XI., and Ferdinand of Aragon, as the
three _Magi_ of kings of the age in which they lived. It is a happy
classification. Ferdinand, however, had more of the knight in him than
his royal cousins, and not less of the statesman. He it was who first
invented the resident embassador at foreign courts.
In chivalric bearing, Henry VIII., when young, was perhaps never
equalled, and certainly never surpassed. He was the most courteous of
knights, and the most gallant of gentlemen. As long as he had Cardinal
Wolsey at his side to guide and control him, he maintained this
character unimpaired; and it was not till this old Mentor died, that
Henry lost his reputation as a Christian knight and gentleman.
By a decree of the 24th of this king’s reign, no person below the
degree of a knight could wear a collar of SS. The judges wear such
collars because they are, or rank with, knights. That a decree was
issued to this effect would seem to imply that previous to the period
named, individuals below the knightly degree might wear the collar in
question. Edward IV., therefore, when he conferred the collar on the
Tanner of Tamworth, was not guilty of any anomaly. On the contrary, he
evidently knew what he was about, by the remark--
“So here I _make_ thee the best Esquire
That is in the North Countrie.”
In Edward’s time then, the collar may have constituted the difference
between squire and knight. But it was not the only one. If there was
a difference at their necks, there was also a distinction at their
heels. The knight always wore golden spurs: he was the Eques Auratus.
The squire could wear spurs of no more costly metal than silver, and
“White-spurs,” accordingly, was the generic term for an esquire. It
was probably in allusion to this that the country squire mentioned
by Jonson, displayed his silver spurs among his side-board plate. To
return to Henry VIII.; let me add that he exhibited something of what
was considered a knightly attribute, compassion for the lowly, when he
suggested that due sleeping-time should be allowed to laborers during
the summer.
Edward VI. was simply a youth of much promise. His father was
unwilling to create him a knight before he knew how to wield arms;
and if he gained this knowledge early, he was never called to put
it in practice. There was more of the chivalrous character in his
over-abused half-sister, Mary, and also in Elizabeth; but then queens
can not of course be considered as knights: Elizabeth, however, had
much of the spirit, and she was surrounded by knightly men and served
with a knightly devotion. There was, I may observe, one species of
knights in her time, who were known as “knights of the road.” The
39th of Elizabeth, especially and curiously points to them in an act
to relieve the hundred of Beynhurst from the statute of Hue and Cry
(where there was no voluntary default) on account of the penalties to
which that hundred was subject from the numerous robberies committed in
Maidenhead Thicket. Mavor, in his account of Berkshire, says that “The
vicar of Henley who served the curé of Maidenhead, was allowed about
the same time an advance of salary as some compensation for the danger
of passing the thicket.” The vicar, like the knights of the road, at
least, had purer air than the clergy and chivalry who kept house in
the capital. “In London,” says Euphues, “are all things (as the fame
goeth) that may either please the sight, or dislike the smell; either
fill the eye with delight, or fill the nose with infection.”
Refreshment under such circumstances was doubly needed; and the popular
gratitude was due to that most serviceable of knights, Sir Thomas
Gresham, who introduced the orange as an article of trade, and who was
consequently painted by Antonio More with an orange in his hand. The
old Utrecht artist just named, was knighted by Charles V. who paid
him poorly--some six hundred ducats for three pictures, but added
knighthood, which cost the emperor nothing, and was esteemed of great
value by the painter.
One would imagine that under Mary and Elizabeth, knighthood had become
extinguished, were we to judge by an anonymous volume which was
published in Mary’s reign, and republished in that of Elizabeth. The
great names of that period are proof to the contrary, but there may
have been exceptions. Let us then look into the volume of this unknown
writer who bewails the degeneracy of his times, and lays down what he
entitles the “Institution of a Gentleman.”
“THE INSTITUTION OF A GENTLEMAN.”
“Your countenance, though it be glossed with knighthood, looks so
borrowingly, that the best words you give me are as dreadful as ‘stand
and deliver.’”--_The Asparagus Garden._
The unknown author of the “Institution of a Gentleman,” dedicates
his able treatise to “Lorde Fitzwater, sonne and heire to the Duke
of Sussex.” In his dedicatory epistle he does not so much mourn over
a general decay of manners, as over the lamentable fact, that the
lowly-born are rising to gentility, while nobility and knighthood are
going to decay. These he beseeches “to build gentry up again, which
is, for truth sore decayed, and fallen to great ruin, whereby such
great corruption of manners hath taken place, that almost the name of
gentleman is quenched, and handicraftsmen have obtained the title of
honor, though (indeed) of themselves they can challenge no greater
worthiness than the spade brought unto their late fathers.”
The writer is troubled with the same matter in his introductory
chapter. This chapter shows how, at this time, trade was taking
equality with gentry. “Yea, the merchantman thinketh not himself
well-bred unless he be called one of the worshipful sort of merchants,
of whom the handicraftsman hath taken example; and taketh to be called
‘Master,’ whose father and grandfather were wont to be called ‘Good
Man.’”
On the question of “What is a gentleman?” the author goes back to a
very remote period, that of Adam, quoting the old saying:--
“When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?”
and he makes the following comment upon this well-known text:
“There be many of so gross understanding that they think to confound a
gentleman, when they ask of him this question. To whom it may be said
that so much grace as Adam our first father, received of God at his
creation, so much nobility and gentry he received. And to understand
perfectly how and after what demeanor Adam behaved himself, or how he
directed the order of his life, the witnesses, I think, in that behalf
are far to seek, whose behavior, if it were good and honest, then was
he the first gentleman, even so much as the first earthly follower of
virtues. But if there were in him no such virtue, then was he the first
gentleman in whom virtues and gentle deeds did first appear.”
As a training toward excellence, our anonymous author recommends
severity of discipline from the cradle upward. “Neither,” he says,
“do I mean to allow _any_ liberty to youth, for as liberty is to all
eyes hurtful, so is it to youth a present poison;” but he forgets
that even poisons are administered in small doses in order to cure
certain diseases, and that life would be a disease, even to the young,
without some measure of liberty. He is terribly afraid that freedom in
childhood will spoil the man, who himself will be no man, with too much
liberty, but a “Royster;” “and a ‘Royster,’” he adds, “can not do the
office of a gentleman, so long I mean as a Roysterian he doth continue.”
He then informs us that there had long been in England a division
of classes, under the heads of “Gentle Gentle, Gentle Ungentle, and
Ungentle Gentle.” These were not classes of society generally, but
classes of the orders of Gentlemen exclusively. The _Gentle Gentle_
are those of noble birth, from dukes’ sons down to esquires, provided
they join to their “gentle house, gentle manners, and noble conditions,
which is the cause of the addition of the other word called gentle.”
This is much such a definition of gentleman as might be now given,
with the exception that the question of birth has little to do
with the matter, and that gentle manners and noble conditions, as
our author calls gentleman-like bearing, scholarly education, and
Christian principles, now make of a man a gentleman, let him be of
“gentle” house or not. Indeed, the author himself is not indisposed to
accept this method of definition, for on proceeding to tell us what
“Gentle Ungentle” is, he says that “Gentle Ungentle is that man which
is descended of noble parentage, by the which he is commonly called
gentle, and hath in him such corrupt and ungentle manners as to the
judgment of all men he justly deserveth the name of ungentle.” His
remedy again for preventing the gentle becoming ungentle is coercion
in youth-time. He thinks that virtue is to be got from the human
being like oils or other juices from certain vegetable substances, by
ex-pression. Squeeze the human being tightly, press him heavily, he is
sure to yield something. No doubt; but after the pressure he is often
of little more use than a well-sucked orange.
We next come to the “Ungentle Gentle.” In the definition of this term,
the author, with all his reverence for nobility, is compelled to allow
that there is a nobility of condition as well as a nobility of birth;
but others who contested this fact, gave a new word to the English
tongue, or made a new application of an old word in order to support
their theory and assail those whom they sought to lower.
“Ungentle Gentle,” says our author, “is he which is born of a low
degree--which man, taking his beginning of a poor kindred, by his
virtue, wit, policy, industry, knowledge in laws, valiancy in arms, or
such like honest means, becometh a well-behaved and high-esteemed man,
preferred then to great office, put in great charge and credit, even so
much as he becometh a post or stay of the commonwealth, and so growing
rich, doth thereby advance and set up the rest of his poor line or
kindred. They are the children of such one commonly called gentleman;
of which sort of gentleman we have now in England very many, whereby
it should appear that virtue flourisheth among us. These gentlemen are
now called ‘Up-starts,’ a term lately invented by such as pondered
not the grounds of honest means of rising or coming to promotion.”
Nevertheless, says our censor, there be upstarts enough and to spare.
The worshipful unworthies, he tells us, abound; and the son of good-man
Thomas, or good-man John, have obtained the name of gentlemen, the
degree of esquires or knights, and possessing “a little dunghill
forecast to get lands, by certain dark augmentative practices,” they
are called “worshipful” at every assize. He dates the origin of this
sort of nobility, knighthood and esquirearchy, from the time of the
suppression and confiscation of abbeys and abbey-estates. He has a
curious passage on this subject:--
“They have wrongfully intruded into gentry, and thrust themselves
therein, as Bayard, the cart-jade, might leap into the stable of
Bucephalus, and thrust his head into the manger with that worthy
courser. The particular names of whom, if I should go about to
rehearse, it would require long labor, and bring no fruit to the
readers thereof. And it is well known that such intruders, such
unworthy worshipful men, have chiefly flourished since the putting down
of abbeys, which time is within my remembrance.”
While allowing that gentlemanly manners help to make the gentleman,
and that birth is only an accidental matter, having little to do with
the subject, he still can not forbear to reverence rather good men of
high birth than good men of low degree. He evidently thinks that he
was enjoined by religion to do so, for he remarks: “As in times past,
no man was suffered to be ‘Knyght of the Roodes,’ but such one as was
descended of the lyne of gentleman, whereby it appeareth that no men
were thought so meet to defend the right, that is to say the faith
of Christ, as gentlemen, and so to have their offices agreeable with
their profession, it is most meet that all gentlemen be called to such
room and office as may be profitable to the commonwealth.” This idea
that the holy sepulchre was to be rescued from the infidels only by
gentlemen, and the fact that it has not been so rescued, reminds me of
that king of Spain, who, finding himself in danger of being roasted
alive, from sitting in a chair which one of his great officers had
placed too near the fire, chose to roast on, for the singular reason
that there was no grandee at hand to draw his chair away again!
In 1555, this writer still accounted the profession of arms as the
noblest, the most profitable to the professor, and the most useful to
the commonwealth. Courage, liberality, and faithful observance of all
promises; thus endowed, he thinks a man is a true gentleman. He draws,
however, a happy parallel when admitting that if it become a gentleman
to be a good knight and valiant soldier, it even more becometh him
to be a great statesman. For, “although to do valiantly in the wars
it deserveth great praise and recompense, yet to minister justice
in the state of peace is an office worthy of higher commendation.
The reason is, wars are nothing necessary, but of necessity must be
defended when they fall. And contrariwise, peace is a thing not only
most necessary, but it is called the best thing which even nature hath
given unto man.” This parallel, if indeed it may be so called, is only
employed, however, for the purpose of showing that certain posts in the
state should only be given to gentlemen born. There is a good deal of
the red-tapist in our moralist after all; and he has a horror, still
entertained in certain localities, of admitting the democratic element
into the public offices. Thus we find him maintaining that, “Unto a
gentleman appertaineth more fully than unto any other sort of man,
embassage or message to be done between kings or princes of this earth;
more fitly I say, because gentlemen do know how to bear countenance and
comely gesture before the majesty of a king, better than other sorts
of men.” One would think that the majesty of a king was something too
dazzling for a common man of common sense to look upon and live, and
yet the writer is evidently aware that there is nothing in it, for he
concludes his chapter on this matter by observing that “a gentleman
sent of embassage unto a prince ought to think a king to be but a
man, and, in reverence and humility, boldly to say his message unto
him.” Surely a man of good sense might do this, irrespective of his
birth, particularly at a time when the unskilfulness and ignorance of
gentlemen were so great as to pass into a proverb, and “He shooteth
like a gentleman fair and far off,” implied not only ill-shooting
with bows and arrows, “but it extended farther and reached to greater
matters, all to the dispraise of ignorant gentlemen.”
It is so common a matter with us to refer to the days in which this
author wrote, as days in which old knights and country gentlemen
maintained such hospitality as has seldom been since witnessed, that we
are surprised to find complaint made, in this treatise, of something
just the contrary. The author enjoins these knights and gentlemen to
repair less to London, and be more seen dispensing hospitality in their
own houses. “In the ancient times,” he says, “when curious buildings
fed not the eye of the wayfaring man, then might he be fed and have
good repast at a gentleman’s place, so called. Then stood the buttery
door without a hatch; yeoman then had no cause to carve small dishes;
Flanders cooks had then no wages for their devices, nor square tables
were not used. This variety and change from the old English manner hath
smally enriched gentlemen, but much it hath impoverished their names,
not without just punishment of their inconsistency in that behalf.” Let
me add, that the writer thinks the country knight or gentleman would
do well were he to exercise the office of justice of the peace. He is
sorely afraid, however, that there is a disqualification, on the ground
of ignorance. A moralist might have the same fear just now, without
coming to the same conclusion. Our author, for instance, argues that
reverence is to be paid to the noble, _quand même_. Let him be ignorant
and tyrannical, yet to reverence him is to give example of obedience to
others. This is very poor logic, and what follows is still worse; for
this writer very gravely remarks, that “We ought to bear the offences
of noble men patiently, and that if these forget themselves, yet ought
not smaller men to be oblivious of their duty in consequence, and fail
in their respect.”
We come upon another social trait, when we find the author lamenting
that, however much it becometh a gentleman to be acquainted with
hawking and hunting, yet that these pastimes are so abused by being
followed to excess, that “gentlemen will almost do nothing else, or
at the least can do that better than any other thing.” To the excess
alluded to does the author trace the fact that “there are so many raw
soldiers when time of war requireth their help. This is the cause of so
many unlearned gentlemen, which, as some say, they understand not the
inkhorn terms that are lately crept into our language. And no marvel it
is, though they do not understand them, whereas in their own hawking
and hunting terms they be ignorants as ‘Auvent’ and ‘Retrouvre,’
which they call ‘_Houent_’ and ‘_Retrires_.’” What better could be
expected from men who had given up the practice of the long bow to
take to the throwing of dice? But there was now as wild extravagance
of dress as ignorance of uncommon things, in the class of foolish
knights and gentlemen. This is alluded to in the chapter on dress,
wherein it is said that “the sum of one hundred pounds is not to be
accounted in these days to be bestowed of apparel for one gentleman,
but in times past, a chamber gown was a garment which dwelt with an
esquire of England twenty years”--and I believe that the knights were
as frugal as the esquires. “Then flourished the laudable simplicity
of England,” exclaims the author; “there were no conjurors and hot
scholars, applying our minds to learne our new trifle in wearing our
apparel.” Upon the point of fashions, the author writes with a feeling
as if he despaired of his country. “The Englishman,” he observes,
“changeth daily the fashion of his garment; sometimes he delighteth
in many guards, welts and pinks, and pounces. Sometimes again, to the
contrary, he weareth his garments as plain as a sack; yet faileth he
not to change also that plainness if any other new fangle be invented.
This is the vanity of his delight.” And this vanity was common to all
men of high degree in his time--to those to whom “honor” was due, from
men of less degree--and these were “dukes, earls, lords, and such
like, of high estate,” as well as to those who were entitled to the
“worship” of smaller men, and _these_ were “knights, esquires, and
gentlemen.” There is here, I think, some confusion in the way such
terms are applied; but I have not made the extract for the purpose of
grounding a comment upon it, but because it illustrates one portion of
my subject, and shows that while “your honor” was once the due phrase
of respect to the peerage, “your worship” was the reverential one paid
to knights, esquires, _and_ gentlemen. We still apply the terms, if
not to the different degrees named above, yet quite as confusedly, or
as thoughtlessly with respect to the point whether there be anything
honorable or worshipful in the individual addressed. This, however, is
only a form lingering among the lower classes. As matters of right,
however, “his honor” still sits in Chancery, and “your worship” is to
be seen behind any justice’s table.
We will now return to a race of kings who, whatever their defects,
certainly did not lack some of the attributes of chivalry.
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
THE STUARTS.
“May’t be pleasure to a reader’s ear,
That never drew save his own country’s air,
To hear such things related.”
HEYWOOD, _the English Traveller_
It is an incontrovertible fact, that the king of England, who least
of all resembled a knight in his warlike character, was the one who
surpassed all his brother sovereigns in his knightly spirit as a lover.
I allude to James I. The godson of Charles IX. of France was in his
childhood, what his godfather had never been, a dirty, droll boy. He
is the only king who ever added an original remark to a royal speech
set down for him to deliver. The remark in question was, probably,
nearly as long as the speech, for James was but four years old when he
gave utterance to it. He had been rolling about on the throne impishly
watching, the while, the grim lords to whom he, ultimately, recited
a prepared speech with great gravity and correctness. At the end of
his speech, he pointed to a split in the tiled roof of the hall, or
to a rent in the canopy of the throne, and announced to the lords and
others present the indisputable fact, that “there was a hole in the
parliament.”
The precocious lad passed no very melancholy boyhood in Stirling
Castle, till the Raid of Ruthven took him from his natural protectors,
and placed him in the hands of Gowrie. His escape thence exhibited
both boldness and judgment in a youth of sixteen; and when Frederick
II., of Denmark, gave him the choice of the two Danish princesses for
a wife, no one thought that so gallant a king was undeserving of
the compliment. When it was, however, discovered that the royal Dane
required James either to accept a daughter or surrender the Orkney
and Shetland islands, as property illegally wrested from Denmark,
men began to look upon the Danish king as guilty of uncommonly sharp
practice toward the sovereign of the Scots. A world of trouble ensued,
which it is not my business to relate, although were I inclined to be
discursive--which, of course, I am _not_--I might find great temptation
to indulge therein, upon this very subject. Suffice it then to say,
that a world of trouble ensued before James made his selection, and
agreed to take, rather than prayed to have granted to him, the hand of
Elizabeth, the elder daughter of Frederick II.
How the intrigues of Queen Elizabeth prevented this marriage I must
not pause to relate. The Danish Princess espoused a reigning duke, and
James was on the point of engaging himself to Katherine of Navarre,
when the offer of the hand of Anne the younger daughter of Frederick
being made to him, coupled with the alternative of his either taking
Anne, or losing the islands, he “prayed and advised with God, for a
fortnight,” and wisely resolved to wed with “pretty Anne.”
The matter progressed anything but smoothly for a time. At length,
after endless vexations, the young princess was married by proxy, in
August, 1589, and set sail, soon after, for Scotland under convoy of a
dozen gallant ships, and with prospects of a very unpleasant voyage.
A terrible storm blew bride and convoy on to the inhospitable coast of
Norway, and although two or three witches were executed for raising
this storm out of very spite, the matter was not mended. Disaster
pursued the fleet, and death overtook several who sailed in it, till
the coast of Scotland was fairly in sight. The Scotch witches, or
perhaps other causes not less powerful than witches, in those seas,
in the fall of the year, then blew the fleet back to the mouth of the
Baltic. “I was commissioned,” said Peter Munch, the admiral, “to land
the young queen in Scotland; it is clear, therefore, that I can not
return with her to Denmark. I will put her majesty ashore, therefore,
in Norway.” The conclusion was not logically attained, but the fact
was as we have described it. Letters reached James announcing to him
the deplorable condition in which his queen was lying at Upslo, on the
Norwegian coast--storm-bound and half-famished. After many projects
considered for her relief, James resolved to set forth and seek the
princess himself. It is in this passage of his life that we have an
illustration of the degree in which he surpassed all other kings who
have sat on the English throne--as a gallant knight _es amours_.
Toward the end of October, of this year, in the very stormiest portion
of the season, James went, privately, on board a diminutive vessel,
with a very reluctant party of followers and confederates, leaving
behind him, for the information of the astonished lieges, a promise
to be back in twenty days; and for their especial profit, a solemn
exhortation to live peaceably till he arrived again among them, with
his wife.
The knightly lover landed in Norway, early in November, and made his
way along the coast, now on foot, now on horseback anon in sledges, and
occasionally in boats or on shipboard, until with infinite pains, and
in a sorry plight, he reached Upslo, to no one’s astonishment more than
the queen’s, about the 19th of November. Accoutred and travel-soiled as
he was, he proceeded at once to her presence. He was so well-pleased
with the fair vision before him, that he made as if he would at once
kiss the queen, who stood gazing at him. “It is not the form of my
country,” said pretty Anne, not very violently holding her head aside.
“It’s good old Scottish fashion,” said the young king: and it was
observed that in less than an hour, Anne had fallen very completely
into the pleasant mode from beyond seas, and quite forgotten the forms
of Denmark.
The young couple were duly married in person, on the Sunday following
the arrival of James. The latter, like any Paladin of romance, had
perilled life, and contended with almost insurmountable obstacles, in
order to win the royal lady after a less easy fashion than marks the
wooing and wedding of kings generally. Such a couple deserved to have
the merriest of marriage banquets, but while such a storm was raging
without as Norway itself had never seen since the sea-wind first blew
over her, such a tempest was raised within, by the Scottish nobles, on
a question of precedence, that the king himself was chiefly occupied
in soothing the quarrellers, and only half succeeded in accomplishing
the desired end. Added to this was the prospect of a long winter
among the melancholy huts of Upslo. James, however, again exhibited
the spirit of a knight of more than ordinary gallantry. He not only
resolved that the young queen should not be thus imprisoned amid the
Norway snows till May, but he resolved to conduct her himself across
the Norwegian Alps, through Sweden, to her Danish home. The idea of
such a journey seemed to partake of insanity, but James proceeded to
realize it, by means of method and judgment. He first performed the
perilous journey alone, as far as Sweden, and finding it practicable,
returned for his wife, and departed a second time, in her company. Much
peril but small accident accompanied them on their way, and when the
wedding party arrived safely at Cronenburg, toward the end of January,
the marriage ceremony was not only repeated for the third time--to
despite the witches who can do nothing against the luck that is said
to lie in odd numbers, but there was a succession of marriage feasts,
at which every gentleman drank deeper and deeper every day, until such
uproar and dissension ensued that few kept their daggers in sheath
except those who were too drunk to draw them. That all were not in the
more disgraceful state, or were not continually in that condition, may
be conjectured from the fact that James paid a visit to Tycho Brahe,
and conversed with the astronomer in his observatory, in very vigorous
Latin. The king, however, was not sorry to leave old Denmark, and when
a Scottish fleet appeared off Cronenburg, to convey his bride and
himself homeward, he could no more be persuaded to stay a day longer,
than Tycho Brahe could be persuaded that Copernicus was correct in
dislodging the earth from its Ptolemaic stand-point as centre of the
solar system. The bridal party set sail on the 21st of April, 1590, and
was safely moored in Leith harbor on May-day. A pretty bride could not
have arrived at a more appropriate season. The royal knight and his
lady deserved all the happiness that could be awarded to the gallantry
of the one and the beauty of the other. But they did not escape the
trials common to much less dignified couples; and here the knightly
character of James may be said to terminate. Exemplary as he had been
as a lover, and faithful as he continued to be as a husband, he was in
all other respects, simply a shrewd man; and not indeed always _that_.
There is little of this quality in a husband who begins and continues
his married life with an indifference upon the matter of borrowing.
With James it was silver spoons to-day, silk stockings to-morrow, and
marks and moidores from any one who would give him credit. The old
French knight who drank broth out of his own helmet rather than sip it
from a borrowed bowl, was moved at least by a good principle. James
rather agreed with Carlo Buffone, in Jonson’s “Every Man out of his
Humor,” that “it is an excellent policy to owe much in these days.” A
policy which, unfortunately, is still deemed excellent, in spite of the
ruin which attends its practice.
The grave chivalry impressed on the face and features of Charles I., is
strikingly alluded to by Ben Jonson in his Masque of “The Metamorphosed
Gypsies;” for example:--
“His brow, his eye, and ev’ry mark of state,
As if he were the issue of each grace,
And bore about him _both his fame and fate_.”
Echard says of him, that he was perfect in all knightly exercises,
“vaulting, riding the great horse, running at the ring, shooting with
cross-bows, muskets, and sometimes great guns; that if sovereignty had
been the reward of excellences in those arts, he would have acquired a
new title to the crown, being accounted the most celebrated marksman,
and the most perfect manager of the great horse, of any in the three
kingdoms.”
It was with reference to the expression of the face, alluded to
by Jonson, that Bernini the sculptor said, on executing the bust
of Charles, that he had never seen any face which showed so much
greatness, and withal such marks of sadness and misfortune. The knight,
Sir Richard Bulstrode, tells us, that when the bust was being carried
across Greenwich Park, it suffered, what Moore calls on another
occasion, some “Tobit-like marks of patronage” from the sparrows.
“It was wiped off immediately,” says Charles’s good knight--“but,
notwithstanding all endeavors, it would not be gotten off, but turned
into blood.” No chevalier in poetic romance meets with more threatening
portent than the above.
The Scotch soldiers of fortune, at this period, were as good
representatives as could be found of the old knight-errant. To them,
Vittorio Siri imputes many of the misfortunes of the period. Some one
tells of an old Scottish knight exclaiming, in a year of universal
peace, “Lord, turn the world upside-down, that gentlemen may make
bread of it.” So, for the sake of furthering their trade of arms, the
Scottish, and, indeed, other mercenary men-at-arms, fanned the flame.
The words of Siri are precise on this point, for he says, “Le Leslie,
le Gordoni, le Duglas ed altri milordi della Scotia, del’ Inghilterra,
e dell’ Irlanda.”
Never had knights of romance worse fare in the dungeons of morose
magicians than they who entered the bloody lists, where was fought out
the quarrel between royalty and republicanism. “I heard a great officer
say,” remarks Blount, “that during the siege of Colchester, he dined at
an entertainment, where the greatest delicacies were roast horseflesh.”
The warlike spirit was, probably, never stronger than in this reign.
It is well illustrated by Hobbes, who remarks that, the Londoners and
citizens of other county capitals, who fought against Charles, “had
that in them which, in time of battle, is more conducing to victory,
than valor and experience both together; and that was _spite_.”
But it is as a lover that Charles I. is chiefly distinguished when we
consider him solely to discover his knightly qualities. In his early
days he was strongly impressed by romance, and possessed of romantic
feelings. This fact is best illustrated by his conduct in connection
with the Spanish Match; and to this matter we will devote a brief
space, and go back to the time when James was king, and Charles was
Prince of Wales.
THE SPANISH MATCH.
This unhappy and ill-advised affair, will ever remain one of the
darkest blemishes on the uniformly pacific but inglorious reign of the
royal pupil of Buchanan;--the whole detail is an ungrateful one of
intrigue and ill-faith, and however justly Buckingham may be accused
of exerting his baleful influence to dissolve the treaty, and that he
did so in the wantonness of his power is now past doubt; the disgrace
which should have attached to him, still hangs round the memory of the
timid king and his weak yet gallantly-disposed son. I am more inclined
to allow a high-mindedness of feeling to Charles than to his father.
The king, who supposed the entire art of reigning lay in dissimulation,
may not be charged with an over-scrupulous nicety in his observations
of the rules of fair dealing; but the young prince, at this period,
had the sentiments without the vanity of a knight-errant, his only
error was in the constitutional weakness which bent to the arrogance
of Buckingham’s somewhat stronger mind. With such a disposition, the
favorite found it as easy to persuade Charles to break off the match,
as he had with facility advised him to the romantic journey--as rash
as it was impolitic. It would be almost an unprofitable occupation to
search for Buckingham’s motives, they are quite unattainable, and,
like hunting the hare in a wagon, conjecture might lead us on, but we
should, at every step, be farther from our object. It is the received
opinion, that the prince’s visit was begun in caprice; and with caprice
it ended. Buckingham viewed it, perhaps, at first as a mere adventure,
and he terminated it, because his wounded pride suggested to him that
_he_ was not the favorite actor in the piece. His terms were, “Ego
et rex meus,” and a less-distinguished station would not satisfy the
haughty insolence of Somerset’s succession in the precarious favor of
the king.
Our British Solomon who willed, but could not restore, the Palatinate
to his son-in-law, had long been accustomed to consider the union of
Charles with the Infanta, as the only available means left by which he
could secure the object he had so much at heart. He was not made of
the stern stuff, which in other kings would have set a whole army in
motion. That “sagacious simpleton” was never in so turbulent a vein.
His most powerful weapon was an ambassador, and the best of these were
but sad specimens of diplomacy, and thus, weak as he was, both in the
cabinet and field, we may guess at his rapture when the marriage was
agreed to by the Court of Spain--the restoration of the Palatinate
talked of as a wedding present, and the bride’s dowry two millions of
eight.
It was at the expiration of five years of negotiation, that James at
length saw the end of what had hitherto been an ever-continuing vista.
The dispensation of the Pope, an indispensable preliminary to the union
of a Most Catholic princess, with a Protestant heir-apparent, had been
held up as a difficulty; James immediately loosened the reins with
which he had held in the Catholic recusants--he set them at liberty,
for the good of the reformed religion, _he said_; then apologized
to his subjects for having so set them at liberty--for the benefit
of Protestantism; and finally, he exulted in having accomplished so
honorable an end for England, as making her the first to enter the
path of moderation. He, moreover, sent to Spain, Digby, the good and
great Lord Bristol, and while _he_ was negotiating with Philip IV., the
Infanta’s brother, George Gage, “a polite and prudent gentleman,” was
employed at Rome to smooth down the obstacles which the zeal of the
Fourteenth Gregory raised in behalf of his mother-church. The parties
were a long time at issue as to what period the presumed offspring of
this marriage should remain under the guardianship of their mother;
that is to say, under the Catholic tuition of her confessors. The
period of “fourteen years,” was suggested by the Pope, and agreed to
by the Court of Spain. Now, George Gage, we are told, was both polite
and prudent; George made some slight objection. The father of the
faithful and the descendant of Roderic now named twelve years as the
stipulated period of maternal or ecclesiastical rule. Mr. Gage, without
losing sight of his prudence, retained all his civility; he treated
the Pope courteously. Gregory, in return, granted the dispensation,
condescended even to agree to the term of nine years, and merely asked
a few privileges for the Catholic suite of the Infanta, which were
not hard to grant, and would have been impolitic to refuse. James’s
advisers counselled him to demand the restitution of the Palatinate by
a preliminary treaty. This he wisely refrained from doing; he saw that
his desired object was considered inseparable from the marriage, and
he was content to trust to the existing treaty which, probably, would
not have been changed, had he so expressed his wish. There is a curious
item in all these diplomatic relations; beside the public treaty
there were various private articles, passed between and signed by the
parties concerned, agreeing that more toleration should be granted to
the papists, and that more of the penal laws against them should be
repealed than was expressed in the public document. There appears also
to have existed a yet more private treaty, of even more restricted
circulation, whereby James was not to be required to act up to the very
letter of that article, by which his royal word pledged what was then
considered--emancipation to the Catholics.
Thus far had proceeded this tedious affair of state; the nation was
beginning to consider its accomplishment with diminished aversion,
and a few months would have brought a Spanish Princess of Wales to
England, when all this goodly and fair-wrought edifice was destroyed by
the temerity of the man who was the evil spirit of the age. Charles’s
youth and inexperience readily lent a willing ear to the glowing
description which Buckingham recounted of the celebrated journey.
His young melancholy was excited into cheerfulness, when he dwelt on
the hoped-for and surprised rapture with which his destined bride
would receive a prince whose unusual gallantry spurned at the laws of
political interest, and whose chivalric feeling had broken through
state negotiation, and, despising to woo by treaty, had brought him to
her feet to win her by his merits. His blood warmed at the popularity
he would acquire by such a step, from a nation famed for its knightly
devotion to the fair, and whose watch-word, according to one of its
poets, has ever been, “love and the ladyes.” Charles would have been
a dull lover, indeed, had he only, like other princes, thought his
bride not worth the fetching. He would have been doubly dull and
undeserving had he paused to consider the bearings, the risks, or the
probable absurdity of the act. There was a certain political danger;
but Charles, young, and a lover, refused to see it; he was tearing
the bonds which might bind more ignoble princes, but were too weak
to confine him; he rent the shackles which proxies force on their
principals, and stood in his own princely strength to win a prize which
has often lost the world.
The only step subsequent to the prince’s acquiescence, was to obtain
the king’s permission, a matter of little difficulty. They attacked
the good-natured and simple James at a moment when his jovial humor
would not have denied a greater boon. He had sense, however, to see
something of the impropriety of the absence of Charles and Buckingham
from England; but his obtusity of intellect was overpowered by the
craft of his favorite, and the petitioners at length obtained his
unadvised sanction to the wild enterprise, less by the strength of
their arguments, than the persisting urgency of its expression. The
prince and his companion further obtained a promise of secrecy; and
they saw nothing more wanting than the ordinary preparations for
their departure. Left to his own reflections, however, the poor king
reproached his own weakness; he saw with terror that his subjects would
not readily forgive him for committing so invaluable a pledge into the
hands of a Catholic sovereign, who might detain Charles in order to
enforce new exactions or demands; and with equal terror he saw that
even success could not possibly justify the means; for there was no
advantage to be obtained, and no unprejudiced censurer would consider
the freak otherwise than as one played for the gratification of the
will of the duke, and of an enthusiastic prince, whose abstract idea of
chivalrous love had overcome his character for prudence.
There ensued, on the return of Charles and Buckingham to the
royal presence for despatches, a melancholy scene. There were the
objurgations and schoolboy blubbering of the monarch, the insolent
imperiousness of the favorite, and the silent tears and submission
of the prince. The audacious threats of the duke wrung from James
the assent which Buckingham required--a second permission for their
journey. A knight, Sir Francis Cottington, the prince’s secretary, and
Endymion Porter, a gentleman of the bedchamber, were selected as the
attendants of the Prince. The duke was, however, also to be accompanied
by his master of the horse, a man of knight’s degree, Sir Richard
Graham. There was a recapitulation of the crying scene when the two
former gentlemen were appointed, for Sir Francis boldly pointed out the
danger of the proceeding. Charles’s countenance showed his displeasure;
but Buckingham was completely carried away by his overwhelming passion.
James cried, the duke swore, and the king had nothing left to do, but
to wish them God speed on their amorous and knight-errant mission.
There is a work, known to many and read by few, the “Epistolæ
Howelianæ,” consisting of a collection of familiar letters on many
subjects, by a certain James Howell. The author was a cadet of a noble
family, several members of which had been on the roll of knighthood. He
pushed his fortunes with all the vigor of an aspiring younger brother.
His letters exhibit him as agent to a glass factory at Vienna--a
tutor--a companion--a clerk--secretary to an embassy--agent again,
and finally an attaché to the privy council. Master Howell, in these
epistles, continually rings the changes on the importance of attending
to the main chance; bewails the stagnation which non-employment throws
round his fortunes; or congratulates himself on the progress they
are making, through his industry. At the period of Charles’s visit
to Madrid, he was agent there for the recovery of a vessel taken
by unlawful seizure, and he contemplates the prince’s arrival with
delight, viewing him as a powerful adjunct to his cause. He complains
bitterly of the prince as showing more condescension to the needy
Spanish poor, than politeness to the accredited agent of an English
company. The agent’s honor or ruin depended on the success of his
mission, hence good Master Howell is occasionally and ill at ease.
The success of his mission, too, hung upon the happy termination
of the match; a marriage he considers as the avant-courier of his
appointments, but should some unlucky reverse prevent the end he hopes
for, why then, to use one of the worshipful agent’s most favorite
figures of speech--then “my cake is dough.” His letters are the chief
authority for what follows.
It is quite consistent with the whole character of this drama, that
the journey should be prosecuted through France. Charles and his suite
travelled incognito it is true, but Buckingham was rash enough to
introduce the prince at a court-ball in Paris, where he perhaps saw and
admired the lovely Henrietta Maria. From the gay court of France the
errant company speedily decamped, hurried rapidly toward the south,
and crossed the frontier just in time to escape the strong arm of the
governor of Bayonne, stretched out to arrest their progress.
On Friday the 7th of March, 1623, Charles and his attendants arrived
at Madrid, under the guise of very homely personages. Buckingham
took a name which has since served to cover a fugitive king of the
French--that of (Thomas) Smith, and therewith he entered Bristol’s
mansion, “’twixt the gloaming and the murk,” with a portmanteau under
his arm, while Charles waited on the other side of the street, not
as the Prince of Wales, but as Thomas Smith’s brother, John. Lord
Bristol did not allow the son of his monarch to remain long in such a
situation. Charles was conducted to the house, and on being ushered
into a bedchamber, he immediately asked for writing materials, and
despatched a messenger to his father, announcing his safe arrival in
the Spanish capital. Cottington and Porter arrived the next day; and
even so soon as this, a report was spreading through the city that
James himself was in Madrid. On the evening of Saturday, Buckingham
went privately to court, in his own person, and told the tale of the
adventures of the knight to whom he had acted as squire. The delight of
all parties was intense. Olivarez accompanied Buckingham on his return
to the prince, to express how immeasurably glad his Catholic majesty
was at his coming. This proud minister, who was the contemporary, and
perhaps the equal, of Richelieu, knelt and kissed the prince’s hand,
and “hugged his thighs,” says Mr. Howell, like a slave as he was.
Gondomar, too, hastened to offer his respects and congratulations to
the young prince. At ten that night, too, came the most distinguished
as he was the most desired visiter: Philip himself appeared in generous
haste to welcome the person and thank the noble confidence of his
almost brother-in-law. The meeting of the parties appears to have been
unaffected and cordial. After the salutations and divers embraces which
passed in the first interview, _they parted late_. The stern severity
of Spanish etiquette would not permit of Charles’s introduction to
the Infanta, and it was accordingly arranged that the princess should
appear in public on Sunday, and the prince meet her on the Prado, just
as the knight Guzman sees Inez, in the ancient ballad. In the afternoon
of the eventful day, the whole court, neglecting for the occasion all
sumptuary laws, appeared in all its bravery. Philip, his queen, two
brothers, and the Infanta, were together in one carriage, and the
princess, the cynosure of attraction, scarcely needed the blue riband
which encircled her arm, as a sign by which Charles might distinguish
her. The knightly lover, who had experienced some difficulty in making
his way through the exulting multitude, who threw up their caps and
cried “God bless him,” was in waiting, with his diminutive court and
Count Gondomar, to view the defiling of the procession. The royal
carriage approached, and as the eyes of the princess first rested on
her destined lord, she blushed deeply, “which,” adds the calculating
Mr. Howell, “we hold to be an impression of love and affection, for
the face is oftentimes a true index of the heart.” The Infanta, at
this period, was only sixteen and tall for her age--“a very comely
lady,” says the agent, “rather of a Flemish complexion than Spanish,
fair-haired, and carried a most pure mixture of red and white in her
face: she is full and big-lipped, which is held as beauty rather than a
blemish.”
Charles was now honored with a complete court establishment and
apartments in the palace; there was revelry in camp and city; and the
gallantry of the journey so touched this high-minded people, that
they declared the beautiful bride ought to have been made Charles’s
immediate reward. Gayety was at every heart and poesy, in the person
of Lope de Vega, celebrated “the Stuart,” and “Marie, his star.”
In all the festivals and carousals at court, Charles was not once
permitted to approach “his star.” The royal family sat together under
a canopy, but there was ever some unwelcome intervener between the
lovers, and the prince was compelled to satisfy his ardent soul with
gazing. The worthy English agent records that he has seen him “have
his eyes immovably fixed upon the Infanta half-an-hour together, in a
thoughtful, speculative posture, which,” he sagaciously adds, “would
needs be tedious unless affection did sweeten it.” It was on one of
these occasions that Olivarez, with less poetic truth than energy of
expression, said that Charles watched her _as a cat does a mouse_.
Whatever outward respect Charles may have voluntarily offered to the
prejudices and observances of Spanish ceremony, he, and perhaps the
blushing Infanta, thought it very cumbersome love-work for young
hearts. Words had passed between them, it is true, but only through the
medium of an interpreter, and always in the presence of the king, for
Philip “sat hard by, to overhear all,” and understand if he could, the
interpretations made by Lord Bristol.
Weary of this restraint, the prince soon found means, or rather an
opportunity, to break through the pompous obstacles which opposed
the good old plan of love-making, and he, with Endymion Porter to
attend him, did not fail to profit by the occasion. Near the city, but
across the river, the king had a summer-house, called Casa di Campo.
Charles discovered that the Infanta was accustomed to go very often
of a morning to gather May-dew. The knight and esquire, accordingly,
donning a silken suit for a spring morning, went out betimes, and
arrived without let or hindrance at the Casa di Campo. Their quality
was a sure passport, and doors, immovably closed to all others, opened
to _them_. They passed through the house into the garden, but to their
wonder and disappointment, the “light of love” was not visible. The
Infanta had not arrived, or had fled, and disappointment seemed likely
to be the probable reward of their labor. The garden was divided from
an adjoining orchard by a high wall; the prince heard voices on the
other side, perhaps heard _the_ voice, and hastened to a door which
formed the only communication of the two divisions. To try this outlet
was the work of a moment; to find it most vexatiously locked, was the
conviction of the next. The lover was at bay, and Endymion’s confused
brain had no resource to suggest. They looked at the wall. It was
high, undoubtedly; but was ever such a barrier too high for a king’s
son--a knight and a gallant, when it stood between him and such a
“star” as the muse of De Vega made of the Infanta? Charles was on the
summit of the wall almost as soon as the thought of climbing it had
first struck him; with the same eagerness he sprang lightly down on
the other side, and hastily made toward the object of his temerity.
Unfortunately there was an old “duenna” of a marquis with her in
quality of guardian, and the Infanta, who perchance expected to see
the intruder, was constrained, for the sake of appearances, to scream
with well-dissembled terror. “She gave a shriek and ran back.” Charles
followed, but the grim marquis interfered his unwelcome person between
the lovers. “Turning to the prince, he fell on his knees, conjuring
his highness to retire;” he swore by his head, that if he admitted the
prince to the company of the Infanta, he, the grisly guardian of the
dove, might pay for it with his head. As the lady, meanwhile, had fled,
and did not return, Charles was not obdurate. Maria, though she had
escaped (because seen) could not but be pleased with the proof he had
given of his devotion, and as the old marquis continued to talk of his
head, the prince, whose business lay more with the heart, turned round
and walked slowly away. He advanced toward the door, the portal was
thrown open, and thus, as Mr. Howell pithily says, “he came out under
that wall over which he had got in.” Endymion was waiting for him, and
perhaps for his story, but the knight was sad, and his squire solemn.
Charles looked an embodying of the idea of gloom, and Master Porter,
with some ill-will, was compelled to observe a respectful silence.
The Infanta and her governor hurried back to the palace, while her
suitor and his followers were left to rail in their thoughts against
the caprice of the ladies, and the reserve of royal masters; and so
ends a pretty story of “how a princess went to gather May-dew.”
This solitary and unsuccessful love-passage was the last effort which
Charles made to engage the good-will of Maria. He, at once, retired to
his apartments in the palace; whence he seldom went abroad, except for
the purpose of attending a bull-fight. Buckingham was sick a-bed, his
offended nobility lay ill-disposed at court, and the palace residence
was gradually becoming irksome to all parties. Charles could only have
bedchamber prayers, and not possessing a room where he might have
attended the service of his own church, the sacred plate and vestments
he had brought over were never used. Moreover, the Knights of the
Garter, Lords Carlisle and Denbigh, had well nigh set the palace on
fire, through leaving their lighted pipes in a summer-house. The
threatened mischief, however, was prevented by the activity of Master
Davies, my Lord of Carlisle’s barber, who “leapt down a great height
and quenched it.” Perhaps a more unfortunate accident than this, in the
eyes of a Catholic population, was a brawl within the royal precinct
between Ballard, an English priest, and an English knight, Sir Edmund
Varney. The prince had a page named Washington, lying mortally ill; to
save his soul the anxious priest hastened to the death-bed of the page;
here, however, he met Sir Edmund, an unflinching pillar of the English
church. An unseemly scene ensued; and while knight and priest passed
from words to blows, the poor suffering page silently died, and soon
after was consigned to the earth under a fig-tree in Lord Bristol’s
Garden.
In the meantime, the Princess Infanta was publicly addressed as
Princess of Wales, and as an acquaintance with the English language
was a possession much to be desired by the bearer of so proud a
title, the Lady Maria began “_her accidence_,” and turned her mind
to harsh declensions and barbarous conjugations. Though enthusiasm
had somewhat cooled, the business continued to proceed; the most
serious interruption was occasioned by the death of the Pontiff, as it
entailed many of the ensuing obstacles which at once began to rise.
The unfinished work of Gregory was thought to require a _da capo_
movement from his successor Urban, and the new Hierarch commenced a
string of objections and proposals, which were of no other effect than
to produce mistrust and delay. Buckingham too, recovering from his
sickness, longed to return to England, where it was now understood that
the Pope’s tardiness was founded on hopes of the prince’s conversion.
The people of England were alarmed and clamorous. Charles and the duke
discontented and impatient. The latter urged a return, and the prince,
in expressing his wishes to Philip, stated as his reasons, his father’s
age and infirmities, the murmurs of his people, and the fact that a
fleet was at sea to meet him. He added, a most close argument, that the
articles which had been signed in England bore, as a proviso, that if
he did not return by a specified month, they should be of no validity.
It honorably belied the suspicions against the Spanish Cabinet, that
not the slightest opposition was made to the return; proxies were
named, and on the termination of affairs with the Pope, Maria was to
follow Charles to England. The lady is said to have remarked, that if
she was not worth waiting for she was not worth having. Charles must
have felt the remark, but the duke was paramount, and the wind, which
favored their departure, as speedily blew away the popularity of a
prince whose knightly bearing, modest gallantry, and high virtues, so
particularly formed him for the favorite of a romantic nation. The
treaty for the Spanish match was broken.
The secret history of the French match possesses an equal interest
with that of the Spanish; but Charles only wrote to his bride on this
occasion, and met her, on her way to him, at Canterbury.
As a further instance of the chivalrous gallantry of Charles I., it
deserves to be recorded, that he it was who suggested a revival of
the custom of inviting the ladies to participate in the honors of
the Garter. I have elsewhere said, that at one time, the ladies were
regularly admitted, but nothing is known as to when this gallant custom
was first introduced. Dr. Barrington, in his excellent “Lectures on
Heraldry,” says, that “in the earliest notice of the habit of the order
having been issued to the ladies, immediately after the accession of
Richard II.,” they are said to have been “newly received into the
Society of the Garter,” and were afterward called “Ladies of the
Fraternity of St. George.” Who were admitted to this distinguished
order, or how long the practice continued, does not appear, though
it is probable it had fallen into disuse in the time of Henry VIII.
Charles remained content with merely suggesting the revival of the
custom, and “nothing,” says Dr. Barrington, “seems to have been done
to carry this suggestion into effect. If any one period,”--adds the
doctor, most appropriately--“if any one period were more fit than
another for doing it, it must surely be the present, when a _lady_ is
the sovereign of the order.”
THE KINGS OF ENGLAND AS KNIGHTS.
FROM STUART TO BRUNSWICK.
Charles II. loved the paraphernalia of courts and chivalry. He even
designed to create two new orders of knighthood--namely “the Knights
of the Sea,” a naval order for the encouragement of the sea-service;
and “the Knights of the Royal Oak,” in memory of his deliverance, and
for the reward of civil merit. He never went much farther than the
intention. He adopted the first idea at another’s suggestion, and
straightway thought no more of it. The second originated with himself,
and a list of persons was made out, on which figured the names of the
intended knights. The matter never went further.
At Charles’s coronation, the knights of the Bath were peculiarly
distinguished for their splendor. They were almost too gorgeously
attired to serve as waiters, and carry up, as they did the first course
to the king’s own table, at the coronation banquet, after a knight of
the Garter had been to the kitchen and had eaten a bit of the first
dish that was to be placed before his Sacred Majesty.
If the king was fond of show, some at least of his knights, shared in
the same feeling of vanity. The robes in recent times were worn only
on occasions of ceremony and service. The king revived a fashion which
his knights followed, and which sober people (who were not knights)
called a ridiculous humor. They were “so proud of their coats,” as
the expression went, that they not only wore them at home, but went
about in them, and even rode about the park with them on. Mr. Pepys is
particularly indignant on this matter especially so, when told that the
Duke of Monmouth and Lord Oxford were seen, “in a hackney-coach, with
two footmen in the park with their robes on; which,” adds the censor,
“is a most scandalous thing, so as all gravity may be said to be lost,
among us.” There was more danger of what Pepys calls “gravity” being
lost, when the Order, at command of the Sovereign head, elected such
men as the Elector of Saxony, who had no other distinction but that of
being a good drinker.
I do not know what the rule now may be in St. George’s Chapel, but in
the reign of Charles II., a singular regulation is noticed by Pepys.
He went in good company to the royal chapel, where he was placed,
by Dr. Childe, the organist, “among the knights’ stalls, and pretty
the observation,” he adds, “that no man, but a woman, may sit in a
knight’s place, where any brass plates are set.” What follows is also,
in some degree, germane to our purpose. “Hither come cushions to us,
and a young singing boy to bring us a copy of the anthem to be sung.
And here, for our sakes, had this anthem and the great service sung
extraordinary, only to entertain us. Great bowing by all the people,
the poor knights particularly, toward the altar.”
Charles II. was the first monarch who allowed the Knights of the Garter
to wear, as at present, the star of the order on the breast of the
coat. Our present queen has renewed in her gracious person, the custom
that was once observed, if we may believe Ashmole, by the ladies, that
is, the wives of Knights of the Garter--namely, of wearing the symbol
of the order as a jewelled badge, or a bracelet, on the arm. This is
in better taste than the mode adopted by Lady Castlereagh, at the gay
doings attendant upon the sitting of the Congress of Vienna; where the
noble lady in question appeared at court with her husband’s jewelled
garter, as a bandeau, round her forehead!
James II. has had not merely his apologists but his defenders. He had
far more of the knightly character than is commonly supposed. For a
long time he labored under the disadvantage of being represented, in
England, by historians only of the Orange faction. Poor Richard the
Third has suffered by a similar misfortune. He was wicked enough, but
he was not the monster described by the Tudor historians and dramatists.
James, in his youth, had as daring and as crafty a spirit as ever
distinguished the most audacious of pages. The tact by the employment
of which he successfully made his escape from the republican guards who
kept him imprisoned at St. James’s, would alone be sufficient proof of
this. When Duke of York, he had the compliment paid to him by Condé,
that if ever there was a man without fear it was he. Under Turenne he
earned a reputation of which any knight might be proud; and in the
service of Spain, he won praise for courage, from leaders whose bravery
was a theme for eulogy in every mouth.
Partisans, not of his own faction, have censured his going publicly
to mass soon after his accession; but it must be remembered that the
Knights of the Garter, in the collar of their order, complacently
accompanied him, and that the Duke of Norfolk was the only knight who
left him at the door of the chapel.
He had little of the knight in him in his method of love, if one may
so speak. He cared little for beauty; so little, that his brother
Charles remarked that he believed James selected his mistresses by way
of penance. He was coarsely minded, and neither practised fidelity nor
expected it in others. Whatever he may have been in battle, there was
little of the refinement of chivalry about him in the bower. It was
said of Louis XIV. and his successor, that if they were outrageously
unfaithful to their consorts, they never failed to treat them with
the greatest politeness. James lacked even this little remnant of
chivalrous feeling; and he was barely courteous to his consort till
adversity taught him the worth of Mary of Modena.
He was arrogant in prosperity, but the slightest check dreadfully
depressed him, and it is hardly necessary to say that he who is easily
elated or easily depressed, has little in him of the hero. His conduct
when his throne was menaced was that of a poor craven. It had not about
it the dignity of even a decent submission. He rose again, however,
to the heroic when he attempted to recover his kingdom, and took the
field for that purpose. This conduct has been alluded to by a zealous
and impartial writer in the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” for November, 1855.
“After the battle of the Boyne,” he says, “the Orange party circulated
the story that James had acted in the most cowardly manner, and fled
from the field before the issue was decided. Not only was this, in a
very short time believed, but even sensible historians adopted it, and
it came down to us as an historical fact. Now in the secret archives
of France there are several letters which passed between Queen Mary
and the Earl of Tyrconnel, and these together with some of the secret
papers, dispose at once of the whole story. It has now been placed
beyond a doubt, that the king was forced from the field. Even when
the day was lost and the Dutch veterans had routed the half-armed and
undisciplined Irish, James rallied a part of the French troops, and was
leading them on, when Tyrconnel and Lauzun interposed, pointed out the
madness of the attempt, and seizing the reins of his horse, compelled
him to retreat.”
This is perhaps proving a little too much, for if the day was lost, it
was not bravery, but rashness, that sought to regain it; and it is the
first merit of a knight, the great merit of a general, to discern when
blood may be spilled to advantage. As for the archives in France, one
would like to know upon what authority the papers preserved there make
their assertions. Documents are exceedingly valuable to historians, but
they are not always trustworthy. The archives of France may contain
Canrobert’s letter explaining how he was compelled to put constraint
upon the bravery of Prince Napoleon, and send him home, in consequence
of severe indisposition. And yet the popular voice has since applied a
very uncomplimentary surname to the Prince--quite as severe, but not so
unsavory, as that which the people of Drogheda still apply to James. In
either case there is considerable uncertainty. I am inclined to believe
the best of both of these illustrious personages, but seeing that the
uncertainty is great, I am not sure that Scarron was wrong when he said
that the best way of writing history was by writing epigrams, pointed
so as to prick everybody.
Cottington (Stafford’s Letters) tells us of a domestic trouble in which
James was concerned with one of his knights. The king’s perplexities
about religion began early. “The nurse is a Roman Catholic, to whom
Sir John Tunston offered the oath of allegiance, and she refused it;
whereupon there grew a great noise both in the town and court; and
the queen afflicted herself with extreme passion upon knowledge of a
resolution to change the woman. Yet after much tampering with the nurse
to convert her, she was let alone, to quiet the queen.” The dissension
is said to have so troubled the nurse, as also to have injured the
child, and never had knight or king more difficult task than James, in
his desire to please all parties.
It was one of the characteristics of a knight to bear adversity without
repining; and if Dodd may be believed, James II. was distinguished
for this great moral courage in his adversity. The passage in Dodd’s
Church History is worth extracting, though somewhat long: “James was
never once heard to repine at his misfortune. He willingly heard read
the scurrilous pamphlets that were daily published in England against
him. If at any time he showed himself touched, it was to hear of the
misfortunes of those gentlemen who suffered on his account. He would
often entertain those about him with the disorders of his youth, but
it was with a public detestation of them, and an admonition to others
not to follow his example. The very newspapers were to him a lesson of
morality; and the daily occurrences, both in the field and the cabinet,
were looked upon by him, not as the result of second causes, but as
providential measures to chastise both nations and private persons,
according to their deserts. He would sometimes say that the exalted
state of a king was attended with this great misfortune, that he lived
out of the reach of reproof, and mentioned himself as an example. He
read daily a chapter in the Bible, and another in that excellent book,
‘The Following of Christ.’ In his last illness he publicly forgave all
his enemies, and several of them by name, especially the Prince of
Orange, whom he acknowledged to be his greatest friend, as being the
person whom Providence had made use of to scourge him and humble him in
the manner he had done, in order to save his soul.” As something very
nearly approaching to reality, this is more pleasing than the details
of dying knights in romance, who after hacking at one another for an
hour, mutually compliment each other’s courage, and die in the happiest
frame of mind possible. Some one speaking of this king, and of Innocent
II., made an apt remark, worth the quoting; namely, that “he wished
for the peace of mankind that the pope had turned papist, and the king
of England, protestant!” How far the latter was from this desired
consummation is wittily expressed in the epitaph on James, made by one
of the poet-chevaliers, or, as some say, by one of the abbés who used
to lounge about the terrace of St. Germains.
“C’est ici que Jacques Second,
Sans ministres et sans maitresses,
Le matin allait à la messe,
Et le soir allait au sermon.”
I have noticed, in a previous page, the very scant courtesy which the
queen of Charles I. met with at the hands of a Commonwealth admiral.
The courtesy of some of the Stuart knights toward royal ladies was
not, however, of a much more gallant aspect. I will illustrate this by
an anecdote told by M. Macaulay in the fourth volume of his history.
The spirit of the Jacobites in William’s reign had been excited by the
news of the fall of Mons.... “In the parks the malcontents wore their
biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most
conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had in
the late reign been high in favor and military command, and was now an
indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exaltation he forgot the
courtesy which man owes to woman. He had more than once made himself
conspicuous by his impertinence to the queen. He now ostentatiously
put himself in her way when she took her airing, and while all around
him uncovered and bowed low, gave her a rude stare, and cocked his hat
in her face. The affront was not only brutal but cowardly. For the
law had provided no punishment for mere impertinence, however gross;
and the king was the only gentleman and soldier in the kingdom who
could not protect his wife from contumely with his sword. All that the
queen could do was to order the park-keepers not to admit Sir John
again within the gates. But long after her death a day came when he
had reason to wish that he had restrained his insolence. He found, by
terrible proof, that of all the Jacobites, the most desperate assassins
not excepted, he was the only one for whom William felt an intense
personal aversion.”
The portrait of William III. as drawn by Burnet, does not wear any very
strong resemblance to a hero. The “Roman nose and bright sparkling
eyes,” are the most striking features, but the “countenance composed
of gravity and authority,” has more of the magistrate than the man at
arms. Nevertheless, and in despite of his being always asthmatical,
with lungs oppressed by the dregs of small-pox, and the slow and
“disgusting dryness” of his speech, there was something chivalrous in
the character of William. In “the day of battle he was all fire, though
without passion; he was then everywhere, and looked to everything. His
genius,” says Burnet in another paragraph, “lay chiefly in war, in
which his courage was more admired than his conduct. Great errors were
often committed by him; but his heroical courage set things right, as
it inflamed those who were about him.” In connection with this part of
his character may be noticed the fact that he procured a parliamentary
sanction for the establishment of a standing army. His character, in
other respects, is not badly illustrated by a remark which he made,
when Prince of Orange, to Sir W. Temple, touching Charles II. “Was ever
anything so hot and so cold as this court of yours? Will the king, who
is so often at sea, never learn the word that I shall never forget,
since my last passage, when in a great storm the captain was crying
out to the man at the helm, all night, ‘Steady, steady, steady!’”
He was the first of our kings who would not touch for the evil. He
would leave the working of all miracles, he said, to God alone. The
half-chivalrous, half-religious, custom of washing the feet of the poor
on Maundy Thursday, was also discontinued by this prince, the last of
the heroic five Princes of Orange.
Great as William was in battle, he perhaps never exhibited more of the
true quality of bravery than when on his voyage to Holland in 1691,
he left the fleet, commanded by Sir Cloudesley Shovel and Sir George
Rooke, and in the midst of a thick fog attempted, with some noblemen of
his retinue, to land in an open boat. “The danger,” says Mr. Macaulay,
who may be said to have _painted_ the incident in a few words, “proved
more serious than they had expected.” It had been supposed that in an
hour the party would be on shore. But great masses of floating ice
impeded the progress of the skiff; the night came on, the fog grew
thicker, the waves broke over the king and the courtiers. Once the
keel struck on a sandbank, and was with great difficulty got off. The
hardiest mariners showed some signs of uneasiness, but William through
the whole night was as composed as if he had been in the drawing-room
at Kensington. “For shame,” he said to one of the dismayed sailors,
“are you afraid to die in my company?” The _vehis Cæsarem_ was,
certainly, not finer than this.
The consort of Queen Anne was of a less chivalrous spirit than William.
Coxe says of him, that even in the battle-field he did not forget
the dinner-hour, and he appears to have had more stomach for feeding
than fighting. Of George I., the best that can be said of him in his
knightly capacity, has been said of him, by Smollet, in the remark,
that this prince was a circumspect general. He did not, however, lack
either courage or impetuosity. He may have learned circumspection
under William of Orange. Courage was the common possession of all the
Brunswick princes. Of some of them, it formed the solitary virtue.
But of George I., whom it was the fashion of poets, aspiring to the
laureatship, to call the great, it can not be said, as was remarked
of Philip IV. of Spain, when he _took_ the title of “Great,” “He has
become great, as a ditch becomes great, by losing the land which
belonged to it.”
One more custom of chivalry observed in this reign, went finally out
in that of George II. I allude to the custom of giving hostages.
According to the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, “two persons of rank were
to reside in France, in that capacity, as sureties to France that Great
Britain should restore certain of its conquests in America and the West
Indies.” The “Chevalier,” Prince Charles Edward, accounted this as a
great indignity to England, and one which, _he said_, he would not have
suffered if he had been in possession of his rights.
The age of chivalry, in the old-fashioned sense of the word, went
out before Burke pronounced it as having departed. I do not think
it survived till the reign of George II. In that reign chivalry was
defunct, but there was an exclusive class, whose numbers arrogated to
themselves that nice sense of honor which was supposed, in olden times,
to have especially distinguished the knight. The people alluded to were
_par excellence_, the people of “fashion.” The gentlemen who guarded,
or who were supposed to guard, the brightest principle of chivalry,
were self-styled rather than universally acknowledged, “men of honor.”
The man of honor has been painted by “one of themselves.” The Earl
of Chesterfield spoke with _connoissance de fait_, when he treated of
the theme; and his lordship, whose complacency on this occasion, does
not permit him to see that his wit is pointed against himself, tells a
story without the slightest recollection of the pithy saying of the old
bard, “De te fabula narratur.”
“A man of honor,” says Lord Chesterfield, “is one who peremptorily
affirms himself to be so, and who will cut anybody’s throat that
questions it, even upon the best grounds. He is infinitely above the
restraints which the laws of God or man lay upon vulgar minds, and
knows no other ties but those of honor, of which word he is to be the
sole expounder. He must strictly advocate a party denomination, though
he may be utterly regardless of its principles. His expense should
exceed his income considerably, not for the necessaries, but for the
superfluities of life, that the debts he contracts may do him honor.
There should be a haughtiness and insolence in his deportment, which
is supposed to result from conscious honor. If he be choleric and
wrong-headed into the bargain, with a good deal of animal courage, he
acquires the glorious character of a man of honor; and if all these
qualifications are duly seasoned with the genteelest vices, the man of
honor is complete; anything his wife, children, servants, or tradesmen,
may think to the contrary, notwithstanding.”
Lord Chesterfield goes on to exemplify the then modern chivalrous
guardian of honor, by drawing the portrait of a friend under an assumed
name. He paints a certain “Belville” of whom his male friends are
proud, his female friends fond, and in whom his party glories as a
living example--frequently making that example the authority for their
own conduct. He has lost a fortune by extravagance and gambling; he
is uneasy only as to how his honor is to be intact by acquitting his
liabilities from “play.” He must raise money at any price, for, as he
says, “I would rather suffer the greatest incumbrance upon my fortune,
than the least blemish upon my honor.” His privilege as a peer will
preserve him from those “clamorous rascals, the tradesmen”; and lest he
should not be able to get money by any other means, to pay his “debts
of honor,” he writes to the prime minister and offers to sell his vote
and conscience for the consideration of fifteen hundred pounds. He
exacts his money before he records his vote, persuaded as he is that
the minister will not be the first person that ever questioned the
honor of the chivalrous Belville.
The modern knight has, of course, a lady love. The latter is as much
like Guinever, of good King Arthur’s time, as can well be; and she
has a husband who is more suspicious and jealous than the founder of
the chivalrous Round Table. “Belville” can not imagine how the lady’s
husband can be suspicious, for he and Belville have been play-fellows,
school-fellows, and sworn friends in manhood. Consequently, Belville
thinks that wrong may be committed in all confidence and security.
“However,” he writes to the lady, “be convinced that you are in the
hands of a man of honor, who will not suffer you to be ill-used, and
should my friend proceed to any disagreeable extremities with you,
depend upon it, I will cut the c----’s throat for him.”
Life in love, so in lying. He writes to an acquaintance that he had
“told a d----d lie last night in a mixed company,” and had challenged a
“formal old dog,” who had insinuated that “Belville” had violated the
truth. The latter requests his “dear Charles” to be his second--“the
booby,” he writes of the adversary who had detected him in a lie, “was
hardly worth my resentment, but you know my delicacy where honor is
concerned.”
Lord Chesterfield wrote more than one paper on the subject of men of
honor. For these I refer the reader to his lordship’s works. I will
quote no further from them than to show a distinction, which the
author draws with some ingenuity. “I must observe,” he says, “that
there is a great difference between a MAN OF HONOR and a PERSON OF
HONOR. By PERSONS OF HONOR were meant, in the latter part of the last
century, bad authors and poets of noble birth, who were but just not
fools enough to prefix their names in great letters to the prologues,
epilogues, and sometimes even the plays with which they entertained
the public. But now that our nobility are too generous to interfere
in the trade of us poor, professed authors” (his lordship is writing
anonymously, in the WORLD), “or to eclipse our performances by the
distinguished and superior excellency and lustre of theirs; the meaning
at present of a PERSON OF HONOR is reduced to the simple idea of a
PERSON OF ILLUSTRIOUS BIRTH.”
The chivalrous courage of one of our admirals at the close of the
reign of George II., very naturally excited the admiration of Walpole.
“What milksops,” he writes in 1760, “the Marlboroughs and Turennes, the
Blakes and Van Tromps appear now, who whipped into winter quarters and
into ports the moment their nose looked blue. Sir Cloudesley Shovel
said that an admiral deserved to be broken who kept great ships out
after the end of September; and to be shot, if after October. There is
Hawke in the bay, weathering this winter (January), after conquering in
a storm.”
George III. was king during a longer period than any other sovereign
of England; and the wars and disasters of his reign were more gigantic
than those of any other period. He was little of a soldier himself;
was, however, constitutionally brave; and had his courage and powers
tested by other than military matters. The politics of his reign wore
his spirit more than if he had been engaged in carrying on operations
against an enemy. During the first ten years after his accession, there
were not less than seven administrations; and the cabinets of Newcastle
and Bute, Grenville and Rockingham, Grafton and North, Shelburne and
Portland, were but so many camps, the leaders in which worried the
poor monarch worse than the Greeks badgered unhappy Agamemnon. Under
the administration of Pitt he was hardly more at his ease, and in no
degree more so under that of Addington, or that of All the Talents,
and of Spencer Perceval. An active life of warfare could not have more
worn the spirit and health of this king than political intrigues did;
intrigues, however, be it said, into which he himself plunged with no
inconsiderable delight, and with slender satisfactory results.
He was fond of the display of knightly ceremonies, and was never more
pleased than when he was arranging the ceremonies of installation, and
turning the simple gentlemen into knights. Of the sons who succeeded
him, George IV. was least like him in good principle of any sort, while
William IV. surpassed him in the circumstance of his having been in
action, where he bore himself spiritedly. The race indeed has ever been
brave, and I do not know that I can better close the chapter than with
an illustration of the “Battle-cry of Brunswick.”
THE BATTLE-CRY OF BRUNSWICK.
The “Battle-cry of Brunswick” deserves to be commemorated among the
acts of chivalry. Miss Benger, in her “Memoirs of Elizabeth, Queen
of Bohemia,” relates that Christian, Duke of Brunswick, was touched
alike by the deep misfortunes, and the cheerful patience of that
unhappy queen. Indignant at the neglect with which she was treated
by her father, James I. of England, and her uncle, Frederick of
Denmark, Duke Christian “seemed suddenly inspired by a sentiment of
chivalric devotion, as far removed from vulgar gallantry as heroism
from ferocity. Snatching from her hand a glove, which he first raised
with reverence to his lips, he placed it in his Spanish hat, as a
triumphal plume which, for her sake, he ever after wore as a martial
ornament; then drawing his sword he took a solemn oath never to lay
down arms until he should see the King and Queen of Bohemia reinstated
in the Palatinate. No sooner had Christian taken this engagement than
he eagerly proclaimed it to the world, by substituting on his ensign,
instead of his denunciation of priests, an intelligible invocation to
Elizabeth in the words ‘For God and for her!’ _Fur Gott und fur sie!_”
“Flash swords! fly pennons! helm and shield
Go glittering forth in proud array!
Haste knight and noble to the field,
Your pages wait, your chargers neigh.
Up! gentlemen of Germany!
Who love to be where strife is seen,
For Brunswick leads the fight to-day,
For God and the Queen!
“Let them to-day, for fame who sigh,
And seek the laurels of the brave;
Or they who long, ’ere night, to lie
Within a soldier’s honored grave,
Round Brunswick’s banner take their stand;
’Twill float around the bloody scene,
As long as foeman walks the land,
’Gainst God and the Queen.
“Draw, Barons, whose proud homes are placed
In many a dark and craig-topped tower;
Forward, ye knights, who have been graced
In tourney lists and ladies’ bower.
And be your country’s good the cause
Of all this proud and mortal stir,
While Brunswick his true sabre draws
For God and for her!
“To Him we look for such good aid
As knights may not be shamed to ask,
For vainly drawn would be each blade,
And weakly fitted to its task,
Each lance we wield, did we forget
When loud we raise our battle-cry,
For old Bohemia’s Queen, to set
Our hopes with God on high.”
The original superscription on the banner of Brunswick was the very
energetic line: “Christian of Brunswick, the friend of God and the
enemy of priests.” Naylor, in his “Civil and Military History of
Germany,” says, that the Duke imprinted the same legend on the money
which he had coined out of the plate of which he had plundered the
convents, and he adds, in a note derived from Galetti, that “the
greater part of the money coined by Christian was derived from twelve
silver statues of the apostles, which the bigotry of preceding ages had
consecrated, in the cathedral of Munster.” When the Duke was accused
of impiety by some of his followers, he sheltered himself under the
authority of Scripture; and pretended to have only realized the ancient
precept: “Go hence, into all parts of the earth!”
Having seen the English Kings as knights, let us look at a few of the
men whom they knighted.
RECIPIENTS OF KNIGHTHOOD.
“The dew of grace bless our new knights to-day.” BEAUMONT AND FLETCHER.
The Conquest was productive of a far more than average quantity
of knights. Indeed, I think it may be asserted without fear of
contradiction, that the first and the last William, and James I. were
more addicted to dubbing knights than any other of our sovereigns. The
good-natured William IV. created them in such profusion that, at last,
gentlemen at the head of deputations appeared in the royal presence
with a mysterious dread lest, in spite of themselves, they should be
compelled to undergo a chivalric metamorphosis, at the hands of the
“sea king.” The honor was so constantly inflicted, that the recipients
were massed together by “John Bull” as “The Thousand and one (K)nights!”
William the Conqueror was not so lavish in accolades as his descendant
of remoter days, nor was he so off-handed in the way of administering
the distinction. He drew his sword with solemnity, laid it on the
shoulder before him with a sort of majestic composure, and throughout
the ceremony looked as calm as dignity required. William is said to
have ennobled or knighted his cook. He does not stand alone in having
so acted: for, unless I am singularly mistaken, the great Louis tied
some small cross of chivalry to the button-hole of the immortal Vatel.
William’s act, however, undoubtedly gave dignity to that department
in palaces, whence many princes have derived their only pleasure. It
was from him that there passed into the palace of France the term
“Officiers de Service,” a term which has been appropriated by others
of less elevated degree than those whom it originally served to
distinguish. The term has led to a standing joke in such dwellings.
“Qui vive?” exclaims a sentinel in one of the base passages, as one of
these officials draws near at night. “Officier,” is the reply of the
modest official in question. “Quel officier?” asks the guard. “Officier
de service!” proudly answers he who is thus questioned; whereupon the
soldier smilingly utters “Passe, Caramel!” and the royal officer--_not_
of the body-guard, passes, as smilingly, on his way.
But, to return from Caramel to the Conqueror, I have to observe, that
the cook whom William knighted bore an unmusical, if not an unsavory,
name. The culinary artist was called Tezelin. The service by which
he had won knighthood consisted in the invention of a white soup for
maigre days. The hungry but orthodox William had been accustomed to
swallow a thin broth “à l’eau de savon;” but Tezelin placed before
him a tureen full of an orthodox yet appetizing liquid, which he
distinguished by the name of _Dillegrout_. The name is not promising,
particularly the last syllable, but the dish could not have been a bad
one. William created the inventor “chevalier de l’office,” and Sir
Caramel Tezelin was farther gratified by being made Lord of the Manor
of Addington. Many a manor had been the wages of less honest service.
The Tiercelins are descendants of the Tezelins; and it has often
struck me as curious that of two recently-deceased holders of that
name, one, a cutler in England, was famous for the excellence of his
carving-knives; and the other, an actor in France, used to maintain
that the first of comic parts was the compound cook-coachman in
Molière’s “_Avare_.” Thus did they seem to prove their descent from the
culinary chivalry of William of Normandy.
But there are other samples of William’s knights to be noticed. Among
the followers who landed with him between Pevensey and Hastings, was
a Robert who, for want of a surname, and because of his sinews, was
called Robert le Fort, or “Strong.” It would have gone ill with William
on the bloody day on which he won a throne, had it not been for this
Robert le Fort, who interposed his escu or shield, between the skull
of the Norman and the battle-axe of a Saxon warrior. This opportune
service made a “Sieur Robert” of him who rendered it, and on the
coat-of-arms awarded to the new knight was inscribed the device which
yet belongs to the Fortescues;--“Forte Scutum Salus Ducum,”--a strong
shield is the salvation of dukes--or leaders, as the word implies.
The Duke of Normandy could not have devised a more appropriate motto;
but he was probably helped to it by the learning and ready wit of his
chaplain.
The danger into which William rushed that day was productive of dignity
to more than one individual. Thus, we hear of a soldier who, on finding
William unhorsed, and his helmet beaten into his face, remounted his
commander after cleverly extricating his head from the battered load
of iron that was about it. William, later in the day, came upon the
trusty squire, fainting from the loss of a leg and a thigh. “You gave
me air when I lacked it,” said the Conqueror, “and such be, henceforth,
thy name; and for thy lost leg and thigh, thou shalt carry them, from
this day, on thy shield of arms.” The maimed knight was made lord of
broad lands in Derbyshire; and his descendants, the Eyres, still bear a
leg and a thigh in armor, for their crest. It is too pretty a story to
lose, but if the account of these knight-makings be correct, some doubt
must be attached to that of the devices, if, as some assert, armorial
bearings were not used until many years subsequent to the battle of
Hastings. The stories are, no doubt, substantially true. William, like
James III. of Scotland, was addicted to knighting and ennobling any
individuals who rendered him the peculiar pleasures he most coveted.
Pitscottie asserts that the latter king conferred his favors on masons
and fiddlers; and we are told that he not only made a knight of
Cochrane, a mason, but also raised him to the dignity of Earl of Mar.
Cochrane, however, was an architect, but he would have been none the
worse had he been a mason--at least, had he been a man and mason of
such quality as Hugh Millar and Allan Cuningham.
Although it has been often repeated that there were no knights, in the
proper sense of that word, before the period of William the Conqueror,
this must be accepted with such amount of exception as to be almost
equivalent to a denial of the assertion. There were knights before
the Conquest, but the systems differed. Thus we know from Collier’s
Ecclesiastical History that Athelstan was knighted by Alfred; and
this is said to have been the first instance of the performance of
the ceremony that can be discovered. Here again, however, a question
arises. Collier has William of Malmesbury for his authority. The words
of this old author are: “Athelstane’s grandfather, Alfred, seeing and
embracing him affectionately, when he was a boy of astonishing beauty
and graceful manners, had most devoutly prayed that his government
might be prosperous; indeed, he had made him a knight unusually early,
giving him a scarlet cloak, a belt studded with diamonds, and a Saxon
sword with a golden scabbard.” This, and similar instances which might
be cited, is supposed by some to prove the existence of knights as a
distinct order among the Saxons, while others think that it may amount
to nothing more than the first bestowing of arms. Louis le Débonnaire,
it is remarked, _ense accinctus est_, received his arms at thirteen
years old. But this was in some degree “knighting,” for we read in
Leland’s History of Ireland, of Irish knighthood being conferred on
recipients only seven years old.
If William the Conqueror made many knights in order to celebrate his
conquest, the gentlemen with new honors did not always obtain peaceable
possession of the estates which were sometimes added to the title. Here
is an instance in the case of the ancient family of the Kinnersleys.
William’s commissioners had appeared in Herefordshire, and in course
of their predatory excursion, they came before the castle of John
de Kinnersly, an old man, who is described as a knight, albeit some
assert that there were no more knights in England before the conquest
than there was rain on the earth before the flood. The old man who
was blind, stood at his castle-gate in front of a semicircle formed
by his twelve sons. Each had sword on thigh and halberd in hand. When
the sheriffs and other commissioners asked him by what tenure he held
his castle and estates, blind John exclaimed, “By my arms; by sword
and spear; and by the same will keep them!” To which all his lively
lads uttered a vigorous “Ay, ay,” and the Norman commissioners were so
satisfied with the title, that they did not venture to further question
the same, but left the possessor of castle and land undisturbed in that
possession which is said to be nine points out of the ten required by
the law.
During many reigns, no man was knighted, but who was of some “quality,”
and generally because he was particularly useful to his own or
succeeding generations. These require no notice. Some of these
introduced customs that are worth noticing, and here is a sample.
Among the lucky individuals knighted by Edward I., Sir William Baud
holds a conspicuous place. Sir William gave rise to a curious custom,
which was long observed in Old St. Paul’s. During his lifetime, the
dean and chapter had made over to him some laud in Essex. In return, or
perhaps in “service” for this, the knight presented at the high altar
of the cathedral, a doe “sweet and seasonable,” on the conversion of
St. Paul, in winter; and a buck, in equally fitting condition, on the
commemoration of St. Paul in summer. The venison was for the especial
eating of the canons resident. The doe was carried to the altar by one
man, surrounded by processional priests, and he was to have nothing
for his trouble. The buck had several bearers and a more numerous
accompaniment of priests, who disbursed the magnificent sum of twelve
pence to the carriers. The knight’s buck made the dean and chapter
so hilarious that when they appeared at the doors of the cathedral
to escort it to the altar, they wore copes and vestments, and their
reverences wore wreaths of roses on their solemn heads! Indeed, there
was a special dress for the cathedral clergy on either day; each,
according to the occasion, being ornamented with figures of bucks
or does. At the altar, the dean sent the body to be baked, but the
head was cut off and carried on a pike to the western door, where the
huntsmen blew a _mort_, and the notes proclaiming the death of the stag
were taken up and repeated by the “horners” of the city, who received
a trifle from the rosy dean and chapter, for thus increasing the noisy
importance of the occasion.
There is something, too, worthy of notice in the fact that Richard
II. was the first king who knighted a London tradesman. Walworth, who
struck down Wat Tyler, and who was knighted by that king for his good
service, was engaged in commercial pursuits. This lord mayor, however,
derived very considerable profits from pursuits less creditable to him.
He was the owner of tenements by the water side, which were of the very
worst reputation, but which brought him a very considerable yearly
revenue. Sir William pocketed this with the imperially-complacent
remark of “non olet.” The dagger in the city arms is not in memory
of this deed; it simply represents the sword of St. Paul, and it
has decorated the city shield since the first existence of a London
municipality.
Walworth then is not a very respectable knight. We find one of better
character in a knight of ancient family name, whose deeds merit some
passing record.
Sir Robert Umfreville, a knight of the Garter, who owed his honors
to the unfortunate Henry VI., found leisure, despite the busy and
troubled times in which he lived, to found the Chantry of Farmacres,
near Ravensworth, where two chaplains were regularly to officiate
according to the law of Sarum. If the knight’s charity was great, his
expectations of benefit were not small. The chaplains were daily to
perform service for the benefit of the souls of the founder, and of
all his kith, kin, and kindred. Nay, more than this, service was to
be performed for the soul’s profit of all knights of the Garter, as
long as the order existed, and of all the proprietors of the estate of
Farmacres. The chaplains were to reside, board, and sleep, under the
roof of the chapel. Once every two years the pious will of the founder
allowed them a renewal of costume, consisting of “a sad and sober vest
sweeping to their heels.” Upon one point Sir Robert was uncommonly
strict; he would not allow of the presence of a female in the chapel,
under any pretence whatever--even as a servant to the chaplains--_quia
frequenter dum colitur Martha, expellitur Maria_. The latter, too, were
bound to exercise no office of a secular nature, especially that of
bailiff. To a little secular amusement, however, the sagacious knight
did not object, and two months’ leave of absence was allowed to the
chaplains every year; and doubtless no questions were asked, on their
return, as to how it had been employed.
While touching on the matters which occurred during the reign of that
unhappy Lancastrian king, Henry VI., I will observe that we have
foreign testimony to the fact of our civil wars having been carried
on with more knightly courtesy than had hitherto been the case in any
other country. “In my humble opinion,” says Comines, “England is, of
all the dominions with which I am acquainted, the one alone in which
a public interest is properly treated. There is no violence employed
against the people, and in war-time no edifice is destroyed or injured
by the belligerents. The fate and misery of war falls heaviest on those
immediately concerned in carrying it on.” He alludes particularly to
the knights and nobles; but it is clear that, let war be carried on in
ever so knightly a fashion, the people must be the chief sufferers.
The warehouses may stand, but so also will commerce--very still and
unproductive.
Courteous as the knights of this age may have been, they were by
no means incorruptible. There were many of them in the service of
Edward IV., who were the pensioners of Louis XI., who used to delight
in exhibiting their names at the foot of acknowledgments for money
received. One official, however, Hastings, would never attach his
autograph to his receipt, but he had no scruples with regard to taking
the money. The Czar buys Prussian service after the fashion of Louis XI.
Henry VIII. cared more for merit than birth in the knights whom he
created. He first recognised the abilities of him who was afterward
Sir John Mason, the eminent statesman of five reigns. This king was
so pleased with an oration delivered in his presence by Mason, at All
Souls, Oxford, that he took upon himself the charge of having him
educated abroad, as one likely to prove an able minister of state. He
was a faithful servant to the king. Elizabeth had one as gallant in
Sir Henry Unton, who challenged the great Guise for speaking lightly
of his royal mistress. The motives for the royal patronage of these
knights was better than that which moved Richard I. when he raised the
lowly-born Will Briewer to favoriteship and knighthood. Henry VIII. was
fond of conferring the honor of chivalry on those who served him well;
thus of the Cornish lawyer, Trigonnel, he made a knight, with forty
pounds a year to help him to keep up the dignity, in acknowledgment
of the ability with which, as proctor, he had conducted the case of
divorce against Queen Katharine. It was better service than John
Tirrell rendered to Richard III., who knighted him for his aid in the
murder of the young princes, on which occasion he kept the keys of the
Tower, and stood at the foot of the stairs, while Forest and Dighton
were despatching the young victims. We have a knight of a different
sort of reputation in Sir Richard Hutton, Charles I.’s “honest judge,”
at whose opposition against the levying of ship-money, even the king
could not feel displeased. Sir Richard deserved his honors; and we may
reckon among them the fact, that “when he was a barrister at Gray’s
Inn, he seldom or never took a fee of a clergyman.”
The old crest of the Huntingdonshire Cromwells was a lion rampant,
holding a diamond ring in its fore-paw. This crest has reference to
an individual knighted by Henry VIII. In the thirty-second year of
that king’s reign, Richard Williams, _aliàs_ Cromwell, with five other
gentlemen, challenged all or any comers from Scotland, Flanders,
France, or Spain, who were willing to encounter them in the lists.
The challenge was duly accepted, and on the day of encounter, Richard
Cromwell flung two of his adversaries from their horses. Henry loved
the sport, and especially such feats as this exhibited by Cromwell,
whom he summoned to his presence. The king said, “You have hitherto
been my Dick, now be my diamond;” and taking a diamond ring from his
own finger, and placing it on that of Cromwell, he bade the latter
always carry it for his crest. The king, moreover, knighted Richard,
and what was better, conferred on him Romney Abbey, “on condition of
his good service, and the payment of £4,663 4_s._ 2_d._ held in capite
by the tenth part of a knight’s fee, paying £29 16_s._”
It was in the reign of Henry VIII. that for the first time a
serjeant-at-law received the honor of knighthood. This seems to
have been considered by the learned body as a corporate honor, by
which the entire company of sergeants were lifted to a level with
knights-bachelors, at least. It is doubtless for this reason that
sergeants-at-law claim to be equal in rank with, and decline to go
below those said knight’s bachelors.
Of Elizabeth, it is sufficient to name but one sample of her knights.
She created many, but she never dubbed one who more nobly deserved the
honor than when she clapped the sword on the shoulder of Spielman,
the paper-maker, and bade him rise a knight. This was done by way of
recompense for the improvements he had introduced into his art, at
a time when printers and paper-makers were considered by Romanists
anything but angels of light.
Hume, referring to the chivalry of James I.’s time, remarks that the
private soldiers were drawn from a better class of men than was the
case in Hume’s time. They approached, he says, nearer to an equality
with the rank of officers. It has been answered that no such rank
existed as that from which they are chiefly drawn now. This, however,
is not the case. There were then, as now, doubtless many of the peasant
and working classes in the army; but there is not now, as there was
then, any encouragement to men of respectable station to begin the
ascent in profession of arms at the lowest round of the ladder.
One of James I.’s knights was the well-known Sir Herbert Croft. James
knighted him at Theobalds, out of respect to his family, and personal
merits. Some years subsequently Sir Herbert, then above fifty years of
age, joined the Church of Rome, and retired to Douay, where he dwelt a
lay-brother, among the English Benedictines. He died among them, after
a five years’ residence, in the year 1622. His eldest son William was
also knighted, I think, by Charles I. He is an example of those who
were both knights and clergymen, for after serving as colonel in the
civil wars, he forsook catholicism, in which he had been brought up
by his father, entered the Church of England, and like so many other
knights who in former times had changed the sword for the gown, rose
to the dignity of carrying an episcopal pastoral staff, and was made
Bishop of Hereford in 1661. It was a descendant of his who wrote the
very inaccurate biography of Young, in “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.”
Wood, in his _Athenæ_, shows that the first Sir Herbert was a literary
knight, who took up pen in the service of the communion into which
he had entered. These were;--1. Letters persuasive to his wife and
children to take upon them the Catholic religion. 2. Arguments to show
that the Church, in communion with the See of Rome, is the true Church.
3. Reply to the answers of his daughter, Mary Croft, which she made
to a paper of his sent to her concerning the Roman Church. All these
pieces appeared in the same year, 1619, and they seem to have been very
harmless weapons in the hands of a very amiable knight.
Among the most worthy of the knights created by James I. was Leonard
Holliday, who served the office of Lord Mayor in 1605, and was dubbed
chevalier by a king who is said never to have conferred the honor
without being half afraid of the drawn sword which was his instrument.
Sir Leonard did good service in return. In his time Moorfields
consisted of nothing but desolate land, the stage whereon was enacted
much violence and terrible pollution. In this savage locality, Sir
Leonard effected as wonderful a change as Louis Napoleon has done
in the Bois de Boulogne; and even a greater; for there were more
difficulties in the knight’s way, and his will was less sovereign and
potent to work mutation. Nevertheless, by perseverance, liberal outlay,
and hard work of those employed in the manual labor, he transformed the
hideous and almost pathless swamp into a smiling garden, wherein the
citizens might take the air without fearing violence either to body or
goods. They blessed king James’s knight as they disported themselves in
the rural district with their wives and children. The laborers employed
were said to have been less lavish of benedictions upon the head of him
from whom they took their wages. They complained bitterly of the toil,
and for a long time in London, when any great exertions were necessary
to produce a desired end, promptly, men spoke of the same as being mere
“Holiday work.”
James I. was not so perfect a knight in presence of a sword as he was
in presence of a lady. He made more knights than any other king, not
excepting William IV.; but he never dubbed one without some nervousness
at the sight of the weapon with which he laid on the honor. Kenelm
Digby states that when _he_ was knighted by James, the sword, had it
not been guided in the King’s hand by the Duke of Buckingham, would
have gone, not upon his shoulder, but into his eye. James’s aversion
from the sight of a sword is said to have descended to him from his
mother who, a short time previous to his birth, was the terrified
spectator of the murder of Rizzio. The same King used to remark that
there were two great advantages in wearing armor, namely, that the
wearer could neither receive nor inflict much injury. Indeed, as James
sagaciously remarked, the chief inconvenience to be dreaded from armor
was in being knocked down in it, and left without a squire to lend
assistance. In this case the knight stood, or lay, in imminent peril
of suffocation; the armor being generally too heavy to admit of a
knight rising from the ground without help. If he lay on his face his
condition was almost hopeless. The sentiment of chivalry was, after
all, not so foreign to James as is popularly supposed. Witness the
circumstance when Sully came over here as embassador extraordinary,
James made the embassador lower his flag to the pennant of the English
vessel sent out to receive or escort him. This, however, had been
well nigh construed into an affront. The poets of this time too began
to have a chivalrous feeling for the hardships of common women. The
feeling used to be all for princesses and courtly dames, but it was now
expressed even for shop-wives, behind counters. Thus the author of “The
Fair Maid of the Inn” says:--
“A goldsmith keeps his wife
Wedged into his shop like a mermaid; nothing of her
To be seen, that’s woman, but her upper part.”
The ladies too, themselves were growing ambitious, and as fanciful as
any knight’s “dame par amour” of them all. The Goldsmith’s daughter in
“Eastward Ho!” who wants to be made a lady, says to her “sweet knight,”
“Carry me out of the scent of Newcastle coal and the hearing of Bow
bells!” and _à-propos_ to titles, let me add that, in James’s time, it
was, according to Jonson--
“----a received heresy
That England bears no Dukes.”
Southey commenting on this passage, said that the title was probably
thought ominous, so many dukes having lost their heads.
In the second year of the reign of James I., he made not less than
three hundred knights; and on another occasion he is said to have made
two hundred and thirty-seven in six weeks. In France, when the state
was in distress, knighthood was often a marketable commodity; but it
probably was never more so there, than it was in England under the
first James. No one was more conscious than he, when he had an unworthy
person before him; and it sometimes happened that these persons had the
same uncomfortable consciousness touching themselves. Thus, we are told
that when “an insignificant person” once held down his head, as the
king was about to knight him, James called out, “Hold up thy head, man,
I have more need to be ashamed than thou.”
The indiscriminate infliction of the order caused great confusion.
Knights-aldermen in the city claimed precedence of knights-commoners,
and violent was the struggle when the question was agitated.
Heralds stood forth and pleaded before “my lords,” as lawyers do,
with reference to the party by which they were retained. One party
considered it absurd that a knight who happened to be an alderman
should take precedence of one who was only a knight. The civic
dignitary, it was said, was no more above the chivalric, than a
rushlight was superior to the sun. Such an idea, it was urged, by York
against Garter, was an insult to God and man. The case was ultimately
gained by the chivalric aldermen, simply because the knights-commoners
did not care to pursue it, or support their own privileges. York
thought that knights-commoners, though tradesmen, who _had_ been lord
mayors, and yet were not now aldermen, ought to take precedence of mere
alderman knights. The commoners lost their cause by neglect; but it has
been ruled that ex-lord mayors, and provosts of Scotland, shall precede
all knights, as having been the Sovereign’s lieutenants.
James may be said, altogether, to have shown very little regard for
the dignity of knights generally. By creating a rank above them, he
set them a step lower in degree of precedence. This monarch is, so to
speak, the inventor of the baronet. When money was required for the
benefit of the Irish province of Ulster, a suggestion was made that
they who supplied it liberally should have the hereditary title of
“Sir” and “Baronet.” James himself was at first a little startled at
the proposition, but he soon gave it his sanction upon Lord Salisbury
observing, “Sire, the money will do you good, and the honor will do
_them_ none.” James thought that a fair bargain, and the matter was
soon arranged. The knights were not pleased, but it was intimated to
them, that only two hundred baronets would be created, and that as the
titles became extinct, no new hereditary “Sirs” would be nominated. The
successors of James did not think themselves bound by the undertaking
of their predecessor. George III. the least regarded it, for during
four or five years of his reign he created baronets at the rate of one
a-month.
A particular annoyance to the poor knights was, that esquires could
purchase the title, and so leap over them at a bound, or could be
dubbed knights first, if they preferred to take that rank, by the way.
But if the knights were aggrieved, much more so were their ladies, for
the wife of a baronet was allowed precedence of all knights’ ladies,
even of those of the Garter. The baronets themselves took precedence of
all knights except of those of the Garter; and their elder sons ranked
before simple knights, whose distinction of “Sir” they were entitled to
assume, at the age of twenty-one, if they were so minded. Few, however,
availed themselves of this privilege.
This matter went so much to the satisfaction of James, that he resolved
to sell another batch of baronet’s titles, and thereupon followed his
“Baronets of Nova Scotia.” All these titles were bought of the crown,
the pecuniary proceeds being applied to the improvement of the outlying
province of Nova Scotia. A sneer, not altogether rightly directed, has
been occasionally flung at these purchased hereditary baronetcies. No
doubt a title so acquired did not carry with it so much honor as one
conferred for great and glorious service rendered to the country. But
there have been many titled sneerers whose own dignity stood upon no
better basis than that their ancestress was a king’s concubine, or the
founder of their house an obsequious slave to monarch or minister.
The first baronets, whether of Ulster or Nova Scotia, rendered some
better service than this to their country, by giving their money for
purposes of certain public good. They were not, indeed, rewarded
accordingly. They were public benefactors, only on condition that they
should be recompensed with an hereditary title. The morality here is
not very pure; the principle is not very exalted; but a smaller outlay
of morality and principle has purchased peerages before now, and the
baronets, therefore, have no reason to be ashamed of the origin of
their order. Least of all have those baronets of later creation, men
who have made large sacrifices and rendered inestimable services to
their country. On these the rank of baronet conferred no real dignity
which they did not before possess, but it served as an acknowledgment
of their worth in the eyes of their fellow-men. I may notice here, that
when Sir Walter Scott makes record of the gallant action performed
at Pinkie by Ralph Sadler, when he rallied the English cavalry so
effectually as to win a battle almost lost, and seized the royal
standard of Scotland with his own hand, the biographer adds that the
rank to which the gallant Ralph was then raised--of knight-banneret,
“may be called the very pinnacle of chivalry. Knight-bannerets could
only be created by the king himself or, which was very rare, by a
person vested with such powers as to represent his person. They were
dubbed either before or after a battle, in which the royal standard
was displayed; and the person so to be honored, being brought before
the king led by two distinguished knights or nobles, presented to the
sovereign his pennon, having an indenture like a swallow’s tail at the
extremity. The king then cut off the fished extremity, rendering the
banner square, in shape similar to that of a baron, which, thereafter,
the knight-banneret might display in every pitched field, in that more
noble form. If created by the king, the banneret took precedence of all
other knights, but if by a general, only of knights of the Bath and
knights-bachelors. Sir Francis Brian, commander of the light horsemen,
and Sir Ralph Vane, lieutenant of the men-at-arms, received this honor
with our Sir Ralph Sadler, on the field of Pinkie. But he survived
his companions, and is said to have been the last knight-banneret of
England.”
I suppose Washington thought that he had as much right as the English
Protector to dub knights; which is not, indeed, to be disputed. But
Washington went further than Cromwell, inasmuch as that he instituted
an order. This was, what it was said to be, trenching on the
privilege of a king. It was a military order, and was named after the
agricultural patriot, who was summoned from his plough to guide the
destinies of Rome; for the Romans had a very proper idea that nations
created their own destinies. The order of Cincinnatus being decreed,
the insignia of the order were sent to Lafayette, then in Paris, where
the nobility, who could no more spell than Lord Duberly, trusting to
their ears only, took it for the order of St. Senatus. A little uproar
ensued. The aristocracy not only sneered at the American Dictator for
assuming the “hedging” of a king, but they considered also that he had
encroached upon the privileges of a pope, and, as they had searched
the calendar and could not find a St. Senatus, they at once came to
the conclusion that he had canonized some deserving but democratic
individual of the city of Boston.
The commonwealth knights, whether in the naval or land service, had
perhaps less of refined gallantry than prevailed among the “Cavaliers”
_par excellence_. Thus it was a feat of which old chivalry would have
been ashamed--that of Admiral Batten, when he cannonaded the house in
which Queen Henrietta Maria was sleeping, at Bridlington, and drove her
into the fields. But, what do I say touching the gallant refinement
on the respective sides?--after all, the rudeness of Batten was
civility itself compared with the doings of Goring and his dragoons.
On the other hand, there was not a man in arms, in either host, who
in knightly qualifications excelled Hampden--“a supreme governor over
all his passions and affections, and having thereby a great power over
those of other men.” With regard to Cromwell himself, Madame de Sévigné
has remarked, that there were some things in which the great Turenne
resembled him. This seems to me rather a compliment to Turenne than to
the Protector. The latter, like Hampden could conceal, at least, if he
could not govern his passions. He had the delicacy of knighthood; and
he was not such a man as Miles Burket, who, in his prayer on the Sunday
after the execution of the king, asked the Almighty if he had not smelt
a sweet savor of blood?
The fighting chivalry of Goring, let me add, was nevertheless perfect.
The courtesies of chivalry were not his; but in ability and bravery
he was never surpassed. His dexterity is said to have been especially
remarkable in sudden emergencies; and it was this dexterity that used
to be most praised in the knight of olden times. Many other cavaliers
were poor soldiers, but admirable company.
The fierce but indomitable spirit of chivalry, on the other hand, that
spirit which will endure all anguish without relinquishing an iota of
principle, or yielding an inch of ground in the face of overwhelming
numbers, was conspicuous in other men besides the martial followers
of Cromwell. I will only instance the case of Prynne, who, under the
merciless scourge, calmly preached against tyranny; and with his
neck in the pillory, boldly wagged his tongue against cruelty and
persecution. “Freeborn John” was gagged for his audacity, but when
he was thus rendered speechless, he stamped incessantly with his
unshackled feet, to express that he was invincible and unconvinced
still. If this was not as great courage as ever was shown by knight, I
know not what to call it.
Against the courage of Cromwell, Dugdale and Roger Manby say more than
can ever be alleged against Prynne--namely, that his heart failed him
once in his life. It is said, that when he was captain of a troop of
horse in Essex’s regiment, at Edgehill, “he absented himself from
the battle, and observing, from the top of a neighboring steeple the
disorder that the right wing sustained from Prince Rupert, he was so
terrified, that slipping down in haste by a bell-rope, he took horse,
and ran away with his troop, for which cowardice he had been cashiered,
had it not been for the powerful mediation of his friends.” This
passage shows that the legendary style of the chivalrous romance still
was followed as an example by historians. Indeed romance itself claimed
Oliver for a hero, as it had done with many a knight before him. It was
gravely told of him that, before the battle of Worcester, he went into
a wood, like any Sir Tristram, where he met a solemn old man with a
roll of parchment in his hand. Oliver read the roll--a compact between
him and the Prince of Darkness, and was heard to say, “This is only for
seven years; I was to have had one for one-and-twenty.” “Then,” says
the Chronicler, “he stood out for fourteen; but the other replied, that
if he would not take it on those terms, there were others who would. So
he took the parchment and died that day seven years.” This is history
after the model of the Seven Champions.
The observance of knightly colors was kept up in the contest between
commonwealth men and the crown. Those of Essex were deep yellow; and
so acute were the jealousies of war, that they who wore any other were
accounted as disaffected to the good cause.
I have remarked before, that Siri puts blame upon the Scottish
men-at-arms, whose alleged mercenary conduct was said to have been the
seed of a heavy crop of evil. The Scots seem to have been unpopular
on all sides. Before the catastrophe, which ended king and kingdom,
the French embassador, then in the north, was escorted to some point
by a troop of Scots horse. On leaving them, he drew out half-a-crown
piece, and asked them how many pence it contained. “Thirty,” was the
ready-reckoned answer of an arithmetical carabinier. “Exactly so!”
replied the envoy, flinging the piece among them with as much contempt
as the Prince of Orange felt respect, when he threw his cross among the
Dutch troops at Waterloo. “Exactly so! take it. It was the price for
which Judas betrayed his master.”
If the saints were unsainted in the time of the commonwealth, they
found some compensation at the hands of Mr. Penry, the author of Martin
Mar-Prelate, who chose to knight the most distinguished--and this not
only did he do to the male, but to the female saints. The facetious
Penry, accordingly, spoke of Sir Paul, Sir Peter, and Sir Martin, and
also of Sir Margaret and Sir Mary.
Passing on to later times, those of James II., I may observe that Poor
Nat Lee, when mad, said of a celebrated knight of this time, Sir Roger
Lestrange, that the difference between the two was that one was Strange
Lee, the other Lestrange. “You poor in purse,” said Lee, “as I am poor
in brains.” Sir Roger was certainly less richly endowed mentally than
the poet, but he had _one_ quality which a knight of old was bound
to have, above most men who were his contemporaries--namely, intense
admiration for the ladies. This gallantry he carried so far that when
he was licenser of books, it is said that he would readily wink at
unlicensed volumes, if the printer’s wife would only smile at him.
Though not exactly germane to the immediate subject of Sir Roger, I
will notice here that it was the custom for children, as late as the
reign of James II., on first meeting their parents in the morning, to
kneel at their feet and ask a blessing. This was an observance seldom
omitted in the early days of chivalry by knights who encountered a
priest. We often hear praises of this filial reverence paid by errant
knights to the spiritual fathers whom they encountered in their
wanderings.
Another social custom connected with chivalry was still observed during
this, and even during the reign of William III. It is noticed by
Dryden, in the dedication to his “Love Triumphant,” in the following
words:--“It is the usual practice of our decayed gentry to look about
them for some illustrious family, and then fix their young darling
where he may be both well-educated and supported.” The knightly courage
and the education were not _always_ of the highest quality, if we
might put implicit faith in the passage in Congreve’s _Old Bachelor_,
wherein it is said, “the habit of a soldier now-a-days as often cloaks
cowardice, as a black coat does atheism.” But the stage is not to be
taken as fairly holding the mirror up to nature; and for my part, I
do not credit the assertion of that stage-knight, Sir Harry Wildair,
that in England, “honesty went out with the slashed doublets, and
love with the close-bodied gown.” Nor do I altogether credit what is
said of Queen Anne’s time, in the _Fair Quaker of Deal_, that “our
sea-chaplains, generally speaking, are as drunk as our sea-captains.”
William III. knighted many a man who did not merit the honor, but he
was guilty of no such mistake when he laid the sword of chivalry on
the shoulders of honest Thomas Abney, citizen of London. Abney was one
of those happy architects who build up their own fortunes, and upon
a basis of rectitude and commonsense. In course of time, he achieved
that greatness which is now of so stupendous an aspect in the eyes of
the Parisians; in other words, he became Lord Mayor of London. The
religious spirit of chivalry beat within the breast that was covered
with broadcloth, and Sir Thomas Abney humbled himself on the day on
which he was exalted. He had been “brought up” a dissenter, but he
certainly was not one when he became sovereign of the city in the year
1700. He was none the less a Christian, and it is an exemplary and an
agreeable trait that we have of him, as illustrated in his conduct on
the day of his inauguration. The evening banquet was still in progress,
when he silently withdrew from the glittering scene, hurried home, read
evening prayers to such of his household as were there assembled on the
festive day, and then calmly returned and resumed his place among the
joyous company.
This knight’s hospitality was of the same sterling quality. Who forgets
that to him Dr. Watts (that amiable intolerant!) was indebted during
thirty years for a home? The Abney family had a respect for the author
of “the Sluggard,” which never slept. It almost reached idolatry. I
have said thirty years, but in truth, Dr. Watts was at home, at the
hearth of Sir Thomas, during no briefer a period than six-and-thirty
years. The valetudinarian poet, the severity of whose early studies had
compelled him to bid an eternal _vale_ to the goddess of health, was
welcomed by the knight, with an honest warmth born of respect for the
worth and genius of a kind-hearted man who “scattered damnation” in
gentle rhymes, and yet who would not have hurt a worm. In the little
paradise where he was as much at ease as his precarious health would
allow, it is astonishing with what vigor of spirit and weakness of
phrase the good-intentioned versifier thrust millions from the gates of
a greater paradise. Such at least was my own early impression of the
rhymes of the knight’s guest. They inspired much fear and little love:
and if I can see now that such was not the author’s design, and that
he only used menace to secure obedience, that thereby affection might
follow, I still am unable to come to any other conclusion, than that
the method adopted is open to censure.
He sat beneath the knightly roof, without a want unsupplied, with every
desire anticipated; exempted from having to sustain an active share of
the warfare in the great battle of life, he was beset by few, perhaps
by no temptations; and free from every care, he had every hour of the
day wherein to walk with God. His defect consisted in forgetting that
other men, and the children of men, had not his advantage, and while,
rightly enough, he accounted their virtue as nothing, he had no bowels
of compassion for their human failings. It is well to erect a high
standard, but it is not less so to console rather than condemn those
who fall short of it. “Excelsior” is a good advice, on a glorious
banner, but they who are luxuriously carried on beneath its folds
should not be hasty to condemn those who faint by the way, fall back,
and await the mercy of God, whereby to attain the high prize which they
had for their chief object. I should like to know if Sir Thomas ever
disputed the conclusions adopted by his guest.
This mention of the metropolitan knight and the poet who sat at his
hearth, reminds me of a patron and guest of another quality, who were
once well known in the neighborhood of Metz;--“Metz _sans_ Lorraine,”
as the proud inhabitants speak of a free locality which was surrounded
by, but was never _in_ Lorraine.
The patron was an old chevalier de St. Louis, with a small cross and
large “aîles de pigeon.” The guest was the parish priest, who resided
under his roof, and was the “friend of the house.” The parish was a
poor one, but it had spirit enough to raise a subscription in order
to supply the altar with a new _ciborium_--the vessel which holds
the “body of the Lord.” With the modest sum in hand, the Knight of
St. Louis, accompanied by the priest, repaired to Metz, to make the
necessary purchase. The orthodox goldsmith placed two vessels before
them. One was somewhat small, but suitable to the funds at the knight’s
disposal; the other was large, splendidly chased, and highly coveted by
the priest.
“Here is a pretty article,” said the chevalier, pointing to the
simpler of the two vessels: “But here is a more worthy,” interrupted
the priest. “It corresponds with the sum at our disposal,” remarked
the former. “I am sure it does not correspond with your love for Him
for whom the sum was raised,” was the rejoinder. “I have no authority
to exceed the amount named,” whispered the cautious chevalier. “But
you have wherewith of your own to supply the deficiency,” murmured
the priest. The perplexed knight began to feel himself a dissenter
from the church, and after a moment’s thought, and looking at the
smaller as well as the simpler of the two vessels, he exclaimed--“it
is large enough for the purpose, and will do honor to the church.”
“The larger would be more to the purpose, and would do more honor
to the Head of the Church,” was the steady clerical comment which
followed. “Do you mean to say that it is _not_ large enough?” asked
the treasurer. “Certainly, since there is a larger, which we may have,
if you will only be generous.” “_Mais!_” remonstrated the knight, in
a burst of profane impatience, and pointing to the smaller ciborium,
“Cela contiendroit le diable!” “Ah, Monsieur le Chevalier,” said the
priest, by no means shocked at the idiomatic phrase. “Le Bon Dieu est
plus grand que le diable!” This stroke won the day, and the goldsmith
was the most delighted of the three, at this conclusion to a knotty
argument.
George I. was not of a sufficiently generous mind to allow of his
distributing honors very profusely. The individuals, however, who were
eminently useful to him were often rewarded by being appointed to enjoy
the emoluments, if not exercise the duties of several offices, each
in his own person. At a period when this was being done in England,
the exact reverse was being accomplished in Spain. Thus we read in
the _London Gazette_ of March 29 to April 1, 1718, under the head of
Madrid, March 21, the following details, which might be put to very
excellent profit in England in these more modern times:--
“The King having resolved that no person shall enjoy more than one
office in his service, notice has been given to the Duke d’Arco, who is
Master of the Horse, and Gentleman of the Bedchamber; the Marquis de
Montelegre, Lord Chamberlain and Captain of the Guard of Halberdiers;
the Marquis de St. Juan, Steward of the Household, and Master of the
Horse to the Queen; and one of the Council of the Harinda, the Marquis
de Bedmar, the Minister of War, and President of the Council; and
several others who are in the like case, to choose which of their
employments they will keep. To which they have all replied that they
will make no claim, but will be determined by what his Majesty shall
think fit to appoint. The like orders are given in the army, where they
who receive pay as General Officers, and have Colonels’ commissions
besides, are obliged to part with their regiments.”
This regulation seriously disturbed the revenue of many a Spanish
knight; but it was a wise and salutary regulation, nevertheless. At the
very period of its being established, Venice was selling her titles
of knighthood and nobility. In the same Gazette from which the above
details are extracted, I find it noticed, under the head of “Venice,
March 25,” that “Signor David, and Paul Spinelli, two Geneva gentlemen,
were, upon their petition, admitted this week by the Grand Council,
into the Order of the Nobility of this Republic, having purchased that
honor for a hundred thousand ducats.” It was a large price for so small
a privilege.
I have treated of knighthood under George II., sufficiently at length,
when speaking of that king himself; and I will add only one trait of
his successor.
It was not often that George III. was facetious, but tradition has
attributed to him a compound pun, when he was urged by his minister
to confer knighthood upon Judge Day, on the return of the latter from
India. “Pooh! pooh!” remonstrated the king, “how can I turn a Day into
night?” On the ministerial application being renewed, the king asked,
if Mr. Day was married, and an affirmative reply being given, George
III. immediately rejoined, “Then let him come to the next drawing-room,
and I will perform a couple of miracles; I will not only turn Day into
Knight, but I will make Lady-Day at Christmas.”
There was a saying of George III. which, put into practice, was as
beneficial as many of the victories gained by more chivalrous monarchs.
“The ground, like man, was never intended to be idle. If it does not
produce something useful it will be overrun with weeds.”
Among the men whom James I. knighted, was one who had passed through
the career of a page, and notice of whom I have reserved, that I might
contrast his career with that of a contemporary and well-known squire.
RICHARD CARR, PAGE; AND GUY FAUX, ESQUIRE.
Of all the adventurers of the seventeenth century, I do not know
any who so well illustrate the objects I have in view, as the two
above-named gentlemen. The first commenced life as a page; the second
was an esquire by condition, and a man-at-arms. Master Faux, for
attempting murder, suffered death; and Richard Carr, although he was
convicted of murder, was suffered to live on, and was not even degraded
from knighthood.
When the Sixth James of Scotland reigned, a poor king in a poor
country, there was among his retinue a graceful boy--a scion of the
ancient house of Fernyhurst, poor in purse, and proud in name. At the
court of the extravagant yet needy Scottish king, there was but scant
living even for a saucy page; and Richard Carr of Fernyhurst turned his
back on Mid Lothian, and in foreign travel forgot his northern home.
James, in his turn, directed his face toward the English border; and
subsequently, in the vanities of Whitehall, the hunting at Theobald’s,
the vicious pleasure of Greenwich, and the roysterings at Royston, he
forgot the graceful lad who had ministered to him at Holyrood, St.
Andrews, and Dunbar.
When this James I. of England had grown nearly tired of his old
favorite and minister, Salisbury, for want of better employment he
ordered a tilting match, and the order was obeyed with alacrity. In
this match Lord Hay resolved to introduce to the King’s notice a youth
who enjoyed his lordship’s especial patronage. Accordingly, when the
monarch was seated in his tribune, and the brazen throats of the
trumpets had bidden the rough sport to begin, the young squire of Lord
Hay, a handsome youth of twenty, straight of limb, fair of favor,
strong-shouldered, smooth-faced, and with a modesty that enhanced his
beauty, rode up on a fiery steed, to lay his master’s shield and lance
at the feet of the monarch. The action of the apprentice warrior was
so full of grace, his steed so full of fire, and both so eminently
beautiful, that James was lost in admiration. But suddenly, as the
youth bent forward to present his master’s device, his spur pricked the
flank of his charger, and the latter, with a bound and a plunge, threw
his rider out of the saddle, and flung young Carr of Fernyhurst, at the
feet of his ex-master, the King. The latter recognised his old page,
and made amends for the broken leg got in the fall, by nursing the
lad, and making him Viscount Rochester, as soon as he was well. James
created him knight of the Garter, and taught him grammar. Rochester
gave lessons to the King in foreign history. The ill-favored King
walked about the court with his arms round the neck of the well-favored
knight. He was for ever either gazing at him or kissing him; trussing
his points, settling his curls, or smoothing his hose. When Rochester
was out of the King’s sight James was mindful of him, and confiscated
the estates of honest men in order to enrich his own new favorite.
He took Sherborne from the widow and children of Raleigh, with the
cold-blooded remark to the kneeling lady, “I maun have it for Carr!”
Rochester was a knight who ruled the King, but there was another knight
who ruled Rochester. This was the well-born, hot-headed, able and
vicious Sir Thomas Overbury. Overbury polished and polluted the mind
of Rochester; read all documents which passed through the hands of the
latter, preparatory to reaching those of the King, and not only penned
Rochester’s own despatches, but composed his love-letters for him. How
pointedly Sir Thomas could write may be seen in his “Characters;” and
as a poet, the knight was of no indifferent reputation in his day.
Rochester, Sir Thomas, and the King, were at the very height of their
too-warm friendship, when James gave Frances Howard, the daughter of
the Earl of Suffolk, in marriage to young Devereux, Earl of Essex. The
bride was just in her teens. The bridegroom was a day older. The Bishop
of Bath and Wells blessed them in the presence of the King, and Ben
Jonson and Inigo Jones constructed a masque in honor of the occasion.
When the curtain fell, bride and bridegroom went their separate ways;
the first to her mother; the second to school. Four years elapsed ere
they again met; and then Frances, who had been ill-trained by her
mother, seduced by Prince Henry, and wooed by Rochester, looked upon
Essex with infinite scorn. Essex turned from her with disgust.
Rochester then resolved to marry Frances, and Frances employed the
poisoner of Paternoster-row, Mrs. Turner, and a certain Dr. Forman,
to prepare philters that should make more ardent the flame of the
lover, and excite increased aversion in the breast of the husband.
Overbury, with intense energy, opposed the idea of the guilty pair,
that a divorce from Essex was likely to be procured. He even spoke
of the infamy of the lady, to her lover. Frances, thereupon, offered
a thousand pounds to a needy knight, Sir John Ward, to slay Overbury
in a duel. Sir John declined the offer. A more successful method was
adopted. Sir Thomas Overbury was appointed embassador to Russia, and
on his refusing to accept the sentence of banishment, he was clapped
into the tower as guilty of contempt toward the king. In that prison,
the literary knight was duly despatched by slow poison. The guilt was
brought home less to Rochester than to Frances, but the King himself
appears to have been very well content at the issue.
James united with Rochester and the lady to procure a divorce between
the latter and Essex. The King was bribed by a sum of £25,000. Essex
himself did not appear. Every ecclesiastical judge was recompensed who
pronounced for the divorce--carried by seven against five, and even
the son of one of them was knighted. This was the heir of Dr. Bilson,
Bishop of Winchester, and he was ever afterward known by the name of
Sir Nullity Bilson.
Sir Nullity danced at the wedding of the famous or infamous pair;
and never was wedding more splendid. King, peers, and illustrious
commoners graced it with their presence. The diocesan of Bath and
Wells pronounced the benediction. The Dean of St. Paul’s wrote for the
occasion an epithalamic eclogue. The Dean of Westminster supplied the
sermon. The great Bacon composed, in honor of the event, the “Masque of
Flowers;” and the City made itself bankrupt by the extravagant splendor
of its fêtes. One gentleman horsed the bride’s carriage, a bishop’s
lady made the bride’s cake, and one humorous sycophant offered the
married pair the equivocal gift of a gold warming-pan.
The King, not to be behindhand in distributing honors, conferred one
which cost him nothing. He created Rochester Earl of Somerset.
Two years after this joyous wedding, the gentleman who had made a
present to the bride, of four horses to draw her in a gilded chariot
to the nuptial altar, had become a knight and secretary of state. Sir
Richard (or, as some call him, Sir Robert) Winwood was a worshipper
of the now rising favorite, Villiers; and none knew better than this
newly-made knight that the King was utterly weary of his old favorite,
Somerset.
Winwood waited on the King and informed him that a garrulous young
apothecary at Flushing, who had studied the use of drugs under Dr.
Franklin of London, was making that melancholy town quite lively,
by his stories of the abuses of drugs, and the method in which they
had been employed by Lord and Lady Somerset, Mrs. Turner (a pretty
woman, who invented yellow starched ruffs) and their accomplices, in
bringing about the death of Overbury. The food conveyed to the latter
was poisoned by Frances and her lover, outside the tower, and was
administered to the imprisoned knight by officials within the walls,
who were bribed for the purpose.
There is inextricable confusion in the details of the extraordinary
trial which ensued. It is impossible to read them without the
conviction that some one higher in rank than the Somersets was
interested, if not actually concerned, in the death of Overbury. The
smaller personages were hanged, and Mrs. Turner put yellow ruffs out of
fashion by wearing them at the gallows.
Lady Somerset pleaded _guilty_, evidently under the influence of a
promise of pardon, if she did so, and of fear lest Bacon’s already
prepared speech, had she pleaded _not guilty_, might send her to an
ignominious death. She was confined in the Tower, and she implored with
frantic energy, that she might not be shut up in the room which had
been occupied by Overbury.
Somerset appeared before his judges in a solemn suit, and wearing
the insignia of the Garter. He pleaded _not guilty_, but despite
insufficiency of legal evidence he was convicted, and formally
condemned to be hanged, like any common malefactor. But the ex-page
won his life by his taciturnity. Had he, in his defence, or afterward,
revealed anything that could have displeased or disturbed the King, his
life would have paid the forfeit. As it was, the King at once ordered
that the Earl’s heraldic arms as knight of the Garter should not be
taken down. For the short period of the imprisonment of the guilty
pair, both guilty of many crimes, although in the matter of Overbury
there is some doubt as to the extent of the Earl’s complicity, they
separately enjoyed the “Liberty of the Tower.” The fallen favorite was
wont to pace the melancholy ramparts with the George and collar round
his neck and the Garter of knighthood below his knee. He was often
seen in grave converse with the Earl of Northumberland. Sometimes, the
guilty wife of Somerset, impelled by curiosity or affection, would
venture to gaze at him for a minute or two from her lattice, and then,
if the Earl saw her, he would turn, gravely salute her, and straightway
pass on in silence.
When liberated from the Tower, the knight of the Garter, convicted of
murder, and his wife, confessedly guilty, went forth together under
protection of a royal pardon. Down to the time of the death of Lady
Somerset, in 1632, the wretched pair are said never to have opened
their lips but to express, each hatred and execration of the other.
The earl lived on till 1645--long enough to see the first husband of
his wife carry his banner triumphantly against the son of James, at
Edgehill. The two husbands of one wife died within a few months of each
other.
Such was the career of one who began life as a page. Let us contrast
therewith the early career of one whose name is still more familiar to
the general reader.
Toward the middle of the sixteenth century there was established at
York a respectable and influential Protestant family of the name of
Fawkes. Some of the members were in the legal profession, others were
merchants. One was registrar and advocate of the Consistory Court of
the cathedral church of York. Another was notary and proctor. A third
is spoken of as a merchant-stapler. All were well to-do; but not one
of them dreamed that the name of Fawkes was to be in the least degree
famous.
The Christian name of the ecclesiastical lawyer was Edward. He was
the third son of William and Ellen Fawkes, and was the favorite child
of his mother. She bequeathed trinkets, small sums, and odd bits of
furniture to her other children, but to Edward she left her wedding
suit, and the residue of her estate. Edward Fawkes was married when his
mother made her will. While the document was preparing, his wife Edith
held in her arms an infant boy. To this boy she left her “best whistle,
and one old angel of gold.”
The will itself is a curious document. It is devotional, according
to the good custom of the days in which it was made. The worthy old
testator made some singular bequests; to her son Thomas, amid a
miscellaneous lot, she specifies, “my second petticoat, my worsted
gowne, gardit with velvet, and a damask kirtle.” The “best kirtle and
best petticoat” are bequeathed to her daughter-in-law Edith Fawkes.
Among the legatees is a certain John (who surely must have been a
_Joan_) Sheerecrofte, to whom, says Mistress Fawkes, “I leave my
petticoat fringed about, my woorse grogram kirtle, one of my lynn
smockes, and a damask upper bodie.” The sex, however, of the legatee is
not to be doubted, for another gentleman in Mrs. Fawkes’s will comes in
for one of her bonnets!
The amount of linen bequeathed, speaks well for the lady’s housewifery;
while the hats, kirtles, and rings, lead us to fear that the wife
of Master Edward Fawkes must have occasionally startled her husband
with the amount of little accounts presented to him by importunate
dressmakers, milliners, and jewellers. Such, however, was the will of
a lady of York three centuries ago, and the child in arms who was to
have the silver whistle and a gold angel was none other than our old
acquaintance, known to us as Guy Faux.
Guy was christened on the sixteenth of April, 1570, in the still
existing church of St. Michael le Belfry; and when the gossips and
sponsors met round the hospitable table of the paternal lawyer to
celebrate the christening of his son, the health of Master Guy followed
hard upon that of her gracious highness the queen.
Master Guy had the misfortune to lose his father in his ninth year.
“He left me but small living,” said Guy, many years afterward, “and I
spent it.” After his sire’s decease, Guy was for some years a pupil at
the free foundation grammar-school in “the Horse Fayre,” adjacent to
York. There he accomplished his humanities under the Reverend Edward
Pulleyne. Among his schoolfellows were Bishop Morton, subsequently
Bishop of Durham, and a quiet little boy, named Cheke, who came to be a
knight and baronet, and who, very probably went, in after-days, to see
his old comrade in the hands of the hangman.
Some seventeen miles from York stands the pleasant town of
Knaresborough, and not far from Knaresborough is the village of
Scotten. When Guy was yet a boy, there lived in this village a very
gay, seductive wooer, named Dennis Baynbridge. This wooer was wont to
visit the widowed Edith, and the result of his visits was that the
widowed Edith rather hastily put away her weeds, assumed a bridal
attire, married the irresistible Dennis, and, with her two daughters,
Anne and Elizabeth, and her only son Guy, accompanied her new husband
to his residence at Scotten.
Baynbridge was a Roman Catholic, as also were the Pullens, Percies,
Winters, Wrights, and others who lived in Scotten or its neighborhood,
and whose names figure in the story of the Gunpowder Plot.
At Scotten, then, and probably soon after his mother’s marriage, in
1582, Guy, it may be safely said, left the faith in which he had been
baptized, for that of the Romish Church. Had he declined to adopt
the creed of his step-sire, he perhaps would have been allowed but
few opportunities of angling in the Nidd, rabbiting by Bilton Banks,
nutting in Goldsborough Wood, or of passing idle holydays on Grimbald
Craig.
On the wedding-day of Edith Fawkes and Dennis Baynbridge, the paternal
uncle of Guy made his will. He exhibited his sense of the step taken by
the lady, by omitting her name from the will, and by bequeathing the
bulk of his property to the two sisters of Guy. To Guy himself, Uncle
Thomas left only “a gold ring,” and a “bed and one pair of sheets, with
the appurtenances.”
When Guy became of age, he found himself in possession of his
patrimony--some land and a farm-house. The latter, with two or three
acres of land, he let to a tailor, named Lumley, for the term of
twenty-one years, at the annual rent of forty-two shillings. The
remainder he sold at once for a trifle less than thirty pounds. Shortly
after, he made over to a purchaser all that was left of his property.
He bethought himself for a while as to what course he should take, and
finally he chose the profession of arms, and went out to Spain, to
break crowns and to win spurs.
In Spain, he fell into evil company and evil manners. He saw enough of
hard fighting, and indulged, more than enough, in hard drinking. He was
wild, almost savage of temper, and he never rose to a command which
gave him any chance of gaining admission on the roll of chivalry. There
was a knight, however, named Catesby, who was a comrade of Guy, and the
latter clung to him as a means whereby to become as great as that to
which he clung.
Guy bore himself gallantly in Spain; and, subsequently, in Flanders,
he fought with such distinguished valor, that when Catesby and his
associates in England were considering where they might find the
particular champion whom they needed for their particular purpose in
the Gunpowder Plot, the thought of the reckless soldier flashed across
the mind of Catesby, and Guy was at once looked after as the “very
properest man” for a very improper service.
The messenger who was despatched to Flanders to sound Guy, found the
latter eager to undertake the perilous mission of destroying king and
parliament, and thereby helping Rome to lord it again in England. The
English soldier in Flanders came over to London, put up at an inn,
which occupied a site not very distant from that of the once well-known
“Angel” in St. Clement’s Danes, and made a gay figure in the open
Strand, till he was prepared to consummate a work which he thought
would help himself to greatness.
Into the matter of the plot I will not enter. It must be observed,
however, that knight never went more coolly to look death in the face
than Guy went to blow up the Protestant king and the parliament. At the
same time it must be added, that Guy had not the slightest intention
of hoisting himself with his own petard. He ran a very great risk, it
is true, and he did it fearlessly; but the fact that both a carriage
and a boat were in waiting to facilitate his escape, shows that
self-sacrifice was not the object of the son of the York proctor. His
great ambition was to rank among knights and nobles. He took but an
ill-method to arrive at such an object; but his reverence for nobility
was seen even when he was very near to his violent end. If he was ever
a hero, it was when certain death by process of law was before him.
But even then it was his boast and solace, that throughout the affair
there was not a man employed, even to handle a spade, in furtherance of
the end in view, who was not a gentleman. Guy died under the perfect
conviction that he had done nothing derogatory to his quality!
Considering how dramatic are the respective stories of the page and
squire, briefly noticed above, it is remarkable that so little use
has been made of them by dramatists. Savage is the only one who has
dramatized the story of the two knights, Somerset and Overbury. In
this tragedy bearing the latter knight’s name, and produced at the
Haymarket, in June, 1723, he himself played the hero, Sir Thomas.
His attempt to be an actor, and thus gain an honest livelihood by
his industry, was the only act of his life of which Savage was ever
ashamed. In this piece the only guilty persons are the countess and
her uncle, the Earl of Northampton. This is in accordance with the
once-prevailing idea that Northampton planned the murder of Sir Thomas,
in his residence, which occupied the site of the present Northumberland
house. The play was not successful, and the same may be said of it
when revived, with alterations, at Covent Garden, in 1777. Sheridan,
the actor, furnished the prologue. In this production he expressed his
belief that the public generally felt little interest in the fate of
knights and kings. The reason he assigns is hardly logical.
“Too great for pity, they inspire respect,
Their deeds astonish rather than affect.
Proving how rare the heart _that_ we can move,
Which reason tells us we can never prove.”
Guy Faux, who, when in Spain, was the ’squire of the higher-born
Catesby, has inspired but few dramatic writers. I only know of two. In
Mrs. Crouch’s memoirs, notice is made of an afterpiece, brought out on
the 5th of November, 1793, at the Haymarket. A far more creditable
attempt to dramatize the story of Guy Fawkes was made with great
success at the Coburg (Victoria) theatre, in September, 1822. This
piece still keeps possession of the minor stage, and deservedly; but
it has never been played with such effect as by its first “cast.” O.
Smith was the Guy, and since he had played the famous Obi, so well
as to cause Charles Kemble’s impersonation at the Haymarket to be
forgotten, he had never been fitted with a character which suited him
so admirably. It was one of the most truthful personations which the
stage had ever seen. Indeed the piece was played by such a troop of
actors as can not now be found in theatres of more pretensions than the
transpontine houses. The chivalric Huntley, very like the chivalric
Leigh Murray, in more respects than one, enacted _Tresham_ with a rare
ability, and judicious Chapman played _Catesby_ with a good taste,
which is not to be found now in the same locality. Dashing Stanley
was the _Monteagle_, and graceful Howell the _Percy_, Beverly and
Sloman gave rough portraits of the king and the facetious knight, _Sir
Tristam Collywobble_--coarse but effective. Smith, however, was the
soul of the piece, and Mr. Fawkes, of Farnley, might have witnessed the
representation, and have been proud of his descent from the dignified
hero that O. Smith made of his ancestor.
I have given samples of knights of various qualities, but I have yet
to mention the scholar and poet knights. There are many personages who
would serve to illustrate the knight so qualified, but I know of none
so suitable as Ulrich Von Hutten.
ULRICH VON HUTTEN.
“Jacta est alea.”--_Ulrich’s Device._
Ulrich von Hutten was born on the 21st of April, 1488, in the castle of
Stackelberg, near Fulda, in Franconia. He was of a noble family--all
the men of which were brave, and all the women virtuous. He had three
brothers and two sisters. His tender mother loved him the most, because
he was the weakest of her offspring. His father loved him the least for
the same reason. For a like cause, however, both parents agreed that a
spiritual education best accorded with the frame of Ulrich. The latter,
at eleven years old, was accordingly sent to learn his humanities in
the abbey school at Fulda.
His progress in all knowledge, religious and secular, made him the
delight of the stern abbot and of his parents. Every effort possible
was resorted to, to induce him to devote himself for ever to the
life of the cloister. In his zealous opposition to this he was ably
seconded by a strong-handed and high-minded knight, a friend of his
father’s named Eitelwolf von Stein. This opposition so far succeeded,
that in 1504, when Ulrich was sixteen years of age he fled from the
cloister-academy of Fulda, and betook himself to the noted high-school
at Erfurt.
Among his dearest fellow _Alumni_ here were Rubianus and Hoff, both of
whom subsequently achieved great renown. In the Augustine convent, near
the school, there was residing a poor young monk, who also subsequently
became somewhat famous. Nobody, however, took much account of him just
then, and few even cared to know his name--Martin Luther. The plague
breaking out at Erfurt, Rubianus was accompanied by Ulrich to Cologne,
there to pursue their studies. The heart and purse of Ulrich’s father
were closed against the son, because of his flight from Fulda; but his
kinsman Eitelwolf, provided for the necessities of the rather imprudent
young scholar.
The sages who trained the young idea at Cologne were of the old high
and dry quality--hating progress and laboriously learned in trifles.
At the head of them were Hogstraten and Ortuin. Ulrich learned enough
of their manner to be able to crush them afterward with ridicule, by
imitating their style, and reproducing their gigantic nonsense, in the
famous “Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum.” In the meantime he knit close
friendship with Sebastian Brandt, and Œcolampadius--both young men of
progress. The latter was expelled from Cologne for being so, but the
University of Frankfort on the Oder offered him an asylum. Thither
Ulrich repaired also, to be near his friend, and to sharpen his weapons
for the coming struggle between light and darkness--Germany against
Rome, and the German language against the Latin.
At Frankfort he won golden opinions from all sorts of people. The
Elector, Joachim of Brandenburg; his brother, the priestly Margrave
Albert; and Bishop Dietrich von Beilow were proud of the youth who did
honor to the university. He here first became a poet, and took the
brothers Von Osthen for his friends. He labored earnestly, and acquired
much glory; but he was a very free liver to boot, though he was by no
means particularly so, for the times in which he lived. His excesses,
however, brought on a dangerous disease, which, it is sometimes
supposed, had not hitherto been known in Europe. Be this as it may, he
was never wholly free from the malady as long as he lived, nor ever
thought that it much mattered whether he suffered or not.
He was still ill when he took up for a season the life of a wandering
scholar. He endured all its miserable vicissitudes, suffered famine and
shipwreck, and was glad at last to find a haven, as a poor student, in
the Pomeranian University of Griefswalde. The Professor Lötz and his
father the Burgomaster, were glad to patronize so renowned a youth,
but they did it with such insulting condescension that the spirit of
Ulrich revolted; and in 1509, the wayward scholar was again a wanderer,
with the world before him where to choose. The Lötzes, who had lent
him clothes, despatched men after him to strip him; and the poor,
half-frozen wretch, reached Rostock half starved, more than half
naked, with wounds gaping for vengeance, and with as little sense about
him as could be possessed by a man so ill-conditioned.
He lived by his wits at Rostock. He was unknown and perfectly
destitute; but he penned so spirited a metrical narrative of his life
and sufferings, addressed to the heads of the university there, that
these at once received him under their protection. In a short time he
was installed in comparative comfort, teaching the classics to young
pupils, and experiencing as much enjoyment as he could, considering
that the Lötzes of Griefswalde were continually assuring his patrons
that their protégé was a worthless impostor.
He took a poet’s revenge, and scourged them in rhymes, the very
ruggedness of which was tantamount to flaying.
Having gained his fill of honor at Rostock, his restless spirit urged
him once again into the world. After much wandering, he settled for a
season at Wittenburg, where he was the delight of the learned men. By
their eleemosynary aid, and that of various friends, save his father,
who rejoiced in his renown but would not help him to live, he existed
after the fashion of many pauper students of his day. At Wittenburg he
wrote his famous “Art of Poetry;” and he had no sooner raised universal
admiration by its production, than forth he rushed once more into the
world.
He wandered through Bohemia and Moravia, thankfully accepting bread
from peasants, and diamond rings from princes. He had not a maravedi
in his purse, nor clean linen on his back; but he made himself welcome
everywhere. One night he slept, thankfully, on the straw of a barn;
and the next sank, well-fed, into the eider-down of a bishop’s bed.
He entered Olmutz ragged, shoeless, and exhausted. He left it, after
enjoying the rich hospitality he had laughingly extracted from Bishop
Turso, on horseback, with a heavy purse in his belt, a mantle on his
shoulder, and a golden ring, with a jewel set in it, upon his finger.
Such were a student’s vicissitudes, in the days of German wandering, a
long time ago.
The boy, for he was not yet twenty years of age, betook himself to
Vienna, where he kept a wide circle in continual rapture by the
excellence of his poetical productions. These productions were not
“all for love,” nor were they all didactic. He poured out war-ballads
to encourage the popular feeling in favor of the Emperor Maximilian,
against his enemies in Germany and Italy. Ulrich was, for the moment,
the Tyrtæus of his native country. Then, suddenly recollecting that his
angry sire had said that if his son would not take the monk’s cowl,
his father would be content to see him assume the lawyer’s coif, our
volatile hero hastened to Pavia, opened the law books on an ominous 1st
of April, 1512, and read them steadily, yet wearied of them heartily,
during just three months.
At this time Francis the first of France, who had seized on Pavia,
was besieged therein by the German and Swiss cavalry. Ulrich was
dangerously ill during the siege, but he occupied the weary time by
writing sharp epitaphs upon himself. The allies entered the city; and
Ulrich straightway departed from it, a charge having been laid against
him of too much partiality for the French. The indignant German hurried
to Bologna, where he once more addressed himself to the _Pandects_ and
the _Juris Codices Gentium_.
This light reading so worked on his constitution that fever laid him
low, and after illness came destitution. He wrote exquisite verses to
Cardinal Gurk, the imperial embassador in Bologna, where the pope for
the moment resided; but he failed in his object of being raised to some
office in the cardinal’s household. Poor Ulrich took the course often
followed by men of his impulses and condition; he entered the army as a
private soldier, and began the ladder which leads to knighthood at the
lowest round.
Unutterable miseries he endured in this character; but he went through
the siege of Pavia with honor, and he wrote such sparkling rhymes in
celebration of German triumphs and in ridicule of Germany’s foes, that,
when a weakness in the ankles compelled him to retire from the army, he
collected his songs and dedicated them to the Emperor.
The dedication, however, was so very independent of tone, that
Maximilian took no notice of the limping knight who had exchanged the
sword for the lyre. Indeed, at this juncture, the man who could wield
a sledge-hammer, was in more esteem with the constituted authorities
than he who skilfully used his pen. The young poet could scarcely win
a smile, even from Albert of Brandenburg, to whom he had dedicated a
poem. Sick at heart, his health gave way, and a heavy fever sent him to
recover it at the healing springs in the valley of Ems.
A short time previous to his entering the army, the young Duke Ulrich
of Wurtemburg had begun to achieve for himself a most unenviable
reputation. He had entered on his government; and he governed his
people ill, and himself worse. He allowed nothing to stand between
his own illustrious purpose and the object aimed at. He had for wife
the gentle Bavarian princess, Sabina, and for friend, young Johan von
Hutten, a cousin of our hero Ulrich.
Now, Johan von Hutten had recently married a fair-haired girl, with
the not very euphonious appellation of Von Thumb. She was, however,
of noble birth, and, we must add, of light principles. The duke fell
in love with her, and she with the duke, and when his friend Johan
remonstrated with him, the ducal sovereign gravely proposed to the
outraged husband an exchange of consorts!
Johan resolved to withdraw from the ducal court; and this resolution
alarmed both his wife and the duke, for Johan had no intention of
leaving his lightsome Von Thumb behind him. Therefore, the duke invited
Johan one fine May morning in the year 1515, to take a friendly ride
with him through a wood. The invitation was accepted, and as Johan was
riding along a narrow path, in front of the duke, the latter passed his
sword through the body of his friend, slaying him on the spot.
Having thus murdered his friend, the duke hung him up by the neck in
his own girdle to a neighboring tree, and he defended the deed, by
giving out that ducal justice had only been inflicted on a traitor who
had endeavored to seduce the Duchess of Wurtemburg! The lady, however,
immediately fled to her father, denouncing the faithlessness of her
unworthy husband, on whose bosom the young widow of the murdered Johan
now reclined for consolation.
On this compound deed becoming known, all Germany uttered a
unanimous cry of horror. The noblest of the duke’s subjects flung
off their allegiance. His very servants quitted him in disgust. His
fellow-princes invoked justice against him and Ulrich von Hutten, from
his sick couch at Ems, penned eloquent appeals to the German nation, to
rise and crush the ruthless wretch who had quenched in blood, the life,
the light, the hope, the very flower of Teutonic chivalry.
The “Philippics” of Ulrich were mainly instrumental in raising a
terrible Nemesis to take vengeance upon his ducal namesake; and he
afterward wrote his “Phalarismus” to show that the tyrant excited
horror, even in the infernal regions. The opening sentence--“Jacta
est alea!” became his motto; and his family took for its apt
device--“Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!” From this time
forward, Ulrich von Hutten was a public man, and became one of the
foremost heroes of his heroic age. He was now scholar, poet, and knight.
His fame would have been a pleasant thing to him, but the pleasure was
temporarily diminished by the death of his old benefactor, Eitelwolf
von Stein. The latter was the first German statesman who was also a
great scholar; and _his_ example first shook the prejudice, that for a
knight or nobleman to be book-learned was derogatory to his chivalry
and nobility. Into the area of public warfare Ulrich now descended,
and the enemies of light trembled before the doughty champion. The
collegiate teachers at Cologne, with Hogstraten, the Inquisitor,
Pfefierkorn, a converted Jew, and Ortuin--at their head, had directed
all the powers of the scholastic prejudices against Reuchlin and his
followers, who had declared, that not only Greek, but Hebrew should
form a portion of the course of study for those destined to enter the
Church. The ancient party pronounced this Heathenism; Reuchlin and
his party called it Reason, and Germany, was split in two, upon the
question.
At the very height of the contest, a lad with a sling and a stone
entered the lists, and so dexterously worked his missiles, that the
enemy of learning was soon overcome. The lad was Von Hutten, who, as
chief author of those amusing satires, “Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum,”
ruined Monkery and paralyzed Rome, by making all the world laugh at the
follies, vices, crimes, and selfish ignorance of both.
Leo X. was so enraged, that he excommunicated the authors, and devoted
them to damnation. “I care no more,” said Von Hutten, “for the bull
of excommunication than I do for a soap-bubble.” The reputation he
had acquired, helped him to a reconciliation with his family; but the
members thereof had only small respect for a mere learned knight. They
urged him to qualify himself for a chancellor, and to repair to Rome,
and study the law accordingly.
Something loath, he turned his face toward the Tyber, in 1515. The
first news received of the law-student was to the effect, that having
been attacked, dagger in hand, at a pic-nic, near Viterbo, by five
French noblemen, whom he had reproved for speaking ill of Germany and
the Emperor Maximilian, he had slain one and put the other four to
flight. From this fray he himself escaped with a slash on the cheek. He
recounted his victory in a song of triumph, and when the law-student
sat down to his books, every one in Rome acknowledged that his sword
and his pen were equally pointed.
His French adversaries threatened vengeance for their humiliating
defeat; and he accordingly avoided it, by withdrawing to Bologne, where
he again, with hearty disgust, applied himself to the severe study of a
law which was never applied for justice sake. He found compensation in
penning such stirring poetry as his satirical “Nemo,” and in noting the
vices of the priesthood with the intention of turning his observation
to subsequent profit. A feud between the German and Italian students at
Bologna soon drove our scholar from the latter place. He took himself
to Ferrara and Venice; was welcomed everywhere by the learned and
liberal, and, as he wrote to Erasmus, was loaded by them with solid
pudding as well as empty praise.
From this journey he returned to his native country. He repaired to
Augsburg, where Maximilian was holding court, and so well was he
commended to the emperor, that on the 15th of June, 1517, that monarch
dubbed him Imperial Knight, placed a gold ring, symbolic of chivalrous
dignity, on his finger, and crowned him a poet, with a laurel wreath,
woven by the fairest flower of Augsburg, Constance Peutinger.
After such honors, his father received him with joy at his hearth;
and while Von Hutten went from his native Stackelberg to the library
at Fulda, yet hesitating whether to take service under the Emperor or
under the Elector of Mayence, he bethought himself of the irrefutable
work of Laurentius Valla against the temporal authority and possessions
of the Popedom. He studied the work well, published an improved
edition, and dedicated it, in a letter of fire and ability, to Leo
X.;--a proof of his hope in, or of his defiance of, that accomplished
infidel.
Luther and Von Hutten were thus, each unconscious of the other,
attacking Popery on two points, about the same moment. Luther employed
fearful weapons in his cause, and wielded them manfully. Von Hutten
only employed, as yet, a wit which made all wither where it fell; and
an irony which consumed where it dropped. In the handling of these
appliances, there was no man in Germany who was his equal. Leo could
admire and enjoy both the wit and the irony; and he was not disinclined
to agree with the arguments of which they were made the supports; but
what he relished as a philosopher, he condemned as a Pontiff. The
Florentine, Lorenzo de’ Medici, could have kissed the German on either
cheek, but the Pope, Leo X., solemnly devoted him to Gehenna.
As a protection against papal wrath, Von Hutten entered the service of
Albert, Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. Albert was a liberal Romanist,
but nothing in the least of an Ultra-Montanist. He loved learning and
learned men, and he recollected that he was a German before he was
a Romanist. In the suite of the elector, Von Hutten visited Paris,
in 1518. He returned to Mayence only to carry on more vigorously his
onslaught against the begging monks. He accounted them as greater
enemies to Germany than the Turks. “We fight with the latter, beyond
our frontier for power; but the former are the corrupters of science,
of religion, of morals--and they are in the very midst of us.” So does
he write, in a letter to Graf Nuenar, at Cologne.
The building of St. Peter’s cost Rome what the building of Versailles
cost France--a revolution. In each case, an absolute monarchy was
overthrown never again to rise. To provide for the expenses of
St. Peter’s, the Dominican Tetzel traversed Germany, selling his
indulgences. Luther confronted him, and denounced his mission, as well
as those who sent him on it. Von Hutten, in his hatred of monks, looked
upon this as a mere monkish squabble; and he was glad to see two of the
vocation holding one another by the throat.
At this precise moment, Germany was excited at the idea of a projected
European expedition against the Turks. The Imperial Knight saw clearly
the perils that threatened Christendom from that question, and was
ready to rush, sword in hand, to meet them. He declared, however, that
Europe groaned under a more insupportable yoke, laid on by Rome, and
he deprecated the idea of helping Rome with funds against the Moslem.
What a change was here from the Imperial crusading knights of a few
centuries earlier. “If Rome,” he said, “be serious on the subject of
such a crusade, we are ready to fight, but she must pay us for our
services. She shall not have both our money and our blood.” He spoke,
wrote, and published boldly against Rome being permitted to levy taxes
in Germany, on pretence of going to war with the unbelieving Ottomans.
At the same moment, Luther was denouncing the monks who thought to
enrich the coffers of Rome by the sale of indulgences. One was the
political, the other the religious enemy of the power which sought to
rule men and their consciences from under the shadow of the Colosseum.
There was little hope of aid from the emperor, but Von Hutten looked
for all the help the cause needed in a union of the citizen classes
(whom he had been wont to satirize) with the nobility. To further the
end in view, he wrote his masterly dialogue of “The Robbers.” In this
piece, the speakers are knights and citizens. Each side blames the
other, but each is made acquainted with the other’s virtues, by the
interposition of a _Deus ex machinâ_ in the presence of the knight,
Franz von Sickingen. The whole partakes of the spirit and raciness of
Bunyan and Cobbett. Throughout the dialogue, the vices of no party in
the state find mercy, while the necessity of the mutual exercise of
virtue and aid is ably expounded.
The knight, Franz von Sickingen, was author of a part of this dialogue.
His adjurations to Von Hutten not to be over-hasty and his reason
why, are no doubt his own. By the production of such papers, Germany
was made eager for the fray. This particular and powerful dialogue
was dedicated to John, Pfalzgraf of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, and
Count of Spanheim. This illustrious personage had requested Ulrich
that whenever he published any particularly bold book, in support of
national liberty, he would dedicate it to him, the duke. The author
obeyed, in this instance, on good grounds and with right good will.
There is in the dialogue an audible call to war, and this pleased
Luther himself, who was now convinced that with the pen alone, the
Reformation could not be an established fact.
Ulrich longed for the contact, whereby to make his country and his
church free of Romanist tyranny. But he considers the possibility of
a failure. He adjured his family to keep aloof from the strife, that
they might not bring ruin on their heads, in the event of destruction
falling on his own. The parents of Ulrich were now no more; Ulrich
as head of his house was possessed of its modest estates. Of his
own possessions he got rid, as of an encumbrance to his daring and
his gigantic activity. He formally made over nearly all to his next
brother, in order that his enemies, should they ultimately triumph,
might have no ground for seizing them.
At the same time, he warned his brother to send him neither letters nor
money, as either would be considered in the light of aid offered to an
enemy, and might be visited with terrible penalties.
Having rid himself of what few would so easily have parted from, he
drew his sword joyously and independently for the sake of liberty
alone, and with a determination of never sheathing it until he had
accomplished that at which he aimed, or that the accomplishment of such
end had been placed beyond his power.
“Jacta est alea,” cried he, viewing his bright sword, “the die is
thrown, Ulrich has risked it.”
In the meantime Von Hutten remained in the service of the
Elector-Archbishop of Mayence. The courtiers laughed at him as a
rude knight. The knights ridiculed him as a poor philosopher. Both
were mistaken; he was neither poor nor rude, albeit a _Ritter_ and
a sage. What he most cared for, was opportunity to be useful in his
generation, and leisure enough to cultivate learning during the hours
he might call his own. His satirical poems, coarsely enough worded
against a courtier’s life, are admirable for strength and coloring.
Not less admirable for taste and power are his letters of this period.
In them he denounces that nobility which is composed solely of family
pride; and he denounces, with equally good foundation, the life of
“Robber Knights,” as he calls them, who reside in their castles, amid
every sort of discomfort, and a world of dirt, of hideous noises, and
unsavory smells; and who only leave them to plunder or to be plundered.
He pronounces the true knights of the period to be those alone who
love religion and education. With the aid of these, applied wisely and
widely, and with the help of great men whom he names, and who share his
opinions, he hopes, as he fervently declares, to see intellect gain
more victories than force--to be able to bid the old barbarous spirit
which still influenced too many “to gird up its loins and be off.”
Health came to him with this determination to devote himself to the
service and improvement of his fellow-men. It came partly by the use of
simple remedies, the chief of which was moderation in all things. Pen
and sword were now alike actively employed. He put aside the former,
for a moment, only to assume the latter, in order to strike in for
vengeance against the aggressive Duke of Wurtemburg.
The crimes of this potentate had at length aroused the emperor against
him. Maximilian had intrusted the leadership of his army to the famous
knight-errant of his day, Franz von Sickingen. This cavalier had often
been in open rebellion against the emperor himself; and Hutten now
enrolled himself among the followers of Franz. His patron not only
gave him the necessary permission but continued to him his liberal
stipend; when the two knights met, and made their armor clash with
their boisterous embrace, they swore not to stop short of vengeance on
the guilty duke, but to fight to the death for liberty and Christendom.
They slept together in the same bed in token of brotherly knighthood,
and they rose to carry their banner triumphantly against the
duke--ending the campaign by the capture of the metropolis, Stutgardt.
Reuchlin resided in the capital, and the good man was full of fear; for
murder and rapine reigned around him. His fear was groundless, for Von
Hutten had urged Sickingen to give out that in the sack of Stutgardt,
no man should dare to assail the dwelling of Reuchlin. The two knights
left the city to proceed to the spot in the wood where still lay buried
the body of the murdered John von Hutten. “It had lain four years
in the grave,” said Ulrich, “but the features were unchanged. As we
touched him, blood flowed afresh from his wounds; recognise in this the
witness of his innocence.” The corpse was eventually transported to the
family vault at Esslingen.
The cities of the hard-pressed duke fell, one after the other, and the
guilty prince was driven from his inheritance. Von Hutten remained with
the army, busily plying his pen; his sword on the table before him,
his dagger on his hip, and himself encased in armor to the throat.
Erasmus laughingly wrote to him to leave Mars and stick to the Muses.
He scarcely needed this advice, for his letters from the camp show that
fond as he was of the field, he loved far better the quiet joys of the
household hearth. Amid the brazen clangor of trumpets, the neighing of
steeds, the rolling of the drum, and the boom of battle, he writes to
Piscator (Fischer), his longing for home, and his desire for a wife to
smile on, and care for him; one who would soothe his griefs and share
his labors--“One,” he says, “with whom I might sportively laugh and
feel glad in our existence--who would sweeten the bitter of life and
alleviate the pressure of care. Let me have a wife, my dear Friederich,
and thou knowest how I would love her ... young, fair, shy, gentle,
affectionate, and well-educated. She may have some fortune, but not
excess of it; and as for position, this is my idea thereon: that _she_
will be noble enough whom Ulrich von Hutten chooses for his mate.” As
a wooer, it will be seen that the scholar-knight had as little of the
faint heart as the audacious “Findlay” of Burns, and I might almost
say of Freiligrath, so spiritedly has the latter poet translated into
German the pleasant lines of the Ayrshire ploughman.
Well had it been for Ulrich had he found, in 1519, the wife of his
complacent visions. The gentle hand would have saved him from many a
cruel hour.
On his return to Mayence he had well-nigh obeyed the universal call
addressed to him, to join openly with Luther against Rome. He was
withheld by his regard for his liberal patron, the archbishop. He
remained, partly looking on and partly aiding, on the outskirts of the
field where the fray was raging. He published a superb edition of Livy,
and to show that the reforming spirit still burned brightly in the
bosom of the scholar, he also published his celebrated “Vadiscus, sive
Trias Romana.” This triple-edged weapon still inflicts anguish on Rome.
Never had arrow of such power stricken the harlot before. Its point
is still in her side; and her adversaries knew well how to use it, by
painfully turning it in the wound.
The knight now hung up his sword in his chamber at Stackelberg,
and devoted himself to his pen. In the convent library at Fulda he
discovered an ancient German work against the supremacy of the Pope
over the princes and people of Germany. Of this he made excellent
use. His own productions against Rome followed one another with great
rapidity. Down to the middle of 1520 he was incessantly charging the
Vatican, at the point of a grey goosequill. He had at heart the freeing
of Germany from the ecclesiastical domination of Italy, just as the
men of Northern Italy have it at heart to rescue her from the cruel
domination of Austria.
To accomplish his ends, Von Hutten left no means untried. Knight and
scholar, noble and villain, the very Emperor Charles V. himself,
Ulrich sought to enlist in the great confederacy, by which he hoped to
strike a mortal blow at the temporal power of the “Universal Bishop.”
His books converted even some of the diocesans of the Romish Church;
but Rome thundered excommunication on the books and their author, and
directed a heavy weight of censure against his protector, Albert of
Mayence.
The archbishop admonished Von Hutten, and interdicted his works. This
step decided Ulrich’s course. He at once addressed his first letter to
Luther. It began with the cry of “Freedom for ever!” and it offered
heart, head, soul, body, brains, and purse, in furtherance of the great
cause. He tendered to Luther, in the name of Sickingen, a secure place
of residence; and he established his first unassailable battery against
Rome, by erecting a printing-press in his own room in the castle of
Stackelberg, whence he directed many a raking fire against all his
assailants. “Jacta est alea!” was his cry; “Let the enemies of light
look to it!”
From Fulda he started to the court of the Emperor Charles V. at
Brussels. But his enemies stood between him and the foot of the throne,
and he was not allowed to approach it. His life, too, was being
constantly threatened. He withdrew before these threats, once more into
Germany, taking compensation by the way, for his disappointment, by a
characteristic bit of spirit. He happened to fall in with Hogstraten,
the heretic-finder, and the arch-enemy of Reuchlin. Ulrich belabored
him with a sheathed sword till every bone in the body of Hogstraten
was sore. In return, the knight was outlawed, and Leo X. haughtily
commanded that hands should be laid upon him wherever he might be
found, and that he should be delivered, gagged, and bound, to the Roman
tribunals.
Franz von Sickingen immediately received him within the safe shelter
of his strong fortress of Ebernberg, where already a score of
renowned theological refugees had found an asylum. The colloquies of
the illustrious fugitives made the old walls ring again. Von Hutten
reduced these colloquies to writing, and I may name, as one of their
conclusions, that the service of the mass in German was determined on,
as the first step toward an established reformation.
The attempt of the Pope to have Ulrich seized and sacrificed, was
eagerly applied by the latter to the benefit of the cause he loved.
To the emperor, to the elector, to the nobles, knights, and states
of Germany, he addressed papers full of patriotism, eloquence, and
wisdom, against the aggression on German liberty. Throughout Germany
this scholar-knight called into life the spirit of civil and religious
freedom, and Luther, looking upon what Ulrich was doing, exclaimed:
“Surely the last day is at hand!”
These two men, united, lit up a flame which can never be trodden out.
One took his Bible and his pen, and with these pricked Rome into a
fury, from which she has never recovered. The other, ungirding his
sword, and transferring his printing-press to Ebernberg, sent therefrom
glowing manifestoes which made a patriot of every reader.
The lyre and learning were both now employed by Von Hutten, in
furtherance of his project. His popular poetry was now read or sung at
every hearth. Not a village was without a copy, often to be read by
stealth, of his “Complaint and Admonition.” His dialogues, especially
that called the “Warner,” in which the colloquists are a Roman alarmist
and Franz von Sickingen himself, achieved a similar triumph. It was to
give heart to the wavering that Von Hutten wrote, and sent abroad from
his press at Ebernberg, those remarkable dialogues.
Franz von Sickingen, his great protector, was for a season apprehensive
that Ulrich’s outcry against Rome was louder than necessary, and
his declared resolution to resent oppression by means of the sword,
somewhat profane. Ulrich reasoned with and read to the gallant knight.
His own good sense, and the arguments of Luther and Ulrich, at length
convinced him that it was folly and sin to maintain outward respect
for Rome as long as the latter aspired to be lord in Germany, above
the kaiser himself. Franz soon agreed with Hutten that they ought not
to heed even the Emperor, if he commanded them to spare the Pope,
when such mercy might be productive of injury to the empire. In such
cases, not to obey was the best obedience. They would not now look
back. “It is better,” so runs it in Von Hutten’s “Warner,” “to consider
what God’s will is, than what may enter the heads of individuals,
capricious men, more especially in the case wherein the truth of the
Gospel is concerned. If it be proved that nothing satisfactory, by way
of encouragement, can come to us from the Emperor, they who love the
Church and civil liberty must be bold at their own peril, let the issue
be what it may.”
The dialogue of the “Warner” was, doubtless, not only read to Sickingen
during the progress of its composition, but was unquestionably a
transcript of much that was talked about, weighed, and considered
between the two friends, as they sat surrounded by a circle of great
scholars and soldiers, for whose blood Rome was thirsting. It ends with
an assurance of the full adhesion of Franz to the views of Ulrich. “In
this matter,” says the “Warner” to the knight of Ebernberg, “I see you
have a passionate and zealous instigator, a fellow named Von Hutten,
who can brook delay with patience, and who has heaped piles upon piles
of stones, ready to fling them at the first adversary who presents
himself.” “Ay, in good sooth,” is the ready answer of Franz, “and his
service is a joy to me, for he has the true spirit requisite to insure
triumph in such a struggle as ours.”
Thus at Ebernburg the battery was played against the defences of
Rome, while Luther, from his known abodes, or from his concealment in
friendly fortresses, thundered his artillery against the doctrines and
superstitions of Rome. The movement had a double aspect. The Germans
were determined to be free both as Christians and as citizens. The
conducting of such determination to its successful issue could not be
intrusted to worthier or more capable hands than those of Luther, aided
by the Saxon Frederick the Wise, and Ulrich von Hutten, with such a
squire at his side as hearty Franz von Sickingen.
In 1521 the young emperor, Charles V., delivered a speech at Worms,
which seemed to have been framed expressly to assure the reformers that
the emperor was with them. It abounded in promises that the kaiser
would do his utmost to effect necessary reforms within the empire.
The reformers were in great spirits, but they soon learned, by the
summoning of Luther to Worms, and by the subsequent conduct of the
emperor, that they had nothing to expect from him which they could
thankfully acknowledge.
Ulrich only wrote the more boldly, and agitated the more unceasingly,
in behalf of the cause of which Luther was the great advocate. To
the kaiser himself he addressed many a daring epistle, as logical as
audacious, in order to induce him to shake off the yoke of Rome, and
be master of the Roman world, by other sanction than that of German
election and papal consent. Von Hutten was more bold and quite as
logical in his witheringly sarcastic epistles addressed to the pope’s
legates at Worms. These epistles show that if at the time there was
neither a recognised liberty of the press nor of individual expression,
the times themselves were so out of joint that men dared do much which
their masters dared not resent.
To the entire body of the priesthood assembled at Worms to confront
Luther, he addressed similar epistles. They abound in “thoughts that
breathe, and words that burn.” In every word there is defiance. Every
sentence is a weapon. Every paragraph is an engine of war. The writer
scatters his deadly missiles around him, threatening all, wounding
many, sometimes indeed breaking his own head by rash management, but
careless of all such accidents as long as he can reach, terrify, maul,
and put to flight the crowd of enemies who have conspired to suppress
both learning and religion in Germany.
In unison with Sickingen, he earnestly entreated Luther to repair to
Ebernburg rather than to Worms, as there his knightly friends would
protect him from all assailants. The reply of the great reformer is
well known. He would go to Worms, he said, though there were as many
devils as tiles on the roofs, leagued against him to oppose his journey
thither. We can not doubt but that Luther would have been judicially
assassinated in that ancient city but for the imposing front assumed by
his well-armed and well-organized adherents, who not only crowded into
the streets of Worms, but who announced by placards, even in the very
bedchamber of the emperor, that a thousand lives should pay for the
loss of one hair of the reformer’s head.
Had it depended on Von Hutten, the reformers would not have waited
till violence had been inflicted on Luther, ere they took their own
revenge for wrongs and oppressions done. But he was overruled, and his
hot blood was kept cool by profuse and prosaic argument on the part of
the schoolmen of his faction. He chafed, but he obeyed. He had more
difficulty in reducing to the same obedience the bands of his adherents
who occupied the city and its vicinity. These thought that the safety
of Luther could only be secured by rescuing him at once from the hands
of his enemies. The scholar-knight thought so too; and he would gladly
have charged against such enemies. He made no signal, however, for
the onslaught; on the contrary he issued orders forbidding it; and
recommended the confederates to sheathe their swords, but yet to have
their hands on the hilt. The elector of Saxony was adverse to violence,
and Luther left Worms in safety, after defying Rome to her face.
Then came those unquiet times in which Charles V. so warmly welcomed
volunteers to his banner. Seduced by his promises, Franz von Sickingen,
with a few hundreds of strong-sinewed men, passed over to the Imperial
quarters. The old brotherly gathering at Ebernberg was thus broken up;
and Ulrich, who had offended both pope and emperor by his denunciations
of ecclesiastical and civil tyranny, betook himself to Switzerland,
where he hoped to find a secure asylum, and a welcome from Erasmus.
This amphibious personage, however, who had already ceased to laud
Luther, affected now a horror against Von Hutten. He wrote of him as a
poor, angry, mangy wretch, who could not be content to live in a room
without a stove, and who was continually pestering his friends for
pecuniary loans. The fiery Ulrich assailed his false friend in wrathful
pamphlets. Erasmus loved the species of warfare into which such
attacks drew or impelled him. He replied to Ulrich more cleverly than
conclusively, in his “Sponge to wipe out the Aspersions of Von Hutten.”
But the enmity of Erasmus was as nothing compared with the loss of
Von Sickingen himself. In the tumultuary wars of his native land he
perished, and Ulrich felt that, despite some errors, the good cause had
lost an iron-handed and a clear-sighted champion.
There is little doubt that it was at the instigation of Erasmus
that the priestly party in Basle successfully urged the government
authorities to drive Ulrich from the asylum he had temporarily found
there. He quietly departed on issue of the command, and took his
solitary and painful way to Muhlhausen, where a host of reformers
warmly welcomed the tottering skeleton into which had shrunk the once
well-knit man. Here his vigor cast aloft its last expiring light.
Muhlhausen threw off the papal yoke, but the papist party was strong
enough there to raise an insurrection; and rather than endanger the
safety of the town, the persecuted scholar and soldier once more walked
forth to find a shelter. He reached Zurich in safety. He went at once
to the hearth of Zuinglius, who looked upon the terrible spectre in
whom the eyes alone showed signs of life; and he could hardly believe
that the pope cared for the person, or dreaded the intellect, of so
ghostlike a champion as this.
Ulrich, excommunicated, outlawed and penniless, was in truth sinking
fast. His hand had not strength to enfold the pommel of his sword. From
his unconscious fingers dropped the pen.
“Who will defend me against my calumniators?” asked the yet willing but
now incapable man.
“I will!” said the skilful physician, Otto Brunfels; and the cooper’s
son stoutly protected the good name of Ulrich, after the latter was at
peace in the grave.
The last hours of the worn-out struggler for civil and religious
liberty, were passed at Ufnau, a small island in the Lake of Zurich. He
had been with difficulty conveyed thither, in the faint hope that his
health might profit by the change. There he slowly and resignedly died
on the last day of August, 1523, and at the early age of thirty-eight.
A few dearly-loved books and some letters constituted all his property.
He was interred on the island, but no monument has ever marked the spot
where his wornout body was laid down to repose.
Through life, whether engaged with sword or pen, his absorbing desire
was that his memory might be held dear by his survivors. He loved
activity, abhorred luxury, adored liberty; and, for the sake of civil
and religious freedom, he fought and sang with earnest alacrity. Lyre
on arm, and sword in hand, he sang and summoned, until hosts gathered
round him, and cheered the burthen of all he uttered. “The die is
thrown! I’ve risked it for truth and freedom’s sake.” Against pope and
kaiser, priest and soldier, he boldly cried, “Slay my frame you may,
but my soul is beyond you!” He was the star that harbingered a bright
dawn. His prevailing enemies drove him from his country; the grave
which they would have denied him, he found in Switzerland, and “after
life’s fitful fever,” the scholar-knight sleeps well in the island of
the Zurich-Zee.
From the Zurich-Zee we will now retrace our steps, and consider the
Sham Knights.
SHAM KNIGHTS.
Between Tooting and Wandsworth lies a village of some celebrity for
its sham knights or mayors--the village of Garrat. The villagers, some
century ago, possessed certain common rights which were threatened
with invasion. They accordingly made choice of an advocate, from among
themselves, to protect their privileges. They succeeded in their
object, and as the selection had been originally made at the period
of a general election, the inhabitants resolved to commemorate the
circumstance by electing a mayor and knighting him at each period of
election for a new parliament. The resolution was warmly approved by
all the publicans in the vicinity, and the Garrat elections became
popular festivities, if not of the highest order, at least of the
jolliest sort.
Not that the ceremony was without its uses. The politicians and wits
of the day saw how the election might be turned to profit; and Wilkes,
and Foote, and Garrick, are especially named as having written some of
the addresses wherein, beneath much fustian, fun, and exaggeration of
both fact and humor, the people were led to notice, by an Aristophanic
process, the defects in the political system by which the country was
then governed. The publicans, however, and the majority of the people
cared more for the saturnalia than the schooling; and for some years
the sham mayors of Garrat were elected, to the great profit, at least,
of the tavern-keepers.
The poorer and the more deformed the candidate, the greater his chance
of success. Thus, the earliest mayor of whom there was any record,
was Sir John Harper, a fellow of infinite mirth and deformity, whose
ordinary occupation was that of an itinerant vender of brick-dust. His
success gave dignity to the brick-dust trade, and inspired its members
with ambition. They had the glory of boasting that their friend and
brother “Sir John” sat, when not sufficiently sober to stand, during
two parliaments. A specimen of his ready wit is given in his remark
when a dead cat was flung at him, on the hustings during the period of
his first election. A companion remarked with some disgust upon the
unpleasant odor from the animal. “That’s not to be wondered at,” said
Sir John, “you see it is a pole-cat.”
But Sir John was ousted by an uglier, dirtier, more deformed, and
merrier fellow than himself. The lucky personage in question was Sir
Jeffrey Dunstan. He was a noted individual, hunched like Esop, and with
as many tales, though not always with the like “morals.” He was a noted
dealer in old wigs, for it was before men had fallen into what was then
considered the disreputable fashion of wearing their own hair, under
round hats. Sir John was a republican; but he did not despise either
his office of mayor or his courtesy title of knight. Had he possessed
more discretion and less zeal, he probably would have prospered in
proportion. In the best, that is, in the quietest, of times, Sir
Jeffrey could with difficulty keep his tongue from wagging. He never
appeared in the streets with his wig-bag on his shoulder, without a
numerous crowd following, whom he delighted with his sallies, made
against men in power, whose weak points were assailable. The French
Revolution broke out when Sir Jeffrey was mayor, and this gave a loose
to his tongue, which ultimately laid him up by the heels. The knight
grew too political, and even seditious, in his street orations, and
he was in consequence committed to prison, in 1793, for treasonable
practices. This only increased his popularity for a time, but it tamed
the spirit of the once chivalrous mayor. When he ceased to be wittily
bold, he ceased to be cared for by the constituents whose presence made
the electors at Garrat. After being thrice elected he was successfully
opposed and defeated, under a charge of dishonesty. The pure electors
of Garrat could have borne with a political traitor; but as they
politely said, they “could not a-bear a petty larcenist,” and Sir
Jeffrey Dunstan was, metaphorically and actually presented “with the
sack.”
When Manners Sutton ceased to be Speaker, he claimed, I believe, to be
made a peer; on the plea that it was not becoming that he who had once
occupied the chair, should ever be reduced to stand upon the floor, of
the House of Commons. Sir Jeffrey Dunstan had something of a similar
sense of dignity. Having fallen from the height of mayor of Garrat,
what was then left for Sir Jeffrey? He got as “drunk as a lord,” was
never again seen sober, and, in 1797, the year following that of his
disgrace, the ex-mayor died of excess. So nice of honor was Sir Jeffrey
Dunstan!
He was succeeded by Sir Harry Dimsdale, the mutilated muffin-seller,
whose tenure of office was only brief, however brilliant, and who has
the melancholy glory of having been the last of the illustriously
dirty line of knighted mayors of Garrat. It was not that there was any
difficulty in procuring candidates, but there was no longer the same
liberality on the part of the peers and publicans to furnish a purse
for them. Originally, the purse was made up by the inhabitants, for
the purpose of protecting their collective rights. Subsequently, the
publicans contributed in order that the attractions of something like
a fair might be added, and therewith great increase of smoking and
drinking. At that time the peerage did not disdain to patronize the
proceeding, and the day of election was a holyday for thousands. Never
before or since have such multitudes assembled at the well-known place
of gathering; nor the roads been so blocked up by carts and carriages,
honorable members on horses, and dustmen on donkeys. Hundreds of
thousands sometimes assembled, and, through the perspiring crowd, the
candidates, dressed like chimney-sweepers on May-day, or in the mock
fashion of the period, were brought to the hustings in the carriages
of peers, drawn by six horses, the owners themselves condescending to
become their drivers.
The candidate was ready to swear anything, and each elector was
required to make oath, on a brick-bat, “quod rem cum aliquâ muliere
intra limites istius pagi habuissent.” The candidates figured under
mock pseudonyms. Thus, at one election there were against Sir Jeffrey,
Lord Twankum, Squire Blowmedown, and Squire Gubbings. His lordship
was Gardener, the Garrat grave-digger, and the squires were in humble
reality, Willis, a waterman, and Simmonds, a Southwark publican. An
attempt was made to renew the old saturnalia in 1826, when Sir John
Paul Pry offered himself as a candidate, in very bad English, and with
a similarly qualified success. He had not the eloquent power of the
great Sir Jeffrey, who, on presenting himself to the electors named
his “estate in the Isle of Man” as his qualification; announced his
intention of relieving the king in his want of money, by abolishing
its use; engaged to keep his promises as long as it was his interest
to do so, and claimed the favorable influence of married ladies, on
the assurance that he would propose the annulling of all marriages,
which, as he said, with his ordinary logic, “must greatly increase the
influence of the crown, and vastly lower Indian bonds.” He intimated
that his own ambition was limited to the governorship of Duck Island,
or the bishopric of Durham. The latter appointment was mentioned for
the purpose of enabling the usually shirtless, but for the moment
court-dressed knight, to add that he was “fond of a clean shirt and
lawn-sleeves.” He moreover undertook to show the governors of India the
way which they ought to be going, to Botany Bay; and to discover the
longitude among the Jews of Duke’s Place.
Courtesy was imperative on all the candidates toward each other.
When Sir Jeffrey Dunstan opposed Sir William Harper, there were five
other candidates, namely--“Sir William Blaze, of high rank in the
army--a corporal in the city train-bands; Admiral Sir Christopher
Dashwood, known to many who has (_sic_) felt the weight of his hand on
their shoulders, and showing an execution in the other. Sir William
Swallowtail, an eminent merchant, who supplies most of the gardeners
with strawberry baskets; Sir John Gnawpost, who carries his traffic
under his left arm, and whose general cry is ‘twenty-five if you
win and five if you lose;’ and Sir Thomas Nameless, of reputation
unmentionable.” Sir John Harper was the only knight who forgot
chivalrous courtesy, and who allowed his squire in armor to insult Sir
Jeffrey. But this was not done with impunity. That knight appealed to
usage, compelled his assailant to dismount, drop his colors, walk six
times round the hustings, and humbly ask pardon.
Sir William Swallowtail, mentioned above, “was one William Cock, a
whimsical basket-maker of Brentford, who, deeming it proper to have
an equipage every way suitable to the honor he aspired to, built his
own carriage, with his own hands, to his own taste. It was made of
wicker work, and was drawn by four, high, hollow-backed horses, whereon
were seated dwarfish boys, whimsically dressed, for postillions. In
allusion to the American War, two footmen, tarred and feathered, rode
before the carriage. The coachman wore a wicker hat, and Sir William
himself, from the seat of his vehicle, maintained his mock dignity,
in grotesque array, amid unbounded applause.” It should be added that
Foote, who witnessed the humors of the election more than once, brought
Sir Jeffrey upon the stage in the character of _Doctor Last_; but the
wretched fellow, utterly incapable and awfully alarmed, was driven from
the stage by the hisses of the whole house. Let us now look abroad for
a few “Shams.”
If foreign lands have sent no small number of pseudo-chevaliers to
London, they have also abounded in many by far too patriotic or prudent
to leave their native land. The Hôtel Saint Florentin, in Paris, was
the residence of the Prince Talleyrand, but before his time it was the
stage and the occasional dwelling-place of an extraordinary actor,
known by the appellation of the Chevalier, or the Count de St. Germain.
He was for a time the reigning wonder of Paris, where his history
was told with many variations; not one true, and all astounding. The
popular voice ascribed to him an Egyptian birth, and attributed to him
the power of working miracles. He could cure the dying, and raise the
dead; could compose magic philters, coin money by an impress of his
index finger; was said to have discovered the philosopher’s stone, and
to be able to make gold and diamonds almost at will. He was, moreover,
as generous as he was great, and his modest breast was covered with
knightly orders, in proof of the gratitude of sovereigns whom he had
obliged. He was supposed to have been born some centuries back, was
the most gigantic and graceful impostor that ever lived, and exacted
implicit faith in his power from people who had none in the power of
God.
The soirées of the Hôtel St. Florentin were the admiration of all
Paris, for there alone, this knight-count of many orders appeared to
charm the visiters and please himself. His prodigality was enormous,
so was his mendacity. He was graceful, witty, refined, yet not lacking
audacity when his story wanted pointing, and always young, gave himself
out for a Methuselah.
The following trait is seriously told of him, and is well
substantiated. “Chevalier,” said a lady to him one night, at a crowded
assembly of the Hôtel St. Florentin, “do you ever remember having,
in the course of your voyages, encountered our Lord Jesus Christ?”
“Yes,” replied the profane impostor, without hesitation and raising
his eyes to heaven. “I have often seen and often spoken to Him. I have
frequently had occasion to admire his mildness, genius, and charity.
He was a celestial being; and I often prophesied what would befall
Him!” The hearers, far from being shocked, only continued to ply the
count with other questions. “Did you ever meet with the Wandering Jew?”
asked a young marquiss. “Often!” was the reply; and the count added
with an air of disdain:--“that wretched blasphemer once dared to salute
me on the high-road; he was then just setting out on his tour of the
world, and counted his money with one hand in his pocket, as he passed
along.” “Count,” asked a Chevalier de St. Louis, “who was the composer
of that brilliant sonata you played to-night, on the harpsichord?” “I
_really_ can not say. It is a song of victory, and I heard it executed
for the first time on the day of the triumph of Trajan.” “Will you be
indiscreet, dear count, for once,” asked a newly-married baronne, “and
tell us the names of the three ladies whom you have the most tenderly
loved?” “That is difficult,” said the honest knight with a smile, “but
I think I may say that they were Lucretia, Aspasia, and Cleopatra.”
The gay world of Paris said he was, at least two thousand years old;
and he did not take the pains to contradict the report. There is reason
to suppose that he was the son of a Portuguese Jew, who had resided at
Bordeaux. His career was soon ended.
There was a far more respectable chevalier in our own country to whom
the term of Sham Knight can hardly apply; but as he called himself “Sir
John,” and _that_ title was not admitted in a court of law, some notice
of him may be taken here.
There was then in the reign of George III., a knight of some notoriety,
whose story is rather a singular one. When Sir John Gallini is now
spoken of, many persons conclude that this once remarkable individual
received the honors of knighthood at the hands of King George. I
have been assured so by very eminent operatic authorities, who were,
nevertheless, completely in error. Sir John Gallini was a knight
of George III.’s time, but he was so created by a far more exalted
individual; in the opinion, at least, of those who give to popes, who
are elective potentates, a precedence over kings, who are hereditary
monarchs. The wonder is that Gallini was ever knighted at all, seeing
that he was simply an admirable ballet-dancer. But he was the first
dancer who ever received an encore for the dexterous use of his heels.
The Pope accordingly clapped upon them a pair of golden spurs, and
Gallini was, thenceforth, Cavaliere del Sperone d’Oro. Such a knight
may be noticed in this place.
Gallini came to England at a time when that part of the world, which
was included in the term “people of quality,” stood in need of a little
excitement. This was in 1759, when there was the dullest of courts,
with the heaviest of mistresses, and an opera, duller and heavier than
either. Gallini had just subdued Paris by the magic of his saltatory
movements. He thence repaired to London, with his reputation and
slight baggage. He did not announce his arrival. It was sufficient
that Gallini was there. He had hardly entered his lodgings when he was
engaged, on his own terms. He took the town by storm. His _pas seul_
was pronounced divine. The “quality” paid him more honor than if he
had invented something useful to his fellow-men. He could not raise
his toe, without the house being hushed into silent admiration. His
_entrechats_ were performed amidst thundering echoes of delight; his
“whirls” elicited shrieks of ecstacy; and when he suddenly checked
himself in the very swiftest of his wild career and looked at the
house with a complacent smile, which seemed to say--“What do you think
of that?” there ensued an explosion of tumultuous homage, such as
the spectators would have _not_ vouchsafed to the young conqueror of
Quebec. Gallini, as far as opera matters were concerned, was found
to be the proper man in the proper place. For four or five years he
was despotic master of the ballet. He was resolved to be master of
something else.
There was then in London a Lady Elizabeth Bertie. Her father, the
Earl of Abingdon, then lately deceased, had, in his youth, married a
Signora Collino, daughter to a “Sir John Collins.” The latter knight
was not English, but of English descent. His son, Signor Collino, was a
celebrated player of the lute in this country. He was indeed the last
celebrated player on that instrument in England.
Gallini then, the very head of his profession, ranking therein higher
than the Abingdons did in the peerage, was rather condescending than
otherwise, when he looked upon the Earl of Abingdon as his equal. The
earl whom he so considered was the son of the one who had espoused the
Signora Collino, and Lady Elizabeth Bertie was another child of the
same marriage. When Gallini the dancer, therefore, began to think of
proposing for the hand of that lady, he was merely thinking of marrying
the niece of an instrumental performer. Gallini did not think there was
derogation in this; but he did think, vain, foolish fellow that he was,
that such a union would confer upon him the title of “my lord.”
Gallini was a gentleman, nevertheless, in his way--that is, both in
manners and morals. Proud indeed he was, as a peacock, and ambitious as
a “climbing-boy,” desirous for ever of being at the top, as speedily
as possible, of every branch of his profession. He was the “professor
of dancing” in the Abingdon family, where his agreeable person, his
ready wit, his amiability, and the modesty beneath which he hid a world
of pretension, rendered him a general favorite. He was very soon the
friend of the house; and long before he had achieved _that_ rank, he
was the very particular friend of Lady Elizabeth Bertie. She loved her
mother’s soft Italian as Gallini spoke it; and in short she loved the
Italian also, language and speaker. Lady and Signor became one.
When the match became publicly known the “did you evers?” that reached
from box to box and echoed along the passages of the opera-house were
deafening. “A lady of quality marry a dancer!” Why not, when maids of
honor were held by royal coachmen as being bad company for the said
coachman’s sons? It was a more suitable match than that of a lady of
quality with her father’s footman.
Gallini happened to be in one of the lobbies soon after his marriage,
where it was being loudly discussed by some angry beauties. In the
midst of their ridicule of the bridegroom he approached, and exclaimed,
“Lustrissima, son io! Excellent lady, I am the man!” “And what does the
man call himself?” asked they with a giggle, and doubtless also with
reference to the story of the bridegroom considering himself a lord by
right of his marriage with a “lady”--“what does the man call himself?”
“Eccelenza,” replied Gallini with a modest bow, “I am Signor Giovanni
Gallini, Esquire.” In the midst of their laughter he turned upon his
heel, and went away to dress in flesh-colored tights, short tunic, and
spangles.
The marriage was not at first an unhappy one. There were several
children, but difficulties also increased much faster than the family.
Not pecuniary difficulties, for Gallini was a prudent man, but class
difficulties. The signor found himself without a properly-defined
position, or what is quite as uneasy probably in itself, he was above
his proper position, without being able to exact the homage that he
thought was due to him. The brother-in-law of the earl was in the
eyes of his own wife, only the dancing-master of their children.
Considering that the lady had condescended to be their mother, she
might have carried the condescension a little farther, and paid more
respect to the father. Dissension arose, and in a _tour de mains_
family interferences rendered it incurable. The quarrel was embittered,
a separation ensued, and after a tranquil union of a few years, there
were separate households, with common ill-will in both.
He felt himself no longer a “lord,” even by courtesy, but he resolved
to be what many lords have tried to be, in vain, or who ruined
themselves by being, namely, proprietor and manager of the opera-house.
This was in 1786, by which time he had realized a fortune by means of
much industry, active heels, good looks, capital benefits, monopoly of
teaching, prudence, temperance, and that economy, which extravagant
people call parsimony. This fortune, or rather a portion of it, he
risked in the opera-house--and lost it all, of course. He commenced
his career with as much spirit as if he had only been the steward of
another man’s property; and he made engagements in Italy with such
generosity and patriotism, that the Pope having leisure for a while to
turn his thoughts from divinity to dancing, became as delighted with
Gallini as Pio Nono was with Fanny Cerito. We are bound to believe that
his holiness was in a fit of infallible enthusiasm, when he dubbed
Gallini, Knight of the Golden Spur. The latter returned to London and
wrote himself down “Sir John.” Cards were just come into fashion, to
enable people to pay what were called “visites en blanc,” and “Sir John
Gallini,” was to be seen in every house where the latter had friend or
acquaintance. His portrait was in all the shops, with this chivalric
legend beneath it, and there are yet to be seen old opera libretti with
a frontispiece exhibiting to an admiring public the effigies of “Sir
John Gallini.”
The public liked the sound, liked the man, and sanctioned the title,
by constantly applying it to the individual, without any mental
reserve. They had seen so many fools made knights that they were glad
to see a spirited man make one of himself, by application of “Sir” to
a papally-conferred title. The law, however, no more allowed it than
it did that of the Romanist official who got presented at court as
“Monsignore something,” and whose presentation was cancelled as soon as
the pleasant trick was discovered. Gallini, however, continued in the
uninterrupted title until circumstances brought him, as a witness, into
the presence of Lord Kenyon. When the Italian opera-dancer announced
himself in the hearing of that judge as Sir John Gallini, the sight of
the judge was what Americans call “a caution.” His lordship looked as
disgusted as Lord Eldon used to do, when he heard an Irish Romanist
Bishop called by a territorial title. As far as the wrath of Lord
Kenyon could do it, metaphorically, the great judge un-sir-John’d Sir
John and chopped off his golden spurs in open court. Gallini was so
good-natured and popular, that the public opinion would not confirm the
opinion of the judge, and Sir John remained Sir John, in the popular
mouth, throughout the kingdom.
He was growing rich enough to buy up half the knights in the country.
He built the music-rooms in Hanover Square, for Bach and Abel’s
subscription concerts. That is, he built the house; and let it out to
any who required any portion of it, for any purpose of music, dancing,
exhibiting, lecturing, or any other object having profit in view. He
lodged rather than lived in it himself, for he had reserved only a
small cabinet for his own use, magnificently sacrificing the rest of
the mansion for the use of others, who paid him liberally for such use.
Therewith, Sir John continued his old profession as teacher as well as
performer, manager at home as well as at the theatre; wary speculator,
saving--avaricious, as they said who failed to cheat him of his money
on faith of illusory promises, with an admirable eye for a bargain, and
admirable care for the result of the bargain after he had concluded it.
Everything went as merrily with him as it did with Polycrates, and
ill-fortune and he seemed never to be acquainted, till one fatal night
in 1789, the Opera House was burned to the ground, and the tide that
had been so long flowing was now thought to be on the ebb. Sir John
was too heroic to be downcast, and he did what many a hero would never
even have thought of doing, nor, indeed, any wise man either. He put
down thirty thousand pounds in hard cash toward the rebuilding of the
opera-house, sent to Italy for the best architectural plans, left no
means unemployed to erect a first rate theatre, and worked for that
object with as much integrity as if the safety of the universe depended
on the building of an opera-house in the Haymarket. What the public
lost in one night was thus being made good to them by another.
Meanwhile fashion was in a deplorable state of musical destitution.
What was to become of London without an opera? How could the world,
the infinitesimal London world, exist without its usual allowance of
roulades and rigadoons? Our knight was just the champion to come in
beneficially at such an extremity. He opened the little theatre in the
Haymarket, and nobody went to it. Fashion turned up its nose in scorn,
and kept away; nay, it did worse, it acted ungratefully, and when some
speculators established an opera at the Pantheon, Fashion led the way
from the Haymarket, and a host of followers went in her train to Oxford
street. “I will victoriously bring her back to her old house,” said Sir
John. The knight was gallant-hearted, but he did not know that he had
other foes besides Fashion.
Sir John got into difficulties through law, lawyers, and false friends.
He ruled as monarch at the opera-house, only to fall, with ruin. But
he was not a man to be dismayed. His courage, zeal, and industry, were
unbounded. He applied all these to good purpose, and his life was
not only a useful but an honorable and a prosperous one. It ended,
after extending beyond the ordinary allotted time of man, calmly, yet
somewhat suddenly; and “Sir John” Gallini died in his house in Hanover
Square, leaving a large fortune, the memory of some eccentricities,
and a good name and example, to his children. For my part, I can never
enter the ancient concert-rooms in Hanover Square, without wishing a
“Requiescat!” to the knight of the Golden Spur, by whom the edifice was
constructed.
If Sir John Gallini, the dancer, could boast of having been knighted by
a pope, Crescentini, the singer, could boast of having been knighted
by an emperor. He received this honor at the hands of Napoleon I. He
had previously been accustomed to compliments from, or in presence of,
emperors. Thus, in 1804, at Vienna, he sang the _Ombra adorata_ in the
character of Romeo, with such exquisite grace and tenderness, that, on
one occasion, when he had just finished this admirable lyric piece, the
whole court forming part of his audience, two doves descended from the
clouds, bearing him a crown of laurels, while on every side, garlands
and flowers were flung upon the enchanted and enchanting warbler.
The Austrian Emperor paid him more honor than his predecessor had
ever paid to the Polish king who saved the empire from the Turks. The
reputation of Crescentini gained for him an invitation, in 1809, to the
imperial court of France. He played in company with Grassini, the two
representing Romeo and Juliet. The characters had never been better
represented, and Talma, who was present, is said to have wept--an _on
dit_ which I do not credit, for there is not only nothing to cry at
in the Italian characters, but Talma himself was in no wise addicted
to indulgence in the melting mood, nor had he even common courtesy
for his own actual Juliet. But the great actor was pleased, and the
great emperor was delighted; so much so, that he conferred an honor on
Crescentini which he would never grant to Talma--made a chevalier of
him. It is true that Talma desired to be made a knight of the Legion
of Honor; but the emperor would not place on the breast of a tragedian
that cross which was the reward, then, only of men who had played
their parts well, in real and bloody tragedies. The French tragedian
declined the honor that was now accorded to Crescentini, whom the
emperor summoned to his box, and decorated him with the insignia of
the knight of the Iron Crown. The singing chevalier was in ecstacies.
But the Juliet of the night had more cause to be so, for to her,
Napoleon presented a draft on the Treasury, for 20,000 francs. “It will
be a nice little dower for one of my nieces,” said the ever-generous
Grassini to one of her friends, on the following day. Several years
after this, a little niece, for whom she had hitherto done little,
came to her, with a contralto voice, and a request for assistance.
After hearing her sing, Grassini exclaimed, “You have no contralto
voice, and need small help. You will have, with care, one of the finest
mezzo-sopranos in the world. Your throat will be to you a mine of gold,
and you may be both rich and renowned, my dear Giulietta Grisi.” The
niece has excelled the aunt.
Knights of the shire are but sham knights _now_, and they originally
sprung from a revolutionary movement. Previous to the reign of Henry
III. the people had no voice in the selection of their legislators. In
that king’s reign, however, the legislators were at loggerheads. Simon
de Montfort, the aristocratic head of a popular party, was opposed to
the king; and the great earl and his friends being fearful of being
outvoted in the next parliament, succeeded in procuring the issue of a
writ in the name of the king, who was then their prisoner, directing
the sheriffs of each county to send two knights, and the authorities
in cities and boroughs to send citizens and burgesses, to represent
them in parliament. This was a fundamental change of a long-established
usage. It was, in fact, a revolution; and the foundation at least
of that form of a constitution on which our present constitutional
substantiality has been erected.
When the king became emancipated, however, although he continued to
summon “barons and great men,” he never during his reign issued a writ
for the election of knights of the shire. His son, Edward I., summoned
the greater and lesser barons, or his tenants in chief, according to
the old usage. This he did during, at least, seven years of his reign.
The last were not barons, but they were summoned as “barons’ peers, and
all these attended in their own persons,” and not as representatives of
the people. In the reign of John, indeed, the people’s voice had been
heard, but it may be stated generally, that until the forty-ninth of
Henry III., the _constituent_ parts of the great council of the nation
was composed solely of the archbishops and bishops, the earls, barons,
and tenants _in capite_.
It is a singular fact that, in the early elections, the knights of the
shire were elected by universal suffrage; and so, indeed, they are
now, in a certain way, as I shall explain, after citing the following
passage from Hallam’s State of Europe during the Middle Ages: “Whoever
may have been the original voters for county representatives, the
first statute that regulates their election, so far from limiting the
privilege to tenants _in capite_, appears to place it upon a very
large and democratical foundation. For (as I rather conceive, though
not without much hesitation) not only all freeholders, but all persons
whatever present at the county court, were declared, or rendered,
capable of voting for the knight of their shire. Such at least seems
to be the inference from the expressions of 7 Henry IV., c. 15, ‘all
who are there present, as well suitors duly summoned for that cause, as
others.’ And this acquires some degree of confirmation from the later
statute 8 Henry VI., c. 7, which, reciting that ‘elections of knights
of shires have now, of late, been made by very great, outrageous, and
excessive number of people dwelling within the same counties, of the
which most were people of small substance and of no value,’ confines
the elective franchise to freeholders of lands or tenements to the
value of forty shillings.”
The original summons to freeholders was, without doubt, by general
proclamation, so that, as Mr. Hallam remarks, “it is not easy to see
what difference there could be between summoned and unsummoned suitors.
And if the words are supposed to glance at the private summonses to a
few friends, by means of which the sheriffs were accustomed to procure
a clandestine election, one can hardly imagine that such persons
would be styled ‘duly summoned.’ It is not unlikely, however,” adds
Mr. Hallam, “that these large expressions were inadvertently used,
and that they led to that inundation of voters without property which
rendered the subsequent act of Henry VI. necessary. That of Henry IV.
had itself been occasioned by an opposite evil, the close election of
knights by a few persons in the name of the county.”
The same writer proceeds to observe that the consequence of the statute
of Henry IV. was not to let in too many voters, or to render election
tumultuous in the largest of English counties, whatever it might be
in others. Prynne, it appears, published some singular indentures for
the county of York, proceeding from the sheriffs, during the intervals
between the acts of the fourth and sixth Henry. These “are selected
by a few persons calling themselves the attorneys of some peers and
ladies, who, as far as it appears, had solely returned the knights of
that shire. What degree of weight,” says Mr. Hallam, “these anomalous
returns ought to possess, I leave to the reader.”
I have said that the universal suffrage system in the election of
these knights (and indeed of others) as far as it can be carried out,
in allowing all persons present to have a voice, is still strictly
in force. Appeal is made to the popular assembly as to the choice of
a candidate. The decision is duly announced by the highest authority
present, and then the rejected candidate may, if he thinks proper,
appeal from the people present to those who are legally qualified
to vote. The first ceremony is now a very unnecessary one, but it
is, without doubt, the relic of a time when observation of it bore
therewith a serious meaning.
From parliament to the university is no very wide step. Sir Hugh
Evans and Sir Oliver Martext were individuals who, with their titles,
are very familiar to the most of us. The knightly title thus given
to clergymen, was not so much by way of courtesy, as for the sake of
distinction. It was “worn” by Bachelors of Arts, otherwise “Domini,”
to distinguish them from the Masters of Arts, or “Magistri.” Properly
speaking, the title was a local one, and ought not to have been used
beyond the bounds of the University: but as now-a-days with the case
of “captains” of packet-boats, they are also captains at home; so, in
old times, the “Sir” of the University was Sir Something Somebody,
everywhere.
We laugh at the French for so often describing our knights only by
their surnames, as “Sir Jones.” This, however, is the old English form
as it was used at Cambridge. The Cambridge “Sirs” were addressed by
Christian and surname in their livings, and in documents connected
therewith. This practice continued till the title itself was abandoned
some time after the Reformation. The old custom was occasionally
revived by the elderly stagers, much to the astonishment of younger
hearers. Thus when Bishop Mawson of Llandaff was on one occasion
at court, he encountered there a reverend Bachelor of Arts, Fellow
of Bene’t College, and subsequently Dean of Salisbury. His name
was Greene. The bishop, as soon as he saw the “bachelor” enter the
drawing-room, accosted him loudly in this manner: “How do you do, Sir
Greene? When did you leave college, Sir Greene?” _Mr._ Greene observing
the astonishment of those around him, took upon himself to explain that
the bishop was only using an obsolete formula of bygone times. The most
recent courtesy title that I can remember, was one given to a blind
beggar who was very well known in the vicinity of Trinity College,
Dublin, where, indeed, he had been a student some five-and-thirty years
ago. He was invariably styled “Domine John,” and he could return a
suitable answer in good Latin, to the query, _Quo modo vales?_--or to
any other query.
“_Vale!_” is indeed what I ought to utter to the courteous reader; nor
will I detain him longer--supposing he has kindly borne with me thus
far--than with one brief chapter more, which, being miscellaneous, I
may not inaptly call “Pieces of Armor.”
PIECES OF ARMOR.
The word Pieces reminds me of a curious theatrical illustration of
Macedonian chivalry. When Barry used to play Alexander the Great,
he made a grand spectacle of his chariot entry. But it was highly
absurd, nevertheless. When he descended from the vehicle, his attendant
knights, bareheaded and unarmed, placed their hands upon it, and in an
instant it went to pieces, like a trick in a pantomime, and left in
every warrior’s possession, swords, javelins, shields, and helmets,
supplied by the spokes of the wheels, the poles, the body of the
car and its ornaments. This feat was very highly applauded by our
intellectual sires.
This act, however, was hardly more unnatural than the sayings of some
real chevaliers, particularly those of Spain.
Among the Spanish Rhodomontades chronicled by Brantome, we find none
that have not reference to personal valor. There is the choleric
swordsman who walks the street without his weapon, for the good reason
that his hand is so ready to fly to his sword, if the wind but blow
on him too roughly, he is never able to walk out armed without taking
two or three lives. “I will hoist you so high,” says another Spanish
cavalier to his antagonist, “that you will die before you can reach
the earth again.” It was a fellow of the same kidney who used not
only to decapitate dozens of Moorish heads every morning, but was
wont afterward to fling them so high into the air, that they were
half-devoured by flies before they came down again. Another, boasting
of his feats in a naval battle, quietly remarked, that making a thrust
downward with his sword, it passed through the sea, penetrated the
infernal region, and sliced off a portion of the moustache of Pluto!
“If that man be a friend of yours,” said a cavalier to a companion,
referring at the same time to a swordsman with whom the cavalier had
had angry words, “pray for his soul, for he has quarrelled with me.”
The self-complacency also of the following is not amiss. A Spanish
captain in Paris, saw the haughty chevalier d’Ambres pass by him. “Is
he,” said the Spaniard, “as valiant as he is proud?” The reply was in
the affirmative. “Then,” remarked the Iberian, “he is almost as good a
man as myself.” We hear of another, less gallant, perhaps, than brave,
who made it a great favor to ladies when he put off a combat at their
request, and passed a pleasant hour with them, in place of knocking
out brains upon the field. It was a knight of similar notions who
cudgelled his page for boasting of the knight’s valor. “If thou dost
such foolish things, Sir Knave,” said the doughty gentleman, “the whole
female sex will perish of love for me, and I shall have no leisure left
to take towns and rout armies.” This was a full-developed knight. It
was probably his youthful squire who remarked, when some one expressed
surprise that one so young had mustaches of such unusual length. “They
sprung up,” said the young soldier, “under the smoke of cannon; they
grew thus quickly under the same influences.”
Some of the old Spanish cavaliers used to maintain that their very
beauty dazzled their enemies. However this may have been, it is a fact
that the beauty of Galeozo Maria, Duke of Milan, was sufficiently
striking to save him for a while, against the daggers of conspirators.
One of these, named Lampugnano, longed to slay him, but did not dare.
He was, nevertheless, resolved; and he employed a singular means
for giving himself courage. He procured a faithful portrait of the
handsome duke, and every time he passed it, he looked steadfastly at
the brilliant eyes, and graceful features, and then plunged his dagger
into the canvass. He continued this practice until he found himself
enabled to look the living duke in the face without being dazzled by
his beauty; and this done, he dealt his blow steadily, and destroyed
his great and graceful foe.
It has often been asserted that there have been few cavaliers who have
carried on war with more indifference and cruelty than the Spanish
knights. But war in all times and in all ages has induced the first,
at least, if not the last. I may cite among what may be called the
more recent instances, one that would hardly have occurred, even at
Sebastopol. It is in reference to Schomberg’s army at Dundalk. “The
survivors,” says Leland, “used the bodies of their dead comrades for
seats or shelter; and when these were carried to interment, murmured
at being deprived of their conveniences.” While touching upon Irish
matters, I will avail myself of the opportunity to notice that Irish
knights were sometimes called “iron knee,” “eagle knee,” and “black
knee,” from the armor which was especially needed for that part of
the body, the Irish with their dreadful battle-axes making the sorest
stroke on the thigh of the horseman. The Irish appellation of the
White Knight, was given to the heir of a family wherein gray hairs
were hereditary. The Irish knights, it may be observed, were generally
more religious than the Spanish. The latter were too ready to ascribe
every success to their own might, and not to a greater hand. Even in
the case of St. Lawrence, calmly roasting to death on his gridiron,
the proud Spaniards would not have this patience ascribed to the grace
of God, but only to the true Spanish valor. While speaking of the
burning of St. Lawrence, I will add that St. Pierre quotes Plutarch in
stating, that when the Roman burners had to reduce to ashes the bodies
of several knights and ladies, they used to place one female body among
eight or ten males, fancying that with this amalgamation they would
burn better. The author of the “Harmonies of Nature” makes upon this
the truly characteristic comment, that the Roman fashion was founded on
the notion, that “the fire of love still burned within us after death.”
Reverting, for a moment, to the Spaniards, I may notice a fashion
among them which is worth mentioning. When a Spanish cavalier entered
the presence of a Spanish queen, accompanied by his lady, he did not
unbonnet to his sovereign. He was supposed to be so engrossed by his
mistress as to forget even the courtesies of loyalty.
Brantome, on the other hand, notices kingly courtesy toward a subject.
When describing the battle-acts of the famous M. de Thorannes, he
states that the King in acknowledgment that the battle of Rentz had
been gained chiefly through his courage, took the collar of his own
order from his neck, and placed it on that of the gallant soldier. This
was a most unusual act, according to the showing of Brantome, but
probably not the first time of a similar occurrence. The author just
named complains in piteous terms that, in his time and previously, the
honors of chivalry had been bestowed for anything but knightly deeds.
They were gained by favor, influence, or money. Some set their wives
to exert their fascination over the Christian sovereign, and purchase
the honor at any cost. M. de Chateaubriand gave a house and an estate
for the order of St. Michael. Ultimately, it was conferred on single
captains of infantry, to the great disgust of the better-born gentlemen
who had paid dearly for the honor. Brantome declares that he knew many
who had never been half a dozen leagues from their houses, who wore the
insignia of the order, and who talked of the taking of Loches, as if
they had really been present. He angrily adds, that even lawyers were
made knights, stripping themselves of their gowns, and clapping swords
on their thighs. He appears especially annoyed that the celebrated
Montaigne should have followed a similar example: and he adds with a
malicious exultation, that the sword did not become him half so well as
the pen.
One French Marquis was persecuted by his neighbors to get orders
for them, as if they were applying for orders for the theatre. He
obtained them with such facility, that he even made a knight of his
house-steward, and forced the poor man to go to market in his collar,
to the infinite wounding of his modesty. It was, however, one rule of
the order that the collar should never, under any pretence whatever,
be taken from the neck. The Court had very unsavory names for these
mushroom-knights; and Brantome gives us some idea of the aristocratic
feeling when he recounts, with a horror he does not seek to disguise,
that the order was sold to an old Huguenot gentleman, for the small
sum of five hundred crowns. A cheap bargain for the new knight, seeing
that membership in the order carried with it exemption from taxation.
Luckily for the Huguenot he died just in time to save himself from
being disgraced. Some gentlemanly ruffians had agreed to attack this
“homme de peu,” as Brantome calls him, to pull the order from his neck,
to give him a cudgelling, and to threaten him with another, whenever he
dared to wear the knightly insignia.
Brantome wonders the more at what he calls the abuse of the order as
it had been instituted by Louis XI., on the ground that the old order
of the Star founded by King John, in memory of the star which guided
the Kings to the Cradle of Divinity, had become so common, that the
silver star of the order was to be seen in the hat and on the mantle of
half the men in France. Louis XI., in abolishing the order, conferred
its insignia as an ornament of dress, upon the Chevaliers de Guet, or
gentlemen of the watch, who looked to the safety of Paris when the
stars were shining, or that it was the hour for them to do so. It was
an understood thing with all these orders that if a knight went into
the service of an enemy to the sovereign head of the order, the knight
was bound to divest himself of the insignia and transmit the same
directly to the King.
Before the dignity of the order was humbled, the members took pride in
displaying it even in battle; although they were put to high ransom,
if captured. Some prudent knights, of as much discretion as valor,
would occasionally conceal the insignia before going into fight; but
they were mercilessly ridiculed, when the absence of the decoration
testified to the presence of their discretion. In the earlier years
of its formation, a man could with more facility obtain a nomination
to be captain of the body-guard than the collar of the order of St.
Michael. Louis XI. himself showed a wise reluctance to making the order
common, and although he fixed the number of knights at six-and-thirty,
he would only, at first, appoint fifteen. Under succeeding kings the
order swelled to limitless numbers, until at last, no one would accept
it, even when forced upon them. One great personage, indeed, sought and
obtained it. He was severely rallied for his bad ambition; but as he
remarked, the emblems of the order would look well, engraved upon his
plate, and the embroidered mantle would make an admirable covering for
his mule.
This sort of satire upon chivalry reminds me that a knight could
unknight himself, when so inclined. An instance occurs in a case
connected with Jeanne Darc. The chevaliers of the Dauphin’s army had no
belief in the inspiration of the Maid of Orleans, until success crowned
her early efforts. The female knight, if one may so speak, on the other
hand, had no measure whatever of respect, either for knight or friar,
who appeared to doubt her heavenly mission. I may just notice, by the
way, that a “board” of seven theologians assembled to consider her
claims, and examine the maiden herself. One of the members, a “brother
Seguin,” a Limousin, who spoke with the strong and disagreeable accent
of his birthplace, asked Jeanne in what sort of idiom she had been
addressed by the divine voice, by which she professed to be guided: “In
a much better idiom than you use yourself,” answered the pert young
lady, “or I should have put no trust in it.” Here, by the way, we
have, perhaps, the origin of the old story of the stammering gentleman
who asked the boy if his m--m--magpie could speak? “Better than you,”
said the boy, “or I would wring his neck off.” But to resume. Jeanne
was quite as _nonchalante_ to the knights, as she was flippant to
the friars. She expressly exhibits this characteristic, in the first
council held in her presence within Orleans, when she urged immediate
offensive measures, contrary to the opinion of the knights themselves.
One of the latter, the Sire de Gamache, was so chafed by the
pertinacity of the Pucelle, that, at last, springing to his feet, he
exclaimed:--“Since noble princes listen for a moment to the nonsense of
a low-bred hussy like this, rather than to the arguments of a chevalier
such as I am, I will not trouble myself to give any more opinions. In
proper time and place, my good sword will speak, and perchance I may
prevail; but the king and my honor so will it. Henceforward, I furl and
pull down my banner; from this moment I am only a simple ’squire; but I
would much rather have a noble man for master, than serve under a wench
who, perhaps, has been a--one really does not know what!” and with
these words, he rolled up his banner, placed the same in the hands of
Dunois, and walked out of the tent, not Sir John de Gamache, but plain
John Gamache, Esquire.
A curious result followed. The first attack on the bastion of Tourelles
failed, and Jeanne was slightly wounded and unhorsed. Gamache was
near, and he dismounted and offered her his steed. “Jump up,” cried
the good fellow, “you are a gallant lass, and I was wrong in calling
you ugly names. I will serve and obey you right willingly.” “And you,”
said Jeanne, “are as hearty a knight as ever thwacked men or helped a
maid.” And so were they reconciled, and remained good friends to the
end;--which was not long in coming.
Knights, irregularly made so, were unknighted with little ceremony.
Although each duly dubbed knight could confer the same honor on any
deserving such distinction, it was necessary that the individual
about to be so honored should be a gentleman. In France, if this
rule was infringed, the unlucky knight had his spurs hacked off, on
a dunghill. Occasionally the unknighted person was fined. It may be
observed, however, that the king might make a knight of a villain, if
the sovereign were so minded. That is, a king could raise any of his
own subjects to the rank, if he thought proper. Not so with sovereigns
and persons not their subjects. The Emperor Sigismund, for instance,
when visiting Paris, in 1415, knighted a person who was below the rank
of gentleman. The French people were indignant at this, as an act of
sovereignty in another monarch’s dominions. If this chevalier was not
unknighted, the reason, probably, was that the Emperor might not be
offended. It is said, that in Naples it has never been necessary for a
man to be noble, a gentleman in fact, in order to be a knight. This may
readily be credited. In Naples the fact of a man being a brute beast
does not incapacitate him from exercising the office even of a king.
After all, there appears to have been some uncertainty in the
observance of the law on the subject. In England the custom which
allowed knights to dub other knights, very soon fell into disuse, so
that there are fewer examples of unknighting in this country than in
France, where the custom prevailed down to the middle of the sixteenth
century; and its abuses, of course, rendered the unmaking of illegally
constituted knights, if not common, at least an occasional occurrence.
Henry III., as I have said in another page, summoned tenants _in
capite_ to receive knighthood from himself, and authorized tenants of
mesne lords to receive the honor from whom they pleased. But there
must have been considerable disrating of these last distinguished
persons, or such an abuse of creation, so to speak, that the privilege
was stopped, except by special permission of the king. Some places,
in France, however, declared that they held a prescriptive right for
burgesses to receive knighthood at the hands of noblemen, without the
royal permission. Hallam, quoting Villaret, says that burgesses, in the
great commercial towns, were considered as of a superior class to the
roturiers, and possessed a kind of demi-nobility.
Ridiculous as modern knights, whether of town or country, have been
made upon the stage, it is indisputable that in some cases the ridicule
has not been what painters call “loaded,” and the reality was in itself
a caricature. I have read somewhere of one city gentleman, who was
knighted during his shrievalty, and who forthwith emancipated himself
a little from business, and aired his chivalrous “sir” in gay company.
He was once, however, sorely puzzled on receiving a note of invitation
from a lady whose soirées were the especial delight of her guests,
and whose note ended with the initials, so absurdly placed at the
termination of an invitation in English. R. S. V. P., “réponse, s’il
vous plait.” The newly-coined knight, after allusions to the pressure
of business, accepted the hospitality offered him through the note,
remarking at the same time, that “all work and no play made Jack a dull
boy,” and that he knew nothing more to his taste, after a long day’s
application, than what her ladyship’s note appeared to present to him
in the initials at its foot; namely, a Regular Small Vist Party. If
this anecdote be not apocryphal, I suspect that the knight’s remark may
have sprung less from ignorance than humor, and that his reading of the
initials was meant as a censure upon an absurd fashion.
While speaking of city knights at home, and their humor, I will
avail myself of the opportunity to give an instance of wit in a poor
chevalier of the city of Paris, whose whole wealth consisted of a few
unproductive acres near the capital, and whose son had just married
a wealthy heiress of very low degree. “Il fait bien,” said the old
knight, “il fume mes terres!”
This was hardly courteous; but elevated courtesy was never wanting
among true knights, in the very rudest of times.
Strange contrasts of feeling were sometimes exhibited. Thus, when the
English were besieging Orleans, they grew suddenly tired of their
bloody work, on Christmas-day, and asked for a truce while they ate
their pudding. The request was not only readily granted, but the French
knights, hearing that the day was dull in the English camp, obtained
the permission of the bastard Dunois, to send over some musicians to
enliven the melancholy leaguers. The band played lustily during the
whole period of the truce, but the last notes had scarcely ceased, and
the “Godons” as Jeanne Darc rather corruptively called our great sires,
who were too much addicted to swearing, had hardly ceased uttering
their thanks for the musical entertainment, when their cannonade was
renewed by the besiegers with such vigor, that the French knights
swore--harmony had never before been paid in such hard coin.
There was little ill-feeling consequent upon this. The pages in either
army were allowed to amuse themselves by slaying each other in a two
days’ duel, presided over by the respective generals-in-chief. This was
chivalrous proof that neither party bore malice, and they beat out each
other’s brains on the occasion, in testimony of universal good-will,
with as much delighted feeling as if they had all been Irishmen. A
further proof of absence of individual rancor may be seen in the fact,
that Suffolk sent a gift of pigs, dates, and raisins, for the _dessert_
of Dunois; and the latter acknowledged the present by forwarding to
the English general some fur for his robe--Suffolk having complained
bitterly of the cold of that memorable February, 1429.
This reminds me of a similar interchange of courtesy between French
and English antagonists, in later times. When brave Elliot was
defending Gibraltar from gallant Crillon, the former, who never
ate meat, suffered greatly (as did his scurvy-stricken men) from a
scarcity of vegetables. Crillon had more than he wanted, and he sent
of his superabundance, most liberally, to the foe whom he respected. A
whole cart-load of carrots and compliments made general and garrison
glad, and Elliot was as profuse in his gratitude as he was bound
to be. It may be remembered that similar exchanges of courtesy and
creature-comforts took place at Sebastopol. Sir Edmund Lyons sent
Admiral Nachimoff a fat buck, a gift which the large-minded hero of the
Sinope butchery repaid by a hard Dutch cheese. It may be said too that
the buck would have been more appropriately sent to the half-starved
English heroes who were rotting in the trenches.
There were some other naval knights of old, touching whom I may here
say a word.
The history of the sea-kings or sea-knights, whose noble vocation it
was to descend from the north with little but ballast in the holds
of their vessels, and to return thither heavily laden with plunder
and glory, is tolerably well known to the majority of readers. The
story of the Flemish pirates, who, nearly eight centuries ago, carried
terror to, and brought spoil from the Mediterranean, is far less
familiar. This story is well illustrated in the “Biographie des hommes
remarquables de la Flandres Occidentale,” of whom the authors are M.
Octave Delepierre, the accomplished Belgian consul in this country, and
Mr. Carton.
The period is a warm June evening of the year 1097. Off the coast of
Cilicia, two large vessels, belonging to the Emperor Alexis Comnenus,
and manned by Constantinopolitan Greeks, were surrounded and attacked
by ten fast-sailing but small vessels, belonging to the dreaded “Greek
Pirates,” whose name alone brought terror with the sound. On the prow
of each light bark was a rudely sculptured figure of a lion; from the
summit of the tall mast was displayed a green pennant, which was never
hauled down, for the good reason that the pirates never attacked but
where success seemed certain; and if defeat menaced them they could
easily find safety in flight.
There was scarcely a place on the coast which they had not, for ten
years past, visited; and many merchants purchased exemption from attack
by paying a species of very liberal black mail. It was beneath the
dignity of an emperor to buy safety from piratical rovers, and they had
little respect for his vessels, in consequence.
M. Delepierre informs us that these Flemish pirates had been,
originally, merchants, but that they thought it more profitable to
steal than to barter; and found “skimming the seas,” as the phrase
went, far more lucrative than living by the dull precepts of trade.
Their three principal chiefs were Zegher of Bruges, Gheraert of
Courtrai, and Wimer (whose name still lives in Wimereux) of Boulogne.
The force they had under them amounted to four hundred intrepid men,
who were at once sailors and soldiers, and who are described as being
so skilful that they could with one hand steer the ship, and with the
other wield the boarding-hatchet. It will be seen that our Laureate’s
exhortation to knavish tradesmen to lay down their weights and their
measures, and to mend their ways by taking to the vocation of arms,
had here a practical illustration. In the present case, M. Delepierre
suggests that the pirates were, probably, not less honest men than
the Greeks. The latter were ostensibly on their way to succor the
Crusaders, but Alexis was a double dealer, and occasionally despatched
forces against the infidel, which forces turned aside to assault those
Christian neighbors of his, who were too powerful to be pleasant in
such a vicinity, and to get rid of whom was to be devoutly desired,
and, at any cost, accomplished. The foreign policy of Alexis was as
villanously void of principle as that of any government under a more
advanced period of Christian civilization.
The Greek crews had been summoned to surrender. Gheraert of
Courtrai had called to them to that effect through his leathern
speaking-trumpet. He probably knew little of Greek, and the Orientals
could not have comprehended his Flemish. We may conclude that his
summons was in a macaronic sort of style; in which two languages were
used to convey one idea. The Hellenes replied to it, however it may
have sounded, by hurling at the Flemings a very hurricane of stones.
The stout men from Flanders were not long in answering in their turn.
“They put into play,” says M. Delepierre, “their mechanical slings.
These were large baskets full of stones fastened to the end of an
elevated balance, the motion of which flung them to some distance.
They had other means of destruction, in enormous engines, which hurled
beams covered with iron, and monster arrows wrapped in flaming rosin.
With scythe-blades attached to long poles, they severed the ropes and
destroyed the sails, and then flinging out their grapnels they made off
with their prize.”
To this point the present battle had not yet come. It had lasted
an hour, the Greeks had suffered most by the means of attack above
noticed; and they had inflicted but trifling injury, comparatively,
upon the men of the green pennant. They refused, however, to surrender,
but prepared to fly. Wimer saw the preparatory movement, and, in a loud
voice, exclaimed:--“A dozen divers!”
Twelve men, quitting their posts, leaped over the side of the boat,
carrying enormous _tarières_ (augers) with them. They disappeared
beneath the waves; appeared for a moment or two again above the
surface, in order to draw breath; once more plunged downward; and,
finally, at the end of ten minutes, climbed again into their small
vessel, exclaiming, “Master, it is done!”
The twelve divers had established twelve formidable leaks in the larger
of the two Greek vessels, and as it began to sink, the crew agreed to
surrender. The Green Pirates seized all that was on board that and
the other ship. In the latter, stripped of everything of value, they
allowed the two Greek crews to sail away; and then proceeded toward the
coast with their booty, consisting of rich stuffs, provisions and arms.
There was far more than they needed for their own wants; and so, for
the nonce, they turned traders again. They sold at a good price what
they had unscrupulously stolen, and the profits realized by the Flemish
rovers were enough to make all honest, but poor traders, desire to turn
corsairs.
Zegher ascended the Cydnus, in order to pay a professional visit to
Tarsis, and was not a little surprised, on approaching the city, to
see formidable preparations made to resist him. On drawing closer,
however, the pirate-leader found that Tarsis was in possession of the
army of Flemish crusaders under the great Count Baldwin; and each party
welcomed the other with joyous shouts of “Long live Flanders!” “Long
live the Lion!” The arrival of the fleet was of the greatest advantage
to the Flemings, who, though they had suffered less than the French,
Italian, and German legions, by whom they had been preceded, and had
been progressively triumphing since they had landed, needed succors
both of men and material, and lo! here were the Green Pirates ready to
furnish both, for a consideration. There was abundance of feasting that
night, and a very heavy sermon in the morning.
Baldwin was himself the preacher. His style was a mixture of exhorting
with the threatening; and he was so little complimentary as to tell the
Green pirates that they were nothing better than brigands, and were
undoubtedly on their way to the devil. He added that he would have
treated them as people of such a character, going such a way, only
that they were his countrymen. And then he wept at the very thought
of their present demerits, and their possible destiny. This practice
of weeping was inherited by knights from the old Greek heroes, and
a chevalier in complete steel might shed tears till his suit was
rusty, without the slightest shame. The exhortation continued without
appearing to make any sensible impression upon the rovers. Baldwin,
however, pointed his address at the end, with an observation that if
they would join him in his career of arms, he would give them lands
that should make lords of the whole of them. Upon this observation the
Green Pirates, with a little modest allusion to their unworthiness,
declared that they were eager, one and all, to turn crusaders.
Each man attached a small green cross, in cloth, to the top of his
sleeve; and joyfully followed Baldwin to the field. The count was no
more able to keep his word than a recruiting sergeant who promises a
recruit that he shall be made a field-marshal. Nor was he to blame, for
the greater part of his new allies perished; but enough were left to
make a score of very doughty knights.
Admirable sailors were the Northmen, especially the Anglo-Normans,
whether with respect to manœuvring or courage. “Close quarters” formed
the condition on which they liked to be with an enemy. “Grapple and
board” was their system as soon as they had created a little confusion
among the enemy with their cross-bows and slings. The “mariners” in
those days fought in armor, with heavy swords, spears, and battle-axes.
They were well furnished too with bags of quick-lime, the contents of
which they flung into the eyes of their adversaries, when they could
get to windward of them, an end which they always had in view.
The first regular naval battle fought between the English and the
French was conducted by the former after the fashion above mentioned.
It was during the reign of Henry III., when Louis of France, by the
destruction of his army at “the fair of Lincoln,” was shut up in
London, and depended on the exertions of his wife, Blanche of Castile,
for his release. Blanche sent eighty large ships, besides many smaller
vessels, from Calais, under a piratical commander, the celebrated
Eustace Le Moine. Hubert de Burgh had only forty vessels wherewith to
proceed against this overwhelming force; and on board of these the
English knights proceeded, under protest and with a world of grumbling,
at being compelled to fight on the waters when they had no sea-legs,
and were accustomed to no battles but those on land. No heed was taken
of protest or grumbling; the forty vessels were loosened from their
moorings, and away went the reluctant but strong-boned land sailors,
all in shirts of mail in place of Guernsey jackets, to contend for
the first time with a French fleet. The English ships contrived to
get between Calais and the enemy’s vessels, and fell upon the latter
in their rear. The English bowmen handled their favorite weapons with
a deadly dexterity; and as soon as their vessels were made fast to
those of the French, out flew the quick-lime, flung by the English,
and carried by the wind into the faces of the French. While these
were stamping with pain, screwing their eyes up to look through the
lime-dust, or turning their backs to avoid it, the English boarders
made a rush, cut down men, hacked away the rigging, and so utterly
defeated the French, unaccustomed to this sort of fighting, that of the
great French fleet only fifteen vessels escaped. The number of Gallic
knights and inferior officers captured was very large. As for Eustace
le Moine, he had slunk below to avoid the lime-powder and battle-axes.
He was seized by Richard Fitzroy, King John’s illegitimate son. Fitzroy
refused to give the recreant quarter, but hewed off his head on the
taffrail, and sent it from town to town through England as a pleasant
exhibition.
Errant knights in quest of adventure, and anxious to secure renown,
less frequently visited England than other countries. They appear to
have had a mortal dislike of the sea. This dislike was common to the
bravest and greatest among them. I may cite, as an instance, the case
of the Duke of Orleans and his cavaliers, captured at Agincourt, and
brought over to England, from Calais to Dover, by the gallant and lucky
Henry. The latter walked the deck during a heavy ground swell, with as
much enjoyment as though he had been to the matter born. The French
prince and his knights, on the other hand, were as ignorant of the sea
and as uneasy upon it as a modern English Lord of the Admiralty. They
suffered horribly, and one and all declared that they would rather be
daily exposed to the peril of battle, than cross the straits of Dover
once a month.
Nevertheless, stray knights did occasionally brave the dangers of the
deep, and step ashore on the coast of Kent with a challenge to all
comers of equal degree. We have an instance of this sort of adventurer
in Jacques de Lelaing, whose story is told in this volume. We hear of
another in the nameless knight of Aragon, who in the reign of Henry
V. set all London and many a provincial baronial hall in commotion by
his published invitation to all knights of the same rank as himself,
to come and give him a taste of their quality in a bout at two-edged
sword, axe, and dagger.
The challenge was promptly accepted by stout Sir Robert Cary. Sir
Robert was a poor knight, with nothing to lose, for his sire had lost
all he possessed before Sir Robert’s time, by being faithful to poor
Richard II., a virtue, for the exercise of which he was punished
by forfeiture of his estates, decreed against him by Henry IV. The
disinherited knight, therefore, had a chance of winning land as well
as honor, should he subdue the arrogant Aragonese. The two met in the
then fashionable district of Smithfield, and the Devonshire swordsman,
after a bloody and long-enduring fight, so thoroughly vanquished the
Spaniard, that the king, who delighted in such encounters, and who was
especially glad when victory was won by the side he most favored, not
only restored to Sir Robert the forfeited paternal estates, but he also
authorized him to wear the arms of the much-bruised knight from beyond
sea.
At a later period knightly estates went in the service of another king.
Sir Henry Cary risked life and property in the cause of Charles I., and
while he preserved the first, he was deprived of nearly all the latter.
The head of the family, no longer a knight, if I remember rightly,
was residing at Torr Bay, when the Old Chevalier was about to attempt
to regain the three crowns which, according to no less than a French
archiepiscopal authority, James II. had been simple enough to lose for
one mass. At this period, the English king that would be, sent the Duke
of Ormond to the head of the Cary family, and not only conveyed to him
an assurance that his services to the Stuarts had not been forgotten;
but, by way of guarantee that future, and perhaps more than knightly
honors should be heaped upon him, in case of victory declaring for the
Stuart cause, the chevalier sent him the portraits of James II., and of
that monarch’s wife, Mary of Modena. Similar portraits are to be found
among the cherished treasures of many English families; and these are
supposed to have been originally distributed among various families,
as pledges from the giver, that for swords raised, money lost, or
blood shed in the cause of the Stuarts, knighthood and honors more
substantial should follow as soon as “the king” should “get his own
again.”
To revert to Charles I., it may be added that he was not half so
energetic in trying to keep his own as his grandson was in trying to
recover what had been lost. An incident connected with the battle of
Rowton Heath will serve to exemplify this. Never did king have better
champion than Charles had on that day, in the able knight Sir Marmaduke
Langdale. The knight in question had gained a marked advantage over his
adversary, the equally able Poyntz. To cheer the king, then beleaguered
in Chester Castle, with the news, Sir Marmaduke despatched Colonel
Shakerley. He could not have commissioned a better man. The colonel
contrived to get into Chester after crossing the Dee in a tub, which
he worked with one hand, while he towed his horse after him with the
other. He delivered his message, and offered to convey an answer
or instructions back to Sir Marmaduke, and by the same means, in a
quarter of an hour. The king hesitated; some sanction required for a
certain course of action proposed by Sir Marmaduke was not given, and
Poyntz recovered his lost ground, defeated the royal horse, and thus
effectually prevented Charles from obtaining access to Scotland and
Montrose.
I have given some illustrations of the means by which knighthood was
occasionally gained: an amusing illustration remains to be told.
Dangeau, in his memoirs, speaks of two French peeresses who lived
chiefly upon asses’ milk, but who, nevertheless, became afflicted
with some of the ills incident to humanity, and were ordered to take
physic. They were disgusted with the prescription, but got over the
difficulty charmingly by physicking the donkey. It was not an unusual
thing in France for very great people to treat their vices as they
did their ailments, by a vicarious treatment. Catherine de Medicis is
one out of many instances of this. She was desirous of succeeding in
some great attempt, and set down her failure to the account of her
sins. She instantly declared that she would atone for the latter,
provided her desires were accomplished, by finding a pilgrim who would
go from France to Jerusalem, on foot, and who at every three steps
he advanced should go back one. The wished-for success was achieved,
and after some difficulty a pilgrim was found, strong enough, and
sufficiently persevering to perform the pilgrimage. The royal pledge
was redeemed, and there only remained to reward the pilgrim, who was a
soldier from the neighborhood of Viterbo. Some say he was a merchant;
but merchant or soldier, Catherine knighted, ennobled, and enriched
him. His arms were a cross and a branch of palm tree. We are not told
if he had a motto. It, at all events, could not have been _nulla
vestigia retrorsum_. They who affirm that the pilgrim was a merchant,
declare that his descendants lost their nobility by falling again into
commercial ways--a course which was considered very derogatory, and
indeed, degrading, in those exclusive days.
I may mention here that Heraldry has, after all, very unfairly treated
many of the doers of great deeds. No person below the degree of a
knight could bear a cognizance of his own. Thus, many a squire may
have outdone his master in bravery; and indeed, many a simple soldier
may have done the same, but the memory of it could not go down to
posterity, because the valiant actor was not noble enough to be worthy
of distinction. In our English army, much the same rule still obtains.
Illustrious incompetence is rewarded with “orders,” but plain John
Smith, who has captured a gun with his own hands, receives a couple of
sovereigns, which only enable him to degrade himself by getting drunk
with his friends. Our heraldic writers approve of this dainty way of
conferring distinctions. An anonymous author of a work on Heraldry and
Chivalry, published at Worcester “sixty years since,” says--“We must
consider that had heraldry distributed its honors indiscriminately,
and with too lavish a hand, making no distinction between gentry and
plebeians, the glory of arms would have been lost, and their lustre
less refulgent.”
But it is clear that the rule which allowed none to bear cognizance
who was not of the rank of a knight, was sometimes infringed. Thus,
when Edward the Black Prince made the stout Sir James Audley, his own
especial knight, with an annuity of five hundred marks, for gallant
services at Poictiers, Audley divided the annuity among his four
squires, Delves, Dutton, Foulthurst, and Hawkeston, and also gave them
permission to wear his own achievements, in memory of the way in which
they had kept at his side on the bloody day of Poictiers.
The fashion of different families wearing the same devices had,
however, its inconveniences. Thus, it happened that at this very battle
of Poictiers, or a little before it, Sir John Chandos reconnoitring
the French army, fell in with the Seigneur de Clerment, who was
reconnoitring the English army. Each saw that the device on the upper
vestment of his adversary was the same as his own, blue worked with
rays of gold round the border. They each fell to sharp, and not very
courteous words. The French lord at length remarked that Sir John’s
claim to wear the device was just like “the boastings of you English.
You can not invent anything new,” added the angry French knight, “but
when you stumble on a pretty novelty, you forthwith appropriate it.”
After more angry words they separated, vowing that in next day’s fight,
they would make good all their assertions.
As the general rule was, that squires could not bear a cognizance, so
also was it a rule that knights should only fight with their equals.
For knights are bound to feel no blows
From paltry and unequal foes;
Who, when they slash and cut to pieces,
Do all with civilest addresses.
It is in allusion to this rule that Don Quixote says to Sancho Panza:
“Friend Sancho, for the future, whenever thou perceivest us to be any
way abused by such inferior fellows, thou art not to expect that I
should offer to draw my sword against them; for I will not do it in the
least; no, do thou then draw and chastise them as thou thinkest fit;
but if any knight come to take their part, then will I be sure to step
in between thee and danger.”
Knights, as I have said, have had honor conferred on them for very
strange reasons, in many countries, but in none for slighter reasons,
perhaps, than in France. We may probably except Belgium; for there
is a living knight there, who obtained his order of chivalry for his
pleasant little exhibition of gallantry in furnishing new-laid eggs
every morning at the late queen’s table, when every hen but his, in the
suburban village of Laecken had ceased to lay!
Dumas, in his “Salvandire,” satirically illustrates how knights were
occasionally made in the days of Louis XIV. The hero of that dashing
romance finds himself a captive in the prison of Fort l’Evêque; and
as the king will not grant him permission to leave, he resolves to
leave without permission. He makes the attempt by night, descends from
the window in the dark, is caught by the thigh on a spike, and is
ultimately carried to a cell and a bed within his prison-walls. The
following day the governor waits upon him, and questions him upon the
motives for his dangerous enterprise. The good governor’s curiosity is
founded solely on his anxiety to elicit from the prisoner, that the
desire of the latter to escape was not caused by his dissatisfaction
with any of the prison arrangements, whether of discipline or diet.
The captive signs a certificate to that effect, adding, that his sole
motive for endeavoring to set himself free, was because he had never
done anything to deserve that he should be put under restraint. A few
days after, the governor announces to the recluse that the certificate
of the latter has had an excellent effect. Roger supposes that it has
gained him his liberty; but the governor complacently remarks that
it has done better than that, and that the king, in acknowledgment
of the strict character of the governor’s surveillance, has created
him chevalier of the order of St. Louis. If all the prisoners had
succeeded in escaping, as nearly as Roger, the governor would probably
have been made Knight of the Holy Ghost! The king of France had many
such faithful servants; but history affords many examples of a truer
fidelity than this; particularly the old romances and legendary
history--examples of faithfulness even after death; but, though there
may be many more romantic in those chronicles, I doubt if there is any
one so touching as the proof of fidelity which a knighted civilian,
Sir Thomas Meautis, gave of his affection for Lord Bacon, to whom that
ancient servant of the great lawyer, erected a monument at his own
cost. Hamond Lestrange relates a curious incident, to show that these
two were not divided even after death. “Sir Thomas,” says Lestrange,
“was not nearer to him living than dead; for this Sir Thomas ending
his life about a score of years after, it was his lot to be inhumed
so near his lord’s sepulchre, that in the forming of his grave, part
of the viscount’s body was exposed to view; which being espied by a
doctor of physic, he demanded the head to be given to him; and did most
shamefully disport himself with that skull which was somewhile the
continent of so vast treasures of knowledge.”
Other knights have been celebrated for other qualities. Thus, Sir
Julius Cæsar never heard Bishop Hackett preach without sending him
a piece of money. Indeed, the good knight never heard any preacher
deliver a sermon without sending him money, a pair of gloves, or some
other little gift. He was unwilling, he said, to hear the Word of God,
gratis.
Other knights have cared less to benefit preachers, than to set up
for makers or explainers of doctrines themselves. Thus the Chevalier
Ramsay held that Adam and Eve begot the entire human race in Paradise,
the members of which fell with their procreators; and in this way
the chevalier found in an intelligible form “the great, ancient, and
luminous doctrine of our co-existence with our first parents.” The
Chevalier deemed that in teaching such doctrine he was rearing plants
for a new Paradise; but he was not half so usefully engaged as some
brother knights who were practically engaged as planters. We may
cite Sir John St. Aubyn, who introduced plane-trees into Cornwall in
1723; and Sir Anthony Ashley, the Dorchester knight, who enjoys the
reputation of having introduced cabbages into England about the middle
of the sixteenth century.
In contrast with these useful knights, the person of the once famous
Chevalier de Lorenzi seems to rise before me, and of him I will now add
a few words, by way of conclusion to my miscellaneous volume.
It is perhaps the tritest of platitudes to say that men are
distinguished by various qualities; but it is among the strangest if
not most novel of paradoxes, that the same man should be remarkable for
endowments of the most opposite quality. The eccentric knight whose
name and title I have given above, is, however, an illustration of
the fact; namely, that a man may be at once stupid and witty. It was
chiefly for his stupidity that Lorenzi was famous, a stupidity which
excited laughter. I must, nevertheless, say in behalf of the brother
of the once celebrated minister of France at the Court of Florence, in
the days of Louis XV., that his stupidity so often looks like wit, as
to induce the belief that it was a humor too refined for his hearers to
appreciate.
Acute as Grimm was, he seems to have undervalued the chevalier in
this respect. That literary minister-plenipotentiary of the Duke of
Saxe Gotha could only see in the chevalier the most extraordinary of
originals. He acknowledges, at the same time, Lorenzi’s high feeling of
honor, and his frank and gentle spirit. The chevalier was crammed with
scientific knowledge, but so confusedly that, according to Grimm, he
could never explain himself in an intelligible way, or without exciting
shouts of laughter on the part of his hearers. Madame de Geoffrin,
when comparing the chevalier with the ungraceful M. de Burigny, said
that the latter was awkward in body, but that Lorenzi was awkward in
mind. As the latter never spoke without, at least, an air of profound
reflection, and had therewith a piquant Florentine accent, his mistakes
were more relished. I do not think much of his misapprehension when
introduced, at Lyons, to M. de la Michaudière, in whose company he
dined, at the residence of the commandant of the city. The gentleman
was addressed by an old acquaintance as Le Michaudière, and Lorenzi,
mistaking this for L’Ami Chaudière, persisted in calling the dignified
official by the appellation of Monsieur _Chaudière_, which, to the
proud _intendant_ of Lyons, must have been as bad as if the chevalier
had certified that the _intendant’s_ father was a brazier.
He was far more happy, whether by chance or design, I can not say, at
a subsequent supper at M. de la Michaudière’s house. At the table sat
M. le Normant, husband of Madame de Pompadour, then at the height of
her brilliant infamy. Lorenzi hearing from a neighbor, in reply to an
inquiry, that the gentleman was the consort of the lady in question,
forthwith addressed him as Monsieur de Pompadour, which was as severe
an infliction as husband so situated could well have endured.
This honorable chevalier was clearly not a religious man--but among
knights and other distinguished personages in France, and elsewhere,
at the period of which I am treating, the two terms were perfectly
distinct, and had no necessary connection. Accordingly, a lady who
had called on Lorenzi one Sunday morning, before eleven o’clock,
proposed, at the end of their conversation, to go with him to mass.
“Do they still celebrate mass?” asked the chevalier, with an air of
astonishment. As he had not attended mass for fifteen years, Grimm
gravely asserts that the Florentine imagined that it was no longer
celebrated. “The more,” adds the epistolary baron, “that as he never
went out before two o’clock, he no longer recollected that he had seen
a church-door open.”
The chevalier, who was Knight of the Order of St. Stephen of Tuscany,
and who had withdrawn from the French Army, with the rank of colonel,
after the conquest of Minorca, had a great devotion toward the abstract
sciences. He studied geometry and astronomy, and had the habit, says
Grimm, to measure the events of life, and reduce them to geometrical
value. As he was thoughtful, he more frequently, when addressed, made
reply to abstruse questionings of his own brain than to persons who
spoke to him. Grimm, after saying that the Knight of St. Stephen was
only struck by the true or false side of a question, and never by its
pleasant or amusing aspect, illustrates his saying by an anecdote,
in which many persons will fail to find any remarkable point. Grimm
encountered him at Madame Geoffrin’s, after his return from a tour in
Italy. “I saw him embroiling his senses with the genealogies of two
ladies in whose society he passes his life, and who bear the same name,
although they are of distinct families. Madame Geoffrin endeavored to
draw him from these genealogical snares, observing to him:--‘Really,
chevalier, you are in your dotage. It is worse than ever.’ ‘Madame,’
answered the chevalier, ‘life is so short!’” Grimm thought he should
have done rank injustice to posterity if he had not recorded this reply
for the benefit of future students of laconic wit. And again:--Grimm
shows us the chevalier walking with Monsieur de St. Lambert toward
Versailles. On the way, the latter asked him his age. “I am sixty,”
said the knight. “I did not think you so old,” rejoined his friend.
“Well,” replied the chevalier, “when I say sixty, I am not indeed quite
so old, just yet; but--” “But how old are you then, in reality?” asked
his companion. “Fifty-five, exactly; but why may I not be allowed to
accustom myself to change my age every year, as I do my shirt?”
One day, he was praising the figure of a lady, but instead of saying
that she had the form of a nymph, he said that her shape was like
that of Mademoiselle Allard. “Oh!” cried Grimm, “you are not lucky,
chevalier, in your comparison. Mademoiselle Allard may be deservedly
eulogized for many qualities, but nobody ever thought of praising her
shape.” “Likely enough,” said Lorenzi, “for I do not know, nor, indeed,
have I ever seen her; but as everybody talks about Mademoiselle Allard,
I thought I might talk about her too.”
If there was satire in this it was not of so neat a quality as that
exhibited by him at Madame Greffon’s, where he was spending an evening
with Grimm and D’Alembert. The last two were seated, and conversing.
Lorenzi stood behind them, with his back to the chimney-piece, and
scarcely able to hold up his head, so overcome was he by a desire to
sleep. “Chevalier,” said Grimm, “you must find our conversation a
horrid bore, since you fall asleep when you are on your legs.” “Oh,
no!” exclaimed the chevalier, “you see I go to sleep when I like.” The
naïveté with which he insinuated that he liked to go to sleep rather
than listen to the small talk of a wit and a philosopher, was expressed
with a delicious delicacy.
Of his _non-sequential_ remarks Grimm supplies several. He was once
speaking disparagingly of M. de St. Lambert’s knowledge of chess. “You
forget,” said the latter, “that I gained fifteen louis to your thirty
sous, during our campaign in Minorca.” “Oh, ay,” answered the knight,
“but that was toward the end of the siege!”
It was at this siege that he used to go to the trenches with his
astronomical instruments, to make observations. He one day returned
to his quarters without his instruments, having left them all in the
trenches. “They will certainly be stolen,” said a friend. “That can’t
be,” said Lorenzi, “for I left my watch with them.”
And yet this “distraught” knight was the cause, remote cause, of the
death of Admiral Byng. He discovered, by mere chance, in his quarters
at Minorca, a book of signals as used by the English fleet. He hastened
with it to the Prince de Beaubeau, who, in his turn, hastened to place
it before the Marshal de Richelieu. The commanders could scarcely
believe in their good fortune, but when the naval combat commenced it
was seen that the English observed this system of signals exactly. With
this knowledge it was easy to anticipate all their manœuvres, and they
were obliged to withdraw with disgrace, which Byng was made to expiate
by his death. The chevalier never thought of asking for a reward, and
his government entirely forgot to give him one.
When about to accompany M. de Mirepoix, who was appointed embassador to
London, he packed up his own things and that so perfectly that it was
not till he had sent them off that he discovered he had left himself
nothing to travel in but the shirt and robe-de-chambre which he wore
while employed in thus disposing of the rest of his wardrobe.
He lived in a small apartment at the Luxembourg, as persons of like
rank and small means reside in the royal palace at Hampton Court. One
day, on descending the staircase he slipped, and broke his nose. On
looking round for the cause of his accident, he observed a whitish
fluid on the steps; and, calling the porter, he rated him soundly for
allowing this soapy water to remain on the staircase. “It is _barley_
water,” said the porter, “which a waiter from the café spilled as he
carried it along.” “Oh! if that be the case,” replied the chevalier, in
a mild tone, and with his hand up to his mutilated nose, “if that be
the case, it is I who am in the wrong.”
Grimm adds, in summing up his character, that he was richer in pocket
handkerchiefs than any other man. As his apartment was just under the
roof of the palace, and that he, almost every day on going out, forgot
to take a handkerchief with him, he found it less trouble to buy a
new than to ascend to his room and procure an old one. Accordingly, a
mercer in his neighborhood had a fresh handkerchief ready for him every
day.
The history of eccentric knights would make a volume of itself. Here,
therefore, I will conclude, grateful to the readers who may have
honored me by perusing any portion of the miscellaneous pages which
I have devoted to illustrations of chivalry, and, adding a remark of
Johnson, who says, touching the respect paid to those who bear arms,
that “The naval and military professions have the dignity of danger,
and that mankind reverence those who have got over fear, which is so
general a weakness.”
THE END.
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Meagher’s Speeches. Speeches on the Legislative Independence of
Ireland, with Introductory Notes. By THOMAS FRANCIS MEAGHER. 1 vol.,
12mo, cloth. Portrait. Price $1 00.
Lectures and Miscellanies. By HENRY JAMES. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth. Price
$1 25.
Characters in the Gospel, illustrating Phases of Character at the
Present Day. By Rev. E. H. CHAPIN. 1 vol., 12mo. Price 50 cents.
Ballou’s Review of Beecher. The Divine Character Vindicated. A Review
of the “Conflict of Ages.” By Rev. MOSES BALLOU. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth.
Price $1 00.
Maurice’s Theological Essays. Theological Essays. By FREDERICK DENISON
MAURICE, M. A., Chaplain of Lincoln’s Inn. From the Second London
Edition, with a New Preface, and other Additions. 1 vol., 12mo, cloth.
Price $1 00.
The Pictorial Bible; being the Old and New Testaments according to
the Authorized Version; Illustrated with more than One Thousand
Engravings, representing the Historical Events, after celebrated
Pictures; the Landscape Scenes, from Original Drawings, or from
Authentic Engravings; and the Subjects of Natural History, Costume,
and Antiquities, from the best sources. 1 vol., 4to, embossed binding.
Price $6 00.
Life under an Italian Despotism!
LORENZO BENONI,
OR
PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF AN ITALIAN
_One Vol., 12mo, Cloth--Price $1.00._
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
“The author of ‘Lorenzo Benoni’ is GIOVANNI RUFFINI, a native of
Genoa, who effected his escape from his native country after the
attempt at revolution in 1833. His book is, in substance, an authentic
account of real persons and incidents, though the writer has chosen
to adopt fictitious and fantastic designations for himself and his
associates. Since 1833, Ruffini has resided chiefly (if not wholly) in
England and France, where his qualities, we understand, have secured
him respect and regard. In 1848, he was selected by Charles Albert to
fill the responsible situation of embassador to Paris, in which city
he had long been domesticated as a refugee. He ere long, however,
relinquished that office, and again withdrew into private life. He
appears to have employed the time of his exile in this country to such
advantage as to have acquired a most uncommon mastery over the English
language. The present volume (we are informed on good authority) is
exclusively his own--and, if so, on the score of style alone it is
a remarkable curiosity. But its matter also is curious.”--_London
Quarterly Review for July._
“A tale of sorrow that has lain long in a rich mind, like a ruin in a
fertile country, and is not the less gravely impressive for the grace
and beauty of its coverings ... at the same time the most determined
novel-reader could desire no work more fascinating over which to
forget the flight of time.... No sketch of foreign oppression has
ever, we believe, been submitted to the English public by a foreigner,
equal or nearly equal to this volume in literary merit. It is not
unworthy to be ranked among contemporary works whose season is the
century in which their authors live.”--_London Examiner._
“The book should be as extensively read as ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’
inasmuch as it develops the existence of a state of slavery and
degradation, worse even than that which Mrs. Beecher Stowe has
elucidated with so much pathos and feeling.”--_Bell’s Weekly
Messenger._
“Few works of the season will be read with greater pleasure than this;
there is a great charm in the quiet, natural way in which the story is
told.”--_London Atlas._
“The author’s great forte is character-painting. This portraiture
is accomplished with remarkable skill, the traits both
individual and national being marked with great nicety without
obtrusiveness.”--_London Spectator._
“Under the modest guise of the biography of an imaginary ‘Lorenzo
Benoni,’ we have here, in fact, the memoir of a man whose name could
not be pronounced in certain parts of northern Italy without calling
up tragic yet noble historical recollections ... its merits, simply as
a work of literary art, are of a very high order. The style is really
beautiful--easy, sprightly, graceful, and full of the happiest and
most ingenious turns of phrase and fancy.”--_North British Review._
“This has been not unjustly compared to ‘_Gil Blas_,’ to which it is
scarcely inferior in spirited delineations of human character, and
in the variety of events which it relates. But as a description of
actual occurrences illustrating the domestic and political condition
of Italy, at a period fraught with interest to all classes of readers,
it far transcends in importance any work of mere fiction.”--_Dublin
Evening Mail._
Memoirs of a Distinguished Financier.
FIFTY YEARS IN BOTH HEMISPHERES;
OR, REMINISCENCES OF A MERCHANT’S LIFE.
By VINCENT NOLTE. 12mo. Price $1.25. [Eighth Edition]
The following, being a few of the more prominent names introduced in
the work, will show the nature and extent of personal and anecdotal
interest exhibited in its pages:--
Aaron Burr; General Jackson; John Jacob Astor; Stephen Girard; La
Fayette; Audubon; the Barings; Robert Fulton; David Parish; Samuel
Swartwout; Lord Aberdeen; Peter K. Wagner; Napoleon; Paul Delaroche;
Sir Francis Chantry; Queen Victoria; Horace Vernet; Major General
Scott; Mr. Saul; Lafitte; John Quincy Adams; Edward Livingston; John
R. Grymes; Auguste Davezac; General Moreau; Gouverneur Morris; J.
J. Ouvrard; Messrs. Hope & Co.; General Claiborne; Marshal Soult;
Chateaubriand; Le Roy de Chaumont; Duke of Wellington; William M.
Price; P. C. Labouchere; Ingres; Charles VI., of Spain; Marshal
Blucher; Nicholas Biddle; Manuel Godoy; Villele; Lord Eldon; Emperor
Alexander, etc. etc.
“He seldom looks at the bright side of a character, and dearly
loves--he confesses it--a bit of scandal. But he paints well,
describes well, seizes characteristics which make clear to the reader
the nature of the man whom they illustrate.”
The memoirs of a man of a singularly adventurous and speculative
turn, who entered upon the occupations of manhood early, and
retained its energies late; has been an eye-witness of not a few of
the important events that occurred in Europe and America between
the years 1796 and 1850, and himself a sharer in more than one of
them; who has been associated, or an agent in some of the largest
commercial and financial operations that British and Dutch capital and
enterprise ever ventured upon, and has been brought into contact and
acquaintance--not unfrequently into intimacy--with a number of the
remarkable men of his time. Seldom, either in print or in the flesh,
have we fallen in with so restless, versatile and excursive a genius
as Vincent Nolte, Esq., of Europe and America--no more limited address
will sufficiently express his cosmopolitan domicile.--_Blackwood’s
Magazine._
As a reflection of real life, a book stamped with a strong personal
character, and filled with unique details of a large experience of
private and public interest, we unhesitatingly call attention to it
as one of the most note-worthy productions of the day.--_New York
Churchman._
Our old merchants and politicians will find it very amusing, and
it will excite vivid reminiscences of men and things forty years
ago. We might criticise the hap-hazard and dare-devil spirit of the
author, but the raciness of his anecdotes is the result of these very
defects.--_Boston Transcript._
His autobiography presents a spicy variety of incident and adventure,
and a great deal of really useful and interesting information, all the
more acceptable for the profusion of anecdote and piquant scandal with
which it is interspersed.--_N. Y. Jour. of Commerce._
Not the least interesting portion of the work, to us here, is the
narration of Nolte’s intercourse with our great men, and his piquant
and occasionally ill-natured notice of their faults and foibles.--_N.
Y. Herald._
It is a vivid chronicle of varied and remarkable experiences, and
will serve to rectify the errors which too often pass among men as
veritable history.--_Evening Post._
The anecdotes, declamations, sentiments, descriptions, and whole
tone of the book, are vivacious and genuine, and, making allowance
for obvious prejudices, graphic and reliable. To the old it will be
wonderfully suggestive, to the young curiously informing, and to both
rich in entertainment.--_Boston Atlas._
As an amusing narrative, it would be difficult to find its superior;
but the book has peculiar interest from the freedom with which
the author shows up our American notorieties of the past forty
years.--_Courier._
THE UNITED STATES JAPAN EXPEDITION.
An Account of Three Visits to the Japanese Empire, with Sketches of
Madeira, St. Helena, Cape of Good Hope, Mauritius, Ceylon, Singapore,
China, and Loo-Choo. By Col. J. W. SPALDING, of the United States
Steam Frigate Mississippi, Flag-ship of the Expedition, with eight
Illustrations in Tint. 12mo., cloth, $1 25.
The book embraces a novel field in “Japan,” and a wide one in the
world, but the author has made a long voyage seem a short one, in the
interest which his graphic and instructive pen has thrown about every
league of his progress. The style is flowing and animated--Japan and
the Japanese are dashed off in life-like pictures. We advise all who
have the slightest curiosity to become acquainted with that secluded
and remarkable people, and to obtain a connected and spirited account
of the great American Expedition to Japan, to purchase the admirable
work of Col. Spalding.--_Rich. Dispatch._
Col. Spalding is a man whose character in the community in which
he has heretofore resided places him above suspicion, so that his
narrative may be implicitly trusted. He is withal a racy writer, and
a person gifted with very uncommon powers of observation.--_Baltimore
Patriot._
It describes all that the intelligent author saw, in a clear and
very agreeable manner, and mentions many things of a personal
character, which, of course, would form no part of an official
report.--_Baltimore American._
There is a freshness and vividness in his descriptions which makes the
book more than commonly attractive.--_Puritan Recorder._
Mr. Spalding writes with great ease and perspicuity. His powers of
description are fully adequate to any occasion which requires their
exertion, as is abundantly evidenced in the present work.--_Petersburg
Intelligencer._
A very readable journal of the Japan Expedition, by an officer which,
though aiming only at re-producing the impressions of the writer’s
mind, gives a good view of the strange scenes and characters which the
opening of that country disclosed.--_N. Y. Evan._
Mr. Spalding’s work gives the results of his observations precisely as
they occurred to him at the time, his mind being singularly unbiassed
by the enthusiasm of those by whom he was surrounded. He looks upon
things with a cool, discriminating eye, neither over-estimating nor
undervaluing the advantages of our new relations.--_N. Y. Herald._
It is the first account of Perry’s Expedition, and will always be more
popular than any government report.--_St. Louis Leader._
“Every Inch a King.”--_Harper’s Magazine._
The Private Life of an Eastern King, from the MS. of a member of the
household of his late Majesty, Nussir-u-Deen, King of Oude. By WM.
KNIGHTON, author of “Forest Life in Ceylon,” &c. 12mo., cloth, 75
cents.
The whole story reads like a lost chapter from the Arabian
Nights.--_Lon. Athenæum._
Gives a better insight into purely eastern manners than any work we
know of.--_London News of the World._
This amusing volume lets the reader very much behind the scenes, as
regards haut ton in Asia. Since the appearance of the Arabian Nights,
there has been no such exposition of the sayings and doings of eastern
royalty.--_N. Y. Daily Times._
Lucknow, the capital, is noted for its extraordinary menagerie of
wild animals, and one of the chief amusements of the court appears
to have been to witness them fight. Some very exciting contests are
narrated, and the book contains much of interest to the sportsman. It
also conveys a vivid picture of eastern manners, as seen in all their
familiarity; and some of the adventures recorded are scarcely less
wonderful than those of Hajji Baba.--_Boston Traveller._
The career of the cabin-boy barber, who exercised such great influence
over the crown, and so much to his own advantage, having amassed the
sum of £240,000 before he returned, is a very curious one, and well
told. On the whole, this is one of the most amusing books of the
season.--_Boston Telegraph._
He lifts the curtain and unfolds the minutiæ of the daily life of
an absolute sovereign. We learn more of eastern manners and Hindoo
peculiarities than from stately historians or elaborate geographies.
We can commend it as an entertaining volume.--_Religious Herald
Richmond. Va._
Transcriber's Notes:
Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.
Bold type is shown thus: =shout=.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.
Perceived typographical errors have been changed.
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