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THE LAST OF THE BARONS

by Edward Bulwer Lytton




DEDICATORY EPISTLE.

I dedicate to you, my indulgent Critic and long-tried Friend, the work
which owes its origin to your suggestion. Long since, you urged me to
attempt a fiction which might borrow its characters from our own
Records, and serve to illustrate some of those truths which History is
too often compelled to leave to the Tale-teller, the Dramatist, and
the Poet.  Unquestionably, Fiction, when aspiring to something higher
than mere romance, does not pervert, but elucidate Facts.  He who
employs it worthily must, like a biographer, study the time and the
characters he selects, with a minute and earnest diligence which the
general historian, whose range extends over centuries, can scarcely be
expected to bestow upon the things and the men of a single epoch.  His
descriptions should fill up with colour and detail the cold outlines
of the rapid chronicler; and in spite of all that has been argued by
pseudo-critics, the very fancy which urged and animated his theme
should necessarily tend to increase the reader's practical and
familiar acquaintance with the habits, the motives, and the modes of
thought which constitute the true idiosyncrasy of an age.  More than
all, to Fiction is permitted that liberal use of Analogical Hypothesis
which is denied to History, and which, if sobered by research, and
enlightened by that knowledge of mankind (without which Fiction can
neither harm nor profit, for it becomes unreadable), tends to clear up
much that were otherwise obscure, and to solve the disputes and
difficulties of contradictory evidence by the philosophy of the human
heart.

My own impression of the greatness of the labour to which you invited
me made me the more diffident of success, inasmuch as the field of
English historical fiction had been so amply cultivated, not only by
the most brilliant of our many glorious Novelists, but by later
writers of high and merited reputation.  But however the annals of our
History have been exhausted by the industry of romance, the subject
you finally pressed on my choice is unquestionably one which, whether
in the delineation of character, the expression of passion, or the
suggestion of historical truths, can hardly fail to direct the
Novelist to paths wholly untrodden by his predecessors in the Land of
Fiction.

Encouraged by you, I commenced my task; encouraged by you, I venture,
on concluding it, to believe that, despite the partial adoption of
that established compromise between the modern and the elder diction,
which Sir Walter Scott so artistically improved from the more rugged
phraseology employed by Strutt, and which later writers have perhaps
somewhat overhackneyed, I may yet have avoided all material trespass
upon ground which others have already redeemed from the waste.
Whatever the produce of the soil I have selected, I claim, at least,
to have cleared it with my own labour, and ploughed it with my own
heifer.

The reign of Edward IV. is in itself suggestive of new considerations
and unexhausted interest to those who accurately regard it.  Then
commenced the policy consummated by Henry VII.; then were broken up
the great elements of the old feudal order; a new Nobility was called
into power, to aid the growing Middle Class in its struggles with the
ancient; and in the fate of the hero of the age, Richard Nevile, Earl
of Warwick, popularly called the King-maker, "the greatest as well as
the last of those mighty Barons who formerly overawed the Crown,"
[Hume adds, "and rendered the people incapable of civil government,"--
a sentence which, perhaps, judges too hastily the whole question at
issue in our earlier history, between the jealousy of the barons and
the authority of the king.] was involved the very principle of our
existing civilization.  It adds to the wide scope of Fiction, which
ever loves to explore the twilight, that, as Hume has truly observed,
"No part of English history since the Conquest is so obscure, so
uncertain, so little authentic or consistent, as that of the Wars
between the two Roses."  It adds also to the importance of that
conjectural research in which Fiction may be made so interesting and
so useful, that "this profound darkness falls upon us just on the eve
of the restoration of letters;" [Hume] while amidst the gloom, we
perceive the movement of those great and heroic passions in which
Fiction finds delineations everlastingly new, and are brought in
contact with characters sufficiently familiar for interest,
sufficiently remote for adaptation to romance, and above all, so
frequently obscured by contradictory evidence, that we lend ourselves
willingly to any one who seeks to help our judgment of the individual
by tests taken from the general knowledge of mankind.

Round the great image of the "Last of the Barons" group Edward the
Fourth, at once frank and false; the brilliant but ominous boyhood of
Richard the Third; the accomplished Hastings, "a good knight and
gentle, but somewhat dissolute of living;" [Chronicle of Edward V., in
Stowe] the vehement and fiery Margaret of Anjou; the meek image of her
"holy Henry," and the pale shadow of their son.  There may we see,
also, the gorgeous Prelate, refining in policy and wile, as the
enthusiasm and energy which had formerly upheld the Ancient Church
pass into the stern and persecuted votaries of the New; we behold, in
that social transition, the sober Trader--outgrowing the prejudices of
the rude retainer or rustic franklin, from whom he is sprung--
recognizing sagaciously, and supporting sturdily, the sectarian
interests of his order, and preparing the way for the mighty Middle
Class, in which our Modern Civilization, with its faults and its
merits, has established its stronghold; while, in contrast to the
measured and thoughtful notions of liberty which prudent Commerce
entertains, we are reminded of the political fanaticism of the secret
Lollard,--of the jacquerie of the turbulent mob-leader; and perceive,
amidst the various tyrannies of the time, and often partially allied
with the warlike seignorie, [For it is noticeable that in nearly all
the popular risings--that of Cade, of Robin of Redesdale, and
afterwards of that which Perkin Warbeck made subservient to his
extraordinary enterprise--the proclamations of the rebels always
announced, among their popular grievances, the depression of the
ancient nobles and the elevation of new men.]--ever jealous against
all kingly despotism,--the restless and ignorant movement of a
democratic principle, ultimately suppressed, though not destroyed,
under the Tudors, by the strong union of a Middle Class, anxious for
security and order, with an Executive Authority determined upon
absolute sway.

Nor should we obtain a complete and comprehensive view of that most
interesting Period of Transition, unless we saw something of the
influence which the sombre and sinister wisdom of Italian policy began
to exercise over the councils of the great,--a policy of refined
stratagem, of complicated intrigue, of systematic falsehood, of
ruthless, but secret violence; a policy which actuated the fell
statecraft of Louis XI.; which darkened, whenever he paused to think
and to scheme, the gaudy and jovial character of Edward IV.; which
appeared in its fullest combination of profound guile and resolute
will in Richard III.; and, softened down into more plausible and
specious purpose by the unimpassioned sagacity of Henry VII., finally
attained the object which justified all its villanies to the princes
of its native land,--namely, the tranquillity of a settled State, and
the establishment of a civilized but imperious despotism.

Again, in that twilight time, upon which was dawning the great
invention that gave to Letters and to Science the precision and
durability of the printed page, it is interesting to conjecture what
would have been the fate of any scientific achievement for which the
world was less prepared.  The reception of printing into England
chanced just at the happy period when Scholarship and Literature were
favoured by the great.  The princes of York, with the exception of
Edward IV. himself, who had, however, the grace to lament his own want
of learning, and the taste to appreciate it in others, were highly
educated.  The Lords Rivers and Hastings [The erudite Lord Worcester
had been one of Caxton's warmest patrons, but that nobleman was no
more at the time in which printing is said to have been actually
introduced into England.] were accomplished in all the "witte and
lere" of their age.  Princes and peers vied with each other in their
patronage of Caxton, and Richard III., during his brief reign, spared
no pains to circulate to the utmost the invention destined to transmit
his own memory to the hatred and the horror of all succeeding time.
But when we look around us, we see, in contrast to the gracious and
fostering reception of the mere mechanism by which science is made
manifest, the utmost intolerance to science itself.  The mathematics
in especial are deemed the very cabala of the black art.  Accusations
of witchcraft were never more abundant; and yet, strange to say, those
who openly professed to practise the unhallowed science, [Nigromancy,
or Sorcery, even took its place amongst the regular callings.  Thus,
"Thomas Vandyke, late of Cambridge," is styled (Rolls Parl. 6, p. 273)
Nigromancer as his profession.--Sharon Turner, "History of England,"
vol iv. p. 6.  Burke, "History of Richard III."] and contrived to make
their deceptions profitable to some unworthy political purpose, appear
to have enjoyed safety, and sometimes even honour, while those who,
occupied with some practical, useful, and noble pursuits
uncomprehended by prince or people, denied their sorcery were
despatched without mercy.  The mathematician and astronomer
Bolingbroke (the greatest clerk of his age) is hanged and quartered as
a wizard, while not only impunity but reverence seems to have awaited
a certain Friar Bungey, for having raised mists and vapours, which
greatly befriended Edward IV. at the battle of Barnet.

Our knowledge of the intellectual spirit of the age, therefore, only
becomes perfect when we contrast the success of the Impostor with the
fate of the true Genius.  And as the prejudices of the populace ran
high against all mechanical contrivances for altering the settled
conditions of labour, [Even in the article of bonnets and hats, it
appears that certain wicked fulling mills were deemed worthy of a
special anathema in the reign of Edward IV. These engines are accused
of having sought, "by subtle imagination," the destruction of the
original makers of hats and bonnets" by man's strength,--that is, with
hands and feet; "and an act of parliament was passed (22d of Edward
IV.) to put down the fabrication of the said hats and bonnets by
mechanical contrivance.] so probably, in the very instinct and destiny
of Genius which ever drive it to a war with popular prejudice, it
would be towards such contrivances that a man of great ingenuity and
intellect, if studying the physical sciences, would direct his
ambition.

Whether the author, in the invention he has assigned to his
philosopher (Adam Warner), has too boldly assumed the possibility of a
conception so much in advance of the time, they who have examined such
of the works of Roger Bacon as are yet given to the world can best
decide; but the assumption in itself belongs strictly to the most
acknowledged prerogatives of Fiction; and the true and important
question will obviously be, not whether Adam Warner could have
constructed his model, but whether, having so constructed it, the fate
that befell him was probable and natural.

Such characters as I have here alluded to seemed, then, to me, in
meditating the treatment of the high and brilliant subject which your
eloquence animated me to attempt, the proper Representatives of the
multiform Truths which the time of Warwick the King-maker affords to
our interests and suggests for our instruction; and I can only wish
that the powers of the author were worthier of the theme.

It is necessary that I now state briefly the foundation of the
Historical portions of this narrative.  The charming and popular
"History of Hume," which, however, in its treatment of the reign of
Edward IV. is more than ordinarily incorrect, has probably left upon
the minds of many of my readers, who may not have directed their
attention to more recent and accurate researches into that obscure
period, an erroneous impression of the causes which led to the breach
between Edward IV. and his great kinsman and subject, the Earl of
Warwick.  The general notion is probably still strong that it was the
marriage of the young king to Elizabeth Gray, during Warwick's
negotiations in France for the alliance of Bona of Savoy (sister-in-
law to Louis XI.), which exasperated the fiery earl, and induced his
union with the House of Lancaster.  All our more recent historians
have justly rejected this groundless fable, which even Hume (his
extreme penetration supplying the defects of his superficial research)
admits with reserve.  ["There may even some doubt arise with regard to
the proposal of marriage made to Bona of Savoy," etc.--HUME, note to
p. 222, vol. iii. edit. 1825.]  A short summary of the reasons for
this rejection is given by Dr. Lingard, and annexed below.  ["Many
writers tell us that the enmity of Warwick arose from his
disappointment caused by Edward's clandestine marriage with Elizabeth.
If we may believe them, the earl was at the very time in France
negotiating on the part of the king a marriage with Bona of Savoy,
sister to the Queen of France; and having succeeded in his mission,
brought back with him the Count of Dampmartin as ambassador from
Louis.  To me the whole story appears a fiction.  1. It is not to be
found in the more ancient historians.  2. Warwick was not at the time
in France.  On the 20th of April, ten days before the marriage, he was
employed in negotiating a truce with the French envoys in London (Rym.
xi. 521), and on the 26th of May, about three weeks after it, was
appointed to treat of another truce with the King of Scots (Rym. xi.
424).  3. Nor could he bring Dampmartin with him to England; for that
nobleman was committed a prisoner to the Bastile in September, 1463,
and remained there till May, 1465 (Monstrel. iii. 97, 109).  Three
contemporary and well-informed writers, the two continuators of the
History of Croyland and Wyrcester, attribute his discontent to the
marriages and honours granted to the Wydeviles, and the marriage of
the princess Margaret with the Duke of Burgundy."--LINGARD, vol. iii.
c. 24, pp. 5, 19, 4to ed.]  And, indeed, it is a matter of wonder that
so many of our chroniclers could have gravely admitted a legend
contradicted by all the subsequent conduct of Warwick himself; for we
find the earl specially doing honour to the publication of Edward's
marriage, standing godfather to his first-born (the Princess
Elizabeth), employed as ambassador or acting as minister, and fighting
for Edward, and against the Lancastrians, during the five years that
elapsed between the coronation of Elizabeth and Warwick's rebellion.

The real causes of this memorable quarrel, in which Warwick acquired
his title of King-maker, appear to have been these.

It is probable enough, as Sharon Turner suggests, [Sharon Turner:
History of England, vol. iii. p. 269.] that Warwick was disappointed
that, since Edward chose a subject for his wife, he neglected the more
suitable marriage he might have formed with the earl's eldest
daughter; and it is impossible but that the earl should have been
greatly chafed, in common with all his order, by the promotion of the
queen's relations, [W. Wyr. 506, 7.  Croyl. 542.] new men and apostate
Lancastrians.  But it is clear that these causes for discontent never
weakened his zeal for Edward till the year 1467, when we chance upon
the true origin of the romance concerning Bona of Savoy, and the first
open dissension between Edward and the earl.

In that year Warwick went to France, to conclude an alliance with
Louis XI., and to secure the hand of one of the French princes [Which
of the princes this was does not appear, and can scarcely be
conjectured.  The "Pictorial History of England" (Book v. 102) in a
tone of easy decision says "it was one of the sons of Louis XI."  But
Louis had no living sons at all at the time.  The Dauphin was not born
till three years afterwards.  The most probable person was the Duke of
Guienne, Louis's brother.] for Margaret, sister to Edward IV.; during
this period, Edward received the bastard brother of Charles, Count of
Charolois, afterwards Duke of Burgundy, and arranged a marriage
between Margaret and the count.

Warwick's embassy was thus dishonoured, and the dishonour was
aggravated by personal enmity to the bridegroom Edward had preferred.
[The Croyland Historian, who, as far as his brief and meagre record
extends, is the best authority for the time of Edward IV., very
decidedly states the Burgundian alliance to be the original cause of
Warwick's displeasure, rather than the king's marriage with Elizabeth:
"Upon which (the marriage of Margaret with Charolois) Richard Nevile,
Earl of Warwick, who had for so many years taken party with the French
against the Burgundians, conceived great indignation; and I hold this
to be the truer cause of his resentment than the king's marriage with
Elizabeth, for he had rather have procured a husband for the aforesaid
princess Margaret in the kingdom of France."  The Croyland Historian
also speaks emphatically of the strong animosity existing between
Charolois and Warwick.--Cont. Croyl. 551.]  The earl retired in
disgust to his castle.  But Warwick's nature, which Hume has happily
described as one of "undesigning frankness and openness," [Hume,
"Henry VI.," vol. iii. p. 172, edit. 1825.] does not seem to have long
harboured this resentment.  By the intercession of the Archbishop of
York and others, a reconciliation was effected, and the next year,
1468, we find Warwick again in favour, and even so far forgetting his
own former cause of complaint as to accompany the procession in honour
of Margaret's nuptials with his private foe.  [Lingard.]  In the
following year, however, arose the second dissension between the king
and his minister,--namely, in the king's refusal to sanction the
marriage of his brother Clarence with the earl's daughter Isabel,--a
refusal which was attended with a resolute opposition that must
greatly have galled the pride of the earl, since Edward even went so
far as to solicit the Pope to refuse his sanction, on the ground of
relationship.  [Carte.  Wm. Wyr.]  The Pope, nevertheless, grants the
dispensation, and the marriage takes place at Calais.  A popular
rebellion then breaks out in England.  Some of Warwick's kinsmen--
those, however, belonging to the branch of the Nevile family that had
always been Lancastrians, and at variance with the earl's party--are
found at its head.  The king, who is in imminent danger, writes a
supplicating letter to Warwick to come to his aid.  ["Paston Letters,"
cxcviii. vol. ii., Knight's ed.  See Lingard, c. 24, for the true date
of Edward's letters to Warwick, Clarence, and the Archbishop of York.]
The earl again forgets former causes for resentment, hastens from
Calais, rescues the king, and quells the rebellion by the influence of
his popular name.

We next find Edward at Warwick's castle of Middleham, where, according
to some historians, he is forcibly detained,--an assertion treated by
others as a contemptible invention.  This question will be examined in
the course of this work; [See Note II.] but whatever the true
construction of the story, we find that Warwick and the king are still
on such friendly terms, that the earl marches in person against a
rebellion on the borders, obtains a signal victory, and that the rebel
leader (the earl's own kinsman) is beheaded by Edward at York.  We
find that, immediately after this supposed detention, Edward speaks of
Warwick and his brothers "as his best friends;" ["Paston Letters,"
cciv. vol. ii., Knight's ed.  The date of this letter, which puzzled
the worthy annotator, is clearly to be referred to Edward's return
from York, after his visit to Middleham in 1469.  No mention is
therein made by the gossiping contemporary of any rumour that Edward
had suffered imprisonment.  He enters the city in state, as having
returned safe and victorious from a formidable rebellion.  The letter
goes on to say: "The king himself hath (that is, holds) good language
of the Lords Clarence, of Warwick, etc., saying 'they be his best
friends.'"  Would he say this if just escaped from a prison?  Sir John
Paston, the writer of the letter, adds, it is true, "But his household
men have (hold) other language." very probably, for the household men
were the court creatures always at variance with Warwick, and held, no
doubt, the same language they had been in the habit of holding
before.] that he betroths his eldest daughter to Warwick's nephew, the
male heir of the family.  And then suddenly, only three months
afterwards (in February, 1470), and without any clear and apparent
cause, we find Warwick in open rebellion, animated by a deadly hatred
to the king, refusing, from first to last, all overtures of
conciliation; and so determined is his vengeance, that he bows a
pride, hitherto morbidly susceptible, to the vehement insolence of
Margaret of Anjou, and forms the closest alliance with the Lancastrian
party, in the destruction of which his whole life had previously been
employed.

Here, then, where History leaves us in the dark, where our curiosity
is the most excited, Fiction gropes amidst the ancient chronicles, and
seeks to detect and to guess the truth.  And then Fiction, accustomed
to deal with the human heart, seizes upon the paramount importance of
a Fact which the modern historian has been contented to place amongst
dubious and collateral causes of dissension.  We find it broadly and
strongly stated by Hall and others, that Edward had coarsely attempted
the virtue of one of the earl's female relations.  "And farther it
erreth not from the truth," says Hall,  "that the king did attempt a
thing once in the earl's house, which was much against the earl's
honesty; but whether it was the daughter or the niece," adds the
chronicler, "was not, for both their honours, openly known; but surely
such a thing WAS attempted by King Edward," etc.

Any one at all familiar with Hall (and, indeed, with all our principal
chroniclers, except Fabyan), will not expect any accurate precision as
to the date he assigns for the outrage.  He awards to it, therefore,
the same date he erroneously gives to Warwick's other grudges (namely,
a period brought some years lower by all judicious historians) a date
at which Warwick was still Edward's fastest friend.

Once grant the probability of this insult to the earl (the probability
is conceded at once by the more recent historians, and received
without scruple as a fact by Rapia, Habington, and Carte), and the
whole obscurity which involves this memorable quarrel vanishes at
once.  Here was, indeed, a wrong never to be forgiven, and yet never
to be proclaimed.  As Hall implies, the honour of the earl was
implicated in hushing the scandal, and the honour of Edward in
concealing the offence.  That if ever the insult were attempted, it
must have been just previous to the earl's declared hostility is
clear.  Offences of that kind hurry men to immediate action at the
first, or else, if they stoop to dissimulation the more effectually to
avenge afterwards, the outbreak bides its seasonable time.  But the
time selected by the earl for his outbreak was the very worst he could
have chosen, and attests the influence of a sudden passion,--a new and
uncalculated cause of resentment.  He had no forces collected; he had
not even sounded his own brother-in-law, Lord Stanley (since he was
uncertain of his intentions); while, but a few months before, had he
felt any desire to dethrone the king, he could either have suffered
him to be crushed by the popular rebellion the earl himself had
quelled, or have disposed of his person as he pleased when a guest at
his own castle of Middleham.  His evident want of all preparation and
forethought--a want which drove into rapid and compulsory flight from
England the baron to whose banner, a few months afterwards, flocked
sixty thousand men--proves that the cause of his alienation was fresh
and recent.

If, then, the cause we have referred to, as mentioned by Hall and
others, seems the most probable we can find (no other cause for such
abrupt hostility being discernible), the date for it must be placed
where it is in this work,--namely, just prior to the earl's revolt.
The next question is, who could have been the lady thus offended,
whether a niece or daughter.  Scarcely a niece, for Warwick had one
married brother, Lord Montagu, and several sisters; but the sisters
were married to lords who remained friendly to Edward, [Except the
sisters married to Lord Fitzhugh and Lord Oxford.  But though
Fitzhugh, or rather his son, broke into rebellion, it was for some
cause in which Warwick did not sympathize, for by Warwick himself was
that rebellion put down; nor could the aggrieved lady have been a
daughter of Lord Oxford, for he was a stanch, though not avowed,
Lancastrian, and seems to have carefully kept aloof from the court.]
and Montagu seems to have had no daughter out of childhood, [Montagu's
wife could have been little more than thirty at the time of his death.
She married again, and had a family by her second husband.] while that
nobleman himself did not share Warwick's rebellion at the first, but
continued to enjoy the confidence of Edward.  We cannot reasonably,
then, conceive the uncle to have been so much more revengeful than the
parents,--the legitimate guardians of the honour of a daughter.  It
is, therefore, more probable that the insulted maiden should have been
one of Lord Warwick's daughters; and this is the general belief.
Carte plainly declares it was Isabel.  But Isabel it could hardly have
been.  She was then married to Edward's brother, the Duke of Clarence,
and within a month of her confinement.  The earl had only one other
daughter, Anne, then in the flower of her youth; and though Isabel
appears to have possessed a more striking character of beauty, Anne
must have had no inconsiderable charms to have won the love of the
Lancastrian Prince Edward, and to have inspired a tender and human
affection in Richard Duke of Gloucester.  [Not only does Majerus, the
Flemish annalist, speak of Richard's early affection to Anne, but
Richard's pertinacity in marrying her, at a time when her family was
crushed and fallen, seems to sanction the assertion.  True, that
Richard received with her a considerable portion of the estates of her
parents.  But both Anne herself and her parents were attainted, and
the whole property at the disposal of the Crown.  Richard at that time
had conferred the most important services on Edward.  He had remained
faithful to him during the rebellion of Clarence; he had been the hero
of the day both at Barnet and Tewksbury.  His reputation was then
exceedingly high, and if he had demanded, as a legitimate reward, the
lands of Middleham, without the bride, Edward could not well have
refused them.  He certainly had a much better claim than the only
other competitor for the confiscated estates,--namely, the perjured
and despicable Clarence.  For Anne's reluctance to marry Richard, and
the disguise she assumed, see Miss Strickland's "Life of Anne of
Warwick."  For the honour of Anne, rather than of Richard, to whose
memory one crime more or less matters but little, it may here be
observed that so far from there being any ground to suppose that
Gloucester was an accomplice in the assassination of the young prince
Edward of Lancaster, there is some ground to believe that that prince
was not assassinated at all, but died (as we would fain hope the
grandson of Henry V. did die) fighting manfully in the field.--
"Harleian Manuscripts;" Stowe, "Chronicle of Tewksbury;" Sharon
Turner, vol. iii. p. 335.]  It is also noticeable, that when, not as
Shakspeare represents, but after long solicitation, and apparently by
positive coercion, Anne formed her second marriage, she seems to have
been kept carefully by Richard from his gay brother's court, and
rarely, if ever, to have appeared in London till Edward was no more.

That considerable obscurity should always rest upon the facts
connected with Edward's meditated crime,--that they should never be
published amongst the grievances of the haughty rebel is natural from
the very dignity of the parties, and the character of the offence;
that in such obscurity sober History should not venture too far on the
hypothesis suggested by the chronicler, is right and laudable.  But
probably it will be conceded by all, that here Fiction finds its
lawful province, and that it may reasonably help, by no improbable nor
groundless conjecture, to render connected and clear the most broken
and the darkest fragments of our annals.

I have judged it better partially to forestall the interest of the
reader in my narrative, by stating thus openly what he may expect,
than to encounter the far less favourable impression (if he had been
hitherto a believer in the old romance of Bona of Savoy), [I say the
old romance of Bona of Savoy, so far as Edward's rejection of her hand
for that of Elizabeth Gray is stated to have made the cause of his
quarrel with Warwick.  But I do not deny the possibility that such a
marriage had been contemplated and advised by Warwick, though he
neither sought to negotiate it, nor was wronged by Edward's preference
of his fair subject.] that the author was taking an unwarrantable
liberty with the real facts, when, in truth, it is upon the real
facts, as far as they can be ascertained, that the author has built
his tale, and his boldest inventions are but deductions from the
amplest evidence he could collect.  Nay, he even ventures to believe,
that whoever hereafter shall write the history of Edward IV. will not
disdain to avail himself of some suggestions scattered throughout
these volumes, and tending to throw new light upon the events of that
intricate but important period.

It is probable that this work will prove more popular in its nature
than my last fiction of "Zanoni," which could only be relished by
those interested in the examinations of the various problems in human
life which it attempts to solve.  But both fictions, however different
and distinct their treatment, are constructed on those principles of
art to which, in all my later works, however imperfect my success, I
have sought at least steadily to adhere.

To my mind, a writer should sit down to compose a fiction as a painter
prepares to compose a picture.  His first care should be the
conception of a whole as lofty as his intellect can grasp, as
harmonious and complete as his art can accomplish; his second care,
the character of the interest which the details are intended to
sustain.

It is when we compare works of imagination in writing with works of
imagination on the canvas, that we can best form a critical idea of
the different schools which exist in each; for common both to the
author and the painter are those styles which we call the Familiar,
the Picturesque, and the Intellectual.  By recurring to this
comparison we can, without much difficulty, classify works of Fiction
in their proper order, and estimate the rank they should severally
hold.  The Intellectual will probably never be the most widely popular
for the moment.  He who prefers to study in this school must be
prepared for much depreciation, for its greatest excellences, even if
he achieve them, are not the most obvious to the many.  In discussing,
for instance, a modern work, we hear it praised, perhaps, for some
striking passage, some prominent character; but when do we ever hear
any comment on its harmony of construction, on its fulness of design,
on its ideal character,--on its essentials, in short, as a work of
art?  What we hear most valued in the picture, we often find the most
neglected in the book,--namely, the composition; and this, simply
because in England painting is recognized as an art, and estimated
according to definite theories; but in literature we judge from a
taste never formed, from a thousand prejudices and ignorant
predilections.  We do not yet comprehend that the author is an artist,
and that the true rules of art by which he should be tested are
precise and immutable.  Hence the singular and fantastic caprices of
the popular opinion,--its exaggerations of praise or censure, its
passion and reaction.  At one while, its solemn contempt for
Wordsworth; at another, its absurd idolatry.  At one while we are
stunned by the noisy celebrity of Byron, at another we are calmly told
that he can scarcely be called a poet.  Each of these variations in
the public is implicitly followed by the vulgar criticism; and as a
few years back our journals vied with each other in ridiculing
Wordsworth for the faults which he did not possess, they vie now with
each other in eulogiums upon the merits which he has never displayed.

These violent fluctuations betray both a public and a criticism
utterly unschooled in the elementary principles of literary art, and
entitle the humblest author to dispute the censure of the hour, while
they ought to render the greatest suspicious of its praise.

It is, then, in conformity, not with any presumptuous conviction of
his own superiority, but with his common experience and common-sense,
that every author who addresses an English audience in serious earnest
is permitted to feel that his final sentence rests not with the jury
before which he is first heard.  The literary history of the day
consists of a series of judgments set aside.

But this uncertainty must more essentially betide every student,
however lowly, in the school I have called the Intellectual, which
must ever be more or less at variance with the popular canons.  It is
its hard necessity to vex and disturb the lazy quietude of vulgar
taste; for unless it did so, it could neither elevate nor move.  He
who resigns the Dutch art for the Italian must continue through the
dark to explore the principles upon which he founds his design, to
which he adapts his execution; in hope or in despondence still
faithful to the theory which cares less for the amount of interest
created than for the sources from which the interest is to be drawn;
seeking in action the movement of the grander passions or the subtler
springs of conduct, seeking in repose the colouring of intellectual
beauty.

The Low and the High of Art are not very readily comprehended.  They
depend not upon the worldly degree or the physical condition of the
characters delineated; they depend entirely upon the quality of the
emotion which the characters are intended to excite,--namely, whether
of sympathy for something low, or of admiration for something high.
There is nothing high in a boor's head by Teniers, there is nothing
low in a boor's head by Guido.  What makes the difference between the
two?  The absence or presence of the Ideal!  But every one can judge
of the merit of the first, for it is of the Familiar school; it
requires a connoisseur to see the merit of the last, for it is of the
Intellectual.

I have the less scrupled to leave these remarks to cavil or to
sarcasm, because this fiction is probably the last with which I shall
trespass upon the Public, and I am desirous that it shall contain, at
least, my avowal of the principles upon which it and its later
predecessors have been composed.  You know well, however others may
dispute the fact, the earnestness with which those principles have
been meditated and pursued,--with high desire, if but with poor
results.

It is a pleasure to feel that the aim, which I value more than the
success, is comprehended by one whose exquisite taste as a critic is
only impaired by that far rarer quality,--the disposition to over-
estimate the person you profess to esteem!  Adieu, my sincere and
valued friend; and accept, as a mute token of gratitude and regard,
these flowers gathered in the Garden where we have so often roved
together.                            E. L. B.

  LONDON, January, 1843.


PREFACE TO THE LAST OF THE BARONS

This was the first attempt of the author in Historical Romance upon
English ground.  Nor would he have risked the disadvantage of
comparison with the genius of Sir Walter Scott, had he not believed
that that great writer and his numerous imitators had left altogether
unoccupied the peculiar field in Historical Romance which the Author
has here sought to bring into cultivation.  In "The Last of the
Barons," as in "Harold," the aim has been to illustrate the actual
history of the period, and to bring into fuller display than general
History itself has done the characters of the principal personages of
the time, the motives by which they were probably actuated, the state
of parties, the condition of the people, and the great social
interests which were involved in what, regarded imperfectly, appear
but the feuds of rival factions.

"The Last of the Barons" has been by many esteemed the best of the
Author's romances; and perhaps in the portraiture of actual character,
and the grouping of the various interests and agencies of the time, it
may have produced effects which render it more vigorous and lifelike
than any of the other attempts in romance by the same hand.

It will be observed that the purely imaginary characters introduced
are very few; and, however prominent they may appear, still, in order
not to interfere with the genuine passions and events of history, they
are represented as the passive sufferers, not the active agents, of
the real events.  Of these imaginary characters, the most successful
is Adam Warner, the philosopher in advance of his age; indeed, as an
ideal portrait, I look upon it as the most original in conception, and
the most finished in execution, of any to be found in my numerous
prose works, "Zanoni" alone excepted.

For the rest, I venture to think that the general reader will obtain
from these pages a better notion of the important age, characterized
by the decline of the feudal system, and immediately preceding that
great change in society which we usually date from the accession of
Henry VII., than he could otherwise gather, without wading through a
vast mass of neglected chronicles and antiquarian dissertations.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

 BOOK I

 THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE

  CHAPTER

      I  The Pastime-ground of old Cockaigne
     II  The Broken Gittern
    III  The Trader and the Gentle; or, the Changing Generation
     IV  Ill fares the Country Mouse in the Traps of Town
      V  Weal to the Idler, Woe to the Workman
     VI  Master Marmaduke Nevile fears for the Spiritual Weal of his
         Host and Hostess
    VII  There is a Rod for the Back of every Fool who would be Wiser
         than his Generation

 BOOK II

 THE KING'S COURT

  CHAPTER

      I  Earl Warwick the King-maker
     II  King Edward the Fourth
    III  The Antechamber

 BOOK III

 IN WHICH THE HISTORY PASSES FROM THE KING'S COURT TO THE STUDENT'S
   CELL, AND RELATES THE PERILS THAT BEFELL A PHILOSOPHER FOR
   MEDDLING WITH THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD

  CHAPTER

      I  The Solitary Sage and the Solitary Maid
     II  Master Adam Warner grows a Miser, and behaves Shamefully
    III  A Strange Visitor--All Ages of the World breed World-
           Betters
     IV  Lord Hastings
      V  Master Adam Warner and King Henry the Sixth
     VI  How, on leaving King Log, Foolish Wisdom runs a-muck on
           King Stork
    VII  My Lady Duchess's Opinion of the Utility of Master Warner's
           Invention, and her esteem for its Explosion
   VIII  The Old Woman talks of Sorrows, the Young Woman dreams
           of Love; the Courtier flies from Present Power to
           Remembrances of Past Hopes, and the World-Bettered opens
           Utopia, with a View of the Gibbet for the Silly Sage he
           has seduced into his Schemes,--so, ever and evermore,
           runs the World away
     IX  How the Destructive Organ of Prince Richard promises Goodly
           Development

 BOOK IV

 INTRIGUES OF THE COURT OF EDWARD IV

  CHAPTER

      I  Margaret of Anjou
     II  In which are laid Open to the Reader the Character of Edward
           the Fourth and that of his Court, with the Machinations of
           the Woodvilles against the Earl of Warwick
    III  Wherein Master Nicholas Alwyn visits the Court, and there
           learns Matter of which the Acute Reader will judge for
           himself
     IV  Exhibiting the Benefits which Royal Patronage confers on
           Genius,--also the Early Loves of the Lord Hastings; with
           other Matters Edifying and Delectable
      V  The Woodville Intrigue prospers--Montagu confers with
           Hastings, visits the Archbishop of York, and is met on the
           Road by a strange Personage
     VI  The Arrival of the Count de la Roche, and the various
           Excitement produced on many Personages by that Event
    VII  The Renowned Combat between Sir Anthony Woodville and the
           Bastard of Burgundy
   VIII  How the Bastard of Burgundy prospered more in his Policy than
           With the Pole-axe--and how King Edward holds his Summer
           Chase in the Fair Groves of Shene
     IX  The Great Actor returns to fill the Stage
      X  How the Great Lords come to the King-maker, and with what
           Proffers

 BOOK V

 THE LAST OF THE BARONS IN HIS FATHERS HALLS

  CHAPTER

      I  Rural England in the Middle Ages--Noble Visitors seek the
           Castle
         Of Middleham
     II  Councils and Musings
    III  The Sisters
     IV  The Destrier

 BOOK VI

 WHEREIN ARE OPENED SOME GLIMPSES OF THE FATE BELOW THAT ATTENDS THOSE
   WHO ARE BETTER THAN OTHERS, AND THOSE WHO DESIRE TO MAKE OTHERS
   BETTER.  LOVE, DEMAGOGY, AND SCIENCE ALL EQUALLY OFF-SPRING OF THE
   SAME PROLIFIC DELUSION,--NAMELY, THAT MEAN SOULS (THE EARTH'S
   MAJORITY) ARE WORTH THE HOPE AND THE AGONY OF NOBLE SOULS, THE
   EVERLASTING SUFFERING AND ASPIRING FEW.

  CHAPTER
      I  New Dissentions
     II  The Would-be Improvers of Jove's Football, Earth--The Sad
           Father and the Sad Child--The Fair Rivals
    III  Wherein the Demagogue seeks the Courtier
     IV  Sibyll
      V  Katherine
     VI  Joy for Adam, and Hope for Sibyll--and Popular Friar Bungey!
    VII  A Love Scene

 BOOK VII

 THE POPULAR REBELLION

  CHAPTER

      I  The White Lion of March shakes his Mane
     II  The Camp at Olney
    III  The Camp of the Rebels
     IV  The Norman Earl and the Saxon Demagogue confer
      V  What Faith Edward IV purposeth to keep with Earl and People
     VI  What befalls King Edward on his Escape from Olney
    VII  How King Edward arrives at the Castle of Middleham
   VIII  The Ancients rightly gave to the Goddess of Eloquence a Crown
     IX  Wedded Confidence and Love--the Earl and the Prelate--the
           Prelate and the King--Schemes--Wiles--and the Birth of a
           Dark Thought destined to eclipse a Sun

 BOOK VIII

 IN WHICH THE LAST LINK BETWEEN KING-MAKER AND KING SNAPS ASUNDER

  CHAPTER

      I  The Lady Anne visits the Court
     II  The Sleeping Innocence--the Wakeful Crime
    III  New Dangers to the House of York--and the King's Heart
           allies itself with Rebellion against the King's Throne
     IV  The Foster-brothers
      V  The Lover and the Gallant--Woman's Choice
     VI  Warwick returns-appeases a Discontented Prince-and confers
           with a Revengeful Conspirator
    VII  The Fear and the Flight
   VIII  The Group round the Death-bed of the Lancastrian Widow

 BOOK IX.

 THE WANDERERS AND THE EXILES

  CHAPTER

      I  How the Great Baron becomes as Great a Rebel
     II  Many Things briefly told
    III  The Plot of the Hostelry--the Maid and the Scholar in
           their Home
     IV  The World's Justice, and the Wisdom of our Ancestors
      V  The Fugitives are captured--the Tymbesteres reappear--
           Moonlight on the Revel of the Living--Moonlight on the
           Slumber of the Dead

     VI  The Subtle Craft of Richard of Gloucester
    VII  Warwick and his Family in Exile
   VIII  How the Heir of Lancaster meets the King-maker
     IX  The Interview of Earl Warwick and Queen Margaret
      X  Love and Marriage--Doubts of Conscience--Domestic Jealousy--
           and Household Treason

 BOOK X.

 THE RETURN OF THE KING-MAKER

  CHAPTER

      I  The Maid's Hope, the Courtier's Love, and the Sage's Comfort
     II  The Man awakes in the Sage, and the She-wolf again hath
           tracked the Lamb
    III  Virtuous Resolves submitted to the Test of Vanity and the
           World
     IV  The Strife which Sibyll had courted, between Katherine and
           herself, commences in Serious Earnest
      V  The Meeting of Hastings and Katherine
     VI  Hastings learns what has befallen Sibyll, repairs to the
           King, and encounters an old Rival
    VII  The Landing of Lord Warwick, and the Events that ensue
           thereon
   VIII  What befell Adam Warner and Sibyll when made subject to the
           Great Friar Bungey
     IX  The Deliberations of Mayor and Council, while Lord Warwick
           marches upon London
      X  The Triumphal Entry of the Earl--the Royal Captive in the
           Tower--the Meeting between King-maker and King
     XI  The Tower in Commotion

 BOOK XI

 THE NEW POSITION OF THE KING-MAKER

  CHAPTER

      I  Wherein Master Adam Warner is notably commended and
           advanced--and Greatness says to Wisdom, "Thy Destiny
           be mine, Amen"
     II  The Prosperity of the Outer Show--the Cares of the Inner Man
    III  Further Views into the Heart of Man, and the Conditions
           of Power
     IV  The Return of Edward of York
      V  The Progress of the Plantagenet
     VI  Lord Warwick, with the Foe in the field and the Traitor at
           The Hearth

 BOOK XII

 THE BATTLE OF BARNET

  CHAPTER

      I  A King in his City hopes to recover his Realm--A Woman in
           her Chamber fears to forfeit her own
     II  Sharp is the Kiss of the Falcon's Bear
    III  A Pause
  IV-VI  The Battle
    VII  The last Pilgrims in the long Procession to the Common Bourne





BOOK I.

THE ADVENTURES OF MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE.




CHAPTER I.

THE PASTIME-GROUND OF OLD COCKAIGNE.

Westward, beyond the still pleasant, but even then no longer solitary,
hamlet of Charing, a broad space, broken here and there by scattered
houses and venerable pollards, in the early spring of 1467, presented
the rural scene for the sports and pastimes of the inhabitants of
Westminster and London.  Scarcely need we say that open spaces for the
popular games and diversions were then numerous in the suburbs of the
metropolis,--grateful to some the fresh pools of Islington; to others,
the grass-bare fields of Finsbury; to all, the hedgeless plains of
vast Mile-end.  But the site to which we are now summoned was a new
and maiden holiday-ground, lately bestowed upon the townsfolk of
Westminster by the powerful Earl of Warwick.

Raised by a verdant slope above the low, marsh-grown soil of
Westminster, the ground communicated to the left with the Brook-
fields, through which stole the peaceful Ty-bourne, and commanded
prospects, on all sides fair, and on each side varied.  Behind, rose
the twin green hills of Hampstead and Highgate, with the upland park
and chase of Marybone,--its stately manor-house half hid in woods.  In
front might be seen the Convent of the Lepers, dedicated to Saint
James, now a palace; then to the left, York House, [The residence of
the Archbishops of York] now Whitehall; farther on, the spires of
Westminster Abbey and the gloomy tower of the Sanctuary; next, the
Palace, with its bulwark and vawmure, soaring from the river; while
eastward, and nearer to the scene, stretched the long, bush-grown
passage of the Strand, picturesquely varied with bridges, and flanked
to the right by the embattled halls of feudal nobles, or the inns of
the no less powerful prelates; while sombre and huge amidst hall and
inn, loomed the gigantic ruins of the Savoy, demolished in the
insurrection of Wat Tyler.  Farther on, and farther yet, the eye
wandered over tower and gate, and arch and spire, with frequent
glimpses of the broad sunlit river, and the opposite shore crowned by
the palace of Lambeth, and the Church of St. Mary Overies, till the
indistinct cluster of battlements around the Fortress-Palatine bounded
the curious gaze.  As whatever is new is for a while popular, so to
this pastime-ground, on the day we treat of, flocked, not only the
idlers of Westminster, but the lordly dwellers of Ludgate and the
Flete, and the wealthy citizens of tumultuous Chepe.

The ground was well suited to the purpose to which it was devoted.
About the outskirts, indeed, there were swamps and fish-pools; but a
considerable plot towards the centre presented a level sward, already
worn bare and brown by the feet of the multitude.  From this, towards
the left, extended alleys, some recently planted, intended to afford,
in summer, cool and shady places for the favourite game of bowls;
while scattered clumps, chiefly of old pollards, to the right broke
the space agreeably enough into detached portions, each of which
afforded its separate pastime or diversion.  Around were ranged many
carts, or wagons; horses of all sorts and value were led to and fro,
while their owners were at sport.  Tents, awnings, hostelries,
temporary buildings, stages for showmen and jugglers, abounded, and
gave the scene the appearance of a fair; but what particularly now
demands our attention was a broad plot in the ground, dedicated to the
noble diversion of archery.  The reigning House of York owed much of
its military success to the superiority of the bowmen under its
banners, and the Londoners themselves were jealous of their reputation
in this martial accomplishment.  For the last fifty years,
notwithstanding the warlike nature of the times, the practice of the
bow, in the intervals of peace, had been more neglected than seemed
wise to the rulers.  Both the king and his loyal city had of late
taken much pains to enforce the due exercise of "Goddes instrumente,"
[So called emphatically by Bishop Latimer, in his celebrated Sixth
Sermon.] upon which an edict had declared that "the liberties and
honour of England principally rested!"

And numerous now was the attendance, not only of the citizens, the
burghers, and the idle populace, but of the gallant nobles who
surrounded the court of Edward IV., then in the prime of his youth,--
the handsomest, the gayest, and the bravest prince in Christendom.

The royal tournaments (which were, however, waning from their ancient
lustre to kindle afresh, and to expire in the reigns of the succeeding
Tudors), restricted to the amusements of knight and noble, no doubt
presented more of pomp and splendour than the motley and mixed
assembly of all ranks that now grouped around the competitors for the
silver arrow, or listened to the itinerant jongleur, dissour, or
minstrel, or, seated under the stunted shade of the old trees,
indulged, with eager looks and hands often wandering to their dagger-
hilts, in the absorbing passion of the dice; but no later and earlier
scenes of revelry ever, perhaps, exhibited that heartiness of
enjoyment, that universal holiday, which attended this mixture of
every class, that established a rude equality for the hour between the
knight and the retainer, the burgess and the courtier.

The revolution that placed Edward IV. upon the throne had, in fact,
been a popular one.  Not only had the valour and moderation of his
father, Richard, Duke of York, bequeathed a heritage of affection to
his brave and accomplished son; not only were the most beloved of the
great barons the leaders of his party; but the king himself, partly
from inclination, partly from policy, spared no pains to win the good
graces of that slowly rising, but even then important part of the
population,--the Middle Class.  He was the first king who descended,
without loss of dignity and respect, from the society of his peers and
princes, to join familiarly in the feasts and diversions of the
merchant and the trader.  The lord mayor and council of London were
admitted, on more than one solemn occasion, into the deliberations of
the court; and Edward had not long since, on the coronation of his
queen, much to the discontent of certain of his barons, conferred the
Knighthood of the hath upon four of the citizens.  On the other hand,
though Edward's gallantries--the only vice which tended to diminish
his popularity with the sober burgesses--were little worthy of his
station, his frank, joyous familiarity with his inferiors was not
debased by the buffooneries that had led to the reverses and the awful
fate of two of his royal predecessors.  There must have been a popular
principle, indeed, as well as a popular fancy, involved in the steady
and ardent adherence which the population of London in particular, and
most of the great cities, exhibited to the person and the cause of
Edward IV. There was a feeling that his reign was an advance in
civilization upon the monastic virtues of Henry VI., and the stern
ferocity which accompanied the great qualities of "The Foreign Woman,"
as the people styled and regarded Henry's consort, Margaret of Anjou.
While thus the gifts, the courtesy, and the policy of the young
sovereign made him popular with the middle classes, he owed the
allegiance of the more powerful barons and the favour of the rural
population to a man who stood colossal amidst the iron images of the
Age,--the greatest and the last of the old Norman chivalry, kinglier
in pride, in state, in possessions, and in renown than the king
himself, Richard Nevile, Earl of Salisbury and Warwick.

This princely personage, in the full vigour of his age, possessed all
the attributes that endear the noble to the commons.  His valour in
the field was accompanied with a generosity rare in the captains of
the time.  He valued himself on sharing the perils and the hardships
of his meanest soldier.  His haughtiness to the great was not
incompatible with frank affability to the lowly.  His wealth was
enormous, but it was equalled by his magnificence, and rendered
popular by his lavish hospitality.  No less than thirty thousand
persons are said to have feasted daily at the open tables with which
he allured to his countless castles the strong hands and grateful
hearts of a martial and unsettled population.  More haughty than
ambitious, he was feared because he avenged all affront; and yet not
envied, because he seemed above all favour.

The holiday on the archery-ground was more than usually gay, for the
rumour had spread from the court to the city that Edward was about to
increase his power abroad, and to repair what he had lost in the eyes
of Europe through his marriage with Elizabeth Gray, by allying his
sister Margaret with the brother of Louis XI., and that no less a
person than the Earl of Warwick had been the day before selected as
ambassador on the important occasion.

Various opinions were entertained upon the preference given to France
in this alliance over the rival candidate for the hand of the
princess,--namely, the Count de Charolois, afterwards Charles the
Bold, Duke of Burgundy.

"By 'r Lady," said a stout citizen about the age of fifty, "but I am
not over pleased with this French marriage-making!  I would liefer the
stout earl were going to France with bows and bills than sarcenets and
satins.  What will become of our trade with Flanders,--answer me that,
Master Stokton?  The House of York is a good House, and the king is a
good king, but trade is trade.  Every man must draw water to his own
mill."

"Hush, Master Heyford!" said a small lean man in a light-gray surcoat.
"The king loves not talk about what the king does.  'T is ill jesting
with lions.  Remember William Walker, hanged for saying his son should
be heir to the crown."

"Troth," answered Master Heyford, nothing daunted, for he belonged to
one of the most powerful corporations of London,--it was but a scurvy
Pepperer [old name for Grocer] who made that joke; but a joke from a
worshipful goldsmith, who has moneys and influence, and a fair wife of
his own, whom the king himself has been pleased to commend, is another
guess sort of matter.  But here is my grave-visaged headman, who
always contrives to pick up the last gossip astir, and has a deep eye
into millstones.  Why, ho, there! Alwyn--I say, Nicholas Alwyn!--who
would have thought to see thee with that bow, a good half-ell taller
than thyself?  Methought thou wert too sober and studious for such
man-at-arms sort of devilry."

"An' it please you, Master Heyford," answered the person thus
addressed,--a young man, pale and lean, though sinewy and large-boned,
with a countenance of great intelligence, but a slow and somewhat
formal manner of speech, and a strong provincial accent,--"an' it
please you, King Edward's edict ordains every Englishman to have a bow
of his own height; and he who neglects the shaft on a holiday
forfeiteth one halfpenny and some honour.  For the rest, methinks that
the citizens of London will become of more worth and potency every
year; and it shall not be my fault if I do not, though but a humble
headman to your worshipful mastership, help to make them so."

"Why, that's well said, lad; but if the Londoners prosper, it is
because they have nobles in their gipsires, [a kind of pouch worn at
the girdle] not bows in their hands."

"Thinkest thou then, Master Heyford, that any king at a pinch would
leave them the gipsire, if they could not protect it with the bow?
That Age may have gold, let not Youth despise iron."

"Body o' me!" cried Master Heyford, "but thou hadst better curb in thy
tongue.  Though I have my jest,--as a rich man and a corpulent,--a lad
who has his way to make good should be silent and--But he's gone."

"Where hooked you up that young jack fish?" said Master Stokton, the
thin mercer, who had reminded the goldsmith of the fate of the grocer.

"Why, he was meant for the cowl, but his mother, a widow, at his own
wish, let him make choice of the flat cap.  He was the best 'prentice
ever I had.  By the blood of Saint Thomas, he will push his way in
good time; he has a head, Master Stokton,--a head, and an ear; and a
great big pair of eyes always looking out for something to his proper
advantage."

In the mean while, the goldsmith's headman had walked leisurely up to
the archery-ground; and even in his gait and walk, as he thus repaired
to a pastime, there was something steady, staid, and business-like.

The youths of his class and calling were at that day very different
from their equals in this.  Many of them the sons of provincial
retainers, some even of franklins and gentlemen, their childhood had
made them familiar with the splendour and the sports of knighthood;
they had learned to wrestle, to cudgel, to pitch the bar or the quoit,
to draw the bow, and to practise the sword and buckler, before
transplanted from the village green to the city stall.  And even then,
the constant broils and wars of the time, the example of their
betters, the holiday spectacle of mimic strife, and, above all, the
powerful and corporate association they formed amongst themselves,
tended to make them as wild, as jovial, and as dissolute a set of
young fellows as their posterity are now sober, careful, and discreet.
And as Nicholas Alwyn, with a slight inclination of his head, passed
by, two or three loud, swaggering, bold-looking groups of apprentices
--their shaggy hair streaming over their shoulders, their caps on one
side, their short cloaks of blue torn or patched, though still
passably new, their bludgeons under their arms, and their whole
appearance and manner not very dissimilar from the German collegians
in the last century--notably contrasted Alwyn's prim dress, his
precise walk, and the feline care with which he stepped aside from any
patches of mire that might sully the soles of his square-toed shoes.

The idle apprentices winked and whispered, and lolled out their
tongues at him as he passed.  "Oh, but that must be as good as a May-
Fair day,--sober Nick Alwyn's maiden flight of the shaft!  Hollo,
puissant archer, take care of the goslings yonder!  Look this way when
thou pull'st, and then woe to the other side!"  Venting these and many
similar specimens of the humour of Cockaigne, the apprentices,
however, followed their quondam colleague, and elbowed their way into
the crowd gathered around the competitors at the butt; and it was at
this spot, commanding a view of the whole space, that the spectator
might well have formed some notion of the vast following of the House
of Nevile.  For everywhere along the front lines, everywhere in the
scattered groups, might be seen, glistening in the sunlight, the
armourial badges of that mighty family.  The Pied Bull, which was the
proper cognizance [Pied Bull the cognizance, the Dun Bull's head the
crest] of the Neviles, was principally borne by the numerous kinsmen
of Earl Warwick, who rejoiced in the Nevile name.  The Lord Montagu,
Warwick's brother, to whom the king had granted the forfeit title and
estates of the earls of Northumberland, distinguished his own
retainers, however, by the special request of the ancient Montagus.--a
Gryphon issuant from a ducal crown.  But far more numerous than Bull
or Gryphon (numerous as either seemed) were the badges worn by those
who ranked themselves among the peculiar followers of the great Earl
of Warwick.  The cognizance of the Bear and Ragged Staff, which he
assumed in right of the Beauchamps, whom he represented through his
wife, the heiress of the lords of Warwick, was worn in the hats of the
more gentle and well-born clansmen and followers, while the Ragged
Staff alone was worked front and back on the scarlet jackets of his
more humble and personal retainers.  It was a matter of popular notice
and admiration that in those who wore these badges, as in the wearers
of the hat and staff of the ancient Spartans, might be traced a grave
loftiness of bearing, as if they belonged to another caste, another
race, than the herd of men.  Near the place where the rivals for the
silver arrow were collected, a lordly party had reined in their
palfreys, and conversed with each other, as the judges of the field
were marshalling the competitors.

"Who," said one of these gallants, "who is that comely young fellow
just below us, with the Nevile cognizance of the Bull on his hat?  He
has the air of one I should know."

"I never saw him before, my Lord of Northumberland," answered one of
the gentlemen thus addressed; "but, pardieu, he who knows all the
Neviles by eye must know half England."  The Lord Montagu--for though
at that moment invested with the titles of the Percy, by that name
Earl Warwick's brother is known to history, and by that, his rightful
name, he shall therefore be designated in these pages--the Lord
Montagu smiled graciously at this remark, and a murmur through the
crowd announced that the competition for the silver arrow was about to
commence.  The butts, formed of turf, with a small white mark fastened
to the centre by a very minute peg, were placed apart, one at each
end, at the distance of eleven score yards.  At the extremity where
the shooting commenced, the crowd assembled, taking care to keep clear
from the opposite butt, as the warning word of "Fast" was thundered
forth; but eager was the general murmur, and many were the wagers
given and accepted, as some well-known archer tried his chance.  Near
the butt that now formed the target, stood the marker with his white
wand; and the rapidity with which archer after archer discharged his
shaft, and then, if it missed, hurried across the ground to pick it up
(for arrows were dear enough not to be lightly lost), amidst the jeers
and laughter of the bystanders, was highly animated and diverting.  As
yet, however, no marksman had hit the white, though many had gone
close to it, when Nicholas Alwyn stepped forward; and there was
something so unwarlike in his whole air, so prim in his gait, so
careful in his deliberate survey of the shaft and his precise
adjustment of the leathern gauntlet that protected the arm from the
painful twang of the string, that a general burst of laughter from the
bystanders attested their anticipation of a signal failure.

"'Fore Heaven!" said Montagu, "he handles his bow an' it were a yard-
measure.  One would think he were about to bargain for the bow-string,
he eyes it so closely."

"And now," said Nicholas, slowly adjusting the arrow, "a shot for the
honour of old Westmoreland!"  And as he spoke, the arrow sprang
gallantly forth, and quivered in the very heart of the white.  There
was a general movement of surprise among the spectators, as the marker
thrice shook his wand over his head.  But Alwyn, as indifferent to
their respect as he had been to their ridicule, turned round and said,
with a significant glance at the silent nobles, "We springals of
London can take care of our own, if need be."

"These fellows wax insolent.  Our good king spoils them," said
Montagu, with a curl of his lip.  "I wish some young squire of gentle
blood would not disdain a shot for the Nevile against the craftsman.
How say you, fair sir?"  And with a princely courtesy of mien and
smile, Lord Montagu turned to the young man he had noticed as wearing
the cognizance of the First House in England.  The bow was not the
customary weapon of the well-born; but still, in youth, its exercise
formed one of the accomplishments of the future knight; and even
princes did not disdain, on a popular holiday, to match a shaft
against the yeoman's cloth-yard.  [At a later period, Henry VIII. was
a match for the best bowman in his kingdom.  His accomplishment was
hereditary, and distinguished alike his wise father and his pious
son.]  The young man thus addressed, and whose honest, open, handsome,
hardy face augured a frank and fearless nature, bowed his head in
silence, and then slowly advancing to the umpires, craved permission
to essay his skill, and to borrow the loan of a shaft and bow.  Leave
given and the weapons lent, as the young gentleman took his stand, his
comely person, his dress, of a better quality than that of the
competitors hitherto, and, above all, the Nevile badge worked in
silver on his hat, diverted the general attention from Nicholas Alwyn.
A mob is usually inclined to aristocratic predilections, and a murmur
of goodwill and expectation greeted him, when he put aside the
gauntlet offered to him, and said, "In my youth I was taught so to
brace the bow that the string should not touch the arm; and though
eleven score yards be but a boy's distance, a good archer will lay his
body into his bow ["My father taught me to lay my body in my bow,"
etc., said Latimer, in his well-known sermon before Edward VI.,--1549.
The bishop also herein observes that "it is best to give the bow so
much bending that the string need never touch the arm.  This," he
adds, "is practised by many good archers with whom I am acquainted."]
as much as if he were to hit the blanc four hundred yards away."

"A tall fellow this!" said Montagu; "and one I wot from the North," as
the young gallant fitted the shaft to the bow.  And graceful and
artistic was the attitude he assumed,--the head slightly inclined, the
feet firmly planted, the left a little in advance, and the stretched
sinews of the bow-hand alone evincing that into that grasp was pressed
the whole strength of the easy and careless frame.  The public
expectation was not disappointed,--the youth performed the feat
considered of all the most dexterous; his arrow, disdaining the white
mark, struck the small peg which fastened it to the butts, and which
seemed literally invisible to the bystanders.

"Holy Saint Dunstan! there's but one man who can beat me in that sort
that I know of," muttered Nicholas, "and I little expected to see him
take a bite out of his own hip."  With that he approached his
successful rival.

"Well, Master Marmaduke," said he, "it is many a year since you showed
me that trick at your father, Sir Guy's--God rest him!  But I scarce
take it kind in you to beat your own countryman!"

"Beshrew me!" cried the youth, and his cheerful features brightened
into hearty and cordial pleasure, "but if I see in thee, as it seems
to me, my old friend and foster-brother, Nick Alwyn, this is the
happiest hour I have known for many a day.  But stand back and let me
look at thee, man.  Thou! thou a tame London trader!  Ha! ha! is it
possible?"

"Hout, Master Marmaduke," answered Nicholas, "every crow thinks his
own baird bonniest, as they say in the North.  We will talk of this
anon an' thou wilt honour me.  I suspect the archery is over now.  Few
will think to mend that shot."

And here, indeed, the umpires advanced, and their chief--an old
mercer, who had once borne arms, and indeed been a volunteer at the
battle of Towton--declared that the contest was over,--"unless," he
added, in the spirit of a lingering fellow-feeling with the Londoner,
"this young fellow, whom I hope to see an alderman one of these days,
will demand another shot, for as yet there hath been but one prick
each at the butts."

"Nay, master," returned Alwyn, "I have met with my betters,--and,
after all," he added indifferently, "the silver arrow, though a pretty
bauble enough, is over light in its weight."

"Worshipful sir," said the young Nevile, with equal generosity, "I
cannot accept the prize for a mere trick of the craft,--the blanc was
already disposed of by Master Alwyn's arrow.  Moreover; the contest
was intended for the Londoners, and I am but an interloper, beholden
to their courtesy for a practice of skill, and even the loan of a bow;
wherefore the silver arrow be given to Nicholas Alwyn."

"That may not be, gentle sir," said the umpire, extending the prize.
"Sith Alwyn vails of himself, it is thine, by might and by right."

The Lord Montagu had not been inattentive to this dialogue, and he now
said, in a loud tone that silenced the crowd, "Young Badgeman, thy
gallantry pleases me no less than thy skill.  Take the arrow, for thou
hast won it; but as thou seemest a new comer, it is right thou
shouldst pay thy tax upon entry,--this be my task.  Come hither, I
pray thee, good sir," and the nobleman graciously beckoned to the
mercer; "be these five nobles the prize of whatever Londoner shall
acquit himself best in the bold English combat of quarter-staff, and
the prize be given in this young archer's name.  Thy name, youth?"

"Marmaduke Nevile, good my lord."

Montagu smiled, and the umpire withdrew to make the announcement to
the bystanders.  The proclamation was received with a shout that
traversed from group to group and line to line, more hearty from the
love and honour attached to the name of Nevile than even from a sense
of the gracious generosity of Earl Warwick's brother.  One man alone,
a sturdy, well-knit fellow, in a franklin's Lincoln broadcloth, and
with a hood half-drawn over his features, did not join the popular
applause.  "These Yorkists," he muttered, "know well how to fool the
people."

Meanwhile the young Nevile still stood by the gilded stirrup of the
great noble who had thus honoured him, and contemplated him with that
respect and interest which a youth's ambition ever feels for those who
have won a name.

The Lord Montagu bore a very different character from his puissant
brother.  Though so skilful a captain that he had never been known to
lose a battle, his fame as a warrior was, strange to say, below that
of the great earl, whose prodigious strength had accomplished those
personal feats that dazzled the populace, and revived the legendary
renown of the earlier Norman knighthood.  The caution and wariness,
indeed, which Montagu displayed in battle probably caused his success
as a general, and the injustice done to him (at least by the vulgar)
as a soldier.  Rarely had Lord Montagu, though his courage was
indisputable, been known to mix personally in the affray.  Like the
captains of modern times, he contented himself with directing the
manoeuvres of his men, and hence preserved that inestimable advantage
of coolness and calculation, which was not always characteristic of
the eager hardihood of his brother.  The character of Montagu differed
yet more from that of the earl in peace than in war.  He was supposed
to excel in all those supple arts of the courtier which Warwick
neglected or despised; and if the last was on great occasions the
adviser, the other in ordinary life was the companion of his
sovereign.  Warwick owed his popularity to his own large, open,
daring, and lavish nature.  The subtler Montagu sought to win, by care
and pains, what the other obtained without an effort.  He attended the
various holiday meetings of the citizens, where Warwick was rarely
seen.  He was smooth-spoken and courteous to his equals, and generally
affable, though with constraint, to his inferiors.  He was a close
observer, and not without that genius for intrigue, which in rude ages
passes for the talent of a statesman.  And yet in that thorough
knowledge of the habits and tastes of the great mass, which gives
wisdom to a ruler, he was far inferior to the earl.  In common with
his brother, he was gifted with the majesty of mien which imposes on
the eye; and his port and countenance were such as became the prodigal
expense of velvet, minever, gold, and jewels, by which the gorgeous
magnates of the day communicated to their appearance the arrogant
splendour of their power.

"Young gentleman," said the earl, after eying with some attention the
comely archer, "I am pleased that you bear the name of Nevile.
Vouchsafe to inform me to what scion of our House we are this day
indebted for the credit with which you have upborne its cognizance?"

"I fear," answered the youth, with a slight but not ungraceful
hesitation, "that my lord of Montagu and Northumberland will hardly
forgive the presumption with which I have intruded upon this assembly
a name borne by nobles so illustrious, especially if it belong to
those less fortunate branches of his family which have taken a
different side from himself in the late unhappy commotions.  My father
was Sir Guy Nevile, of Arsdale, in Westmoreland."

Lord Montagu's lip lost its gracious smile; he glanced quickly at the
courtiers round him, and said gravely, "I grieve to hear it.  Had I
known this, certes my gipsire had still been five nobles the richer.
It becomes not one fresh from the favour of King Edward IV. to show
countenance to the son of a man, kinsman though he was, who bore arms
for the usurpers of Lancaster.  I pray thee, sir, to doff, henceforth,
a badge dedicated only to the service of Royal York.  No more, young
man; we may not listen to the son of Sir Guy Nevile.--Sirs, shall we
ride to see how the Londoners thrive at quarter-staff?"

With that, Montagu, deigning no further regard at Nevile, wheeled his,
palfrey towards a distant part of the ground, to which the multitude
was already pressing its turbulent and noisy way.

"Thou art hard on thy namesake, fair my lord," said a young noble, in
whose dark-auburn hair, aquiline, haughty features, spare but powerful
frame, and inexpressible air of authority and command, were found all
the attributes of the purest and eldest Norman race,--the Patricians
of the World.

"Dear Raoul de Fulke," returned Montagu, coldly, "when thou hast
reached my age of thirty and four, thou wilt learn that no man's
fortune casts so broad a shadow as to shelter from the storm the
victims of a fallen cause."

"Not so would say thy bold brother," answered Raoul de Fulke, with a
slight curl of his proud lip.  "And I hold, with him, that no king is
so sacred that we should render to his resentments our own kith and
kin.  God's wot, whosoever wears the badge and springs from the stem
of Raoul de Fulke shall never find me question over much whether his
father fought for York or Lancaster."

"Hush, rash babbler!" said Montagu, laughing gently; "what would King
Edward say if this speech reached his ears?  Our friend," added the
courtier, turning to the rest, "in vain would bar the tide of change;
and in this our New England, begirt with new men and new fashions,
affect the feudal baronage of the worn-out Norman.  But thou art a
gallant knight, De Fulke, though a poor courtier."

"The saints keep me so!" returned De Fulke.  "From overgluttony, from
over wine-bibbing, from cringing to a king's leman, from quaking at a
king's frown, from unbonneting to a greasy mob, from marrying an old
crone for vile gold, may the saints ever keep Raoul de Fulke and his
sons!  Amen!"  This speech, in which every sentence struck its
stinging satire into one or other of the listeners, was succeeded by
an awkward silence, which Montagu was the first to break.

"Pardieu!" he said, "when did Lord Hastings leave us, and what fair
face can have lured the truant?"

"He left us suddenly on the archery-ground," answered the young
Lovell.  "But as well might we track the breeze to the rose as Lord
William's sigh to maid or matron."

While thus conversed the cavaliers, and their plumes waved, and their
mantles glittered along the broken ground, Marmaduke Nevile's eye
pursued the horsemen with all that bitter feeling of wounded pride and
impotent resentment with which Youth regards the first insult it
receives from Power.




CHAPTER II.

THE BROKEN GITTERN.

Rousing himself from his indignant revery, Marmaduke Nevile followed
one of the smaller streams into which the crowd divided itself on
dispersing from the archery-ground, and soon found himself in a part
of the holiday scene appropriated to diversions less manly, but no
less characteristic of the period than those of the staff and arrow.
Beneath an awning, under which an itinerant landlord dispensed cakes
and ale, the humorous Bourdour (the most vulgar degree of minstrel, or
rather tale-teller) collected his clownish audience; while seated by
themselves--apart, but within hearing--two harpers, in the king's
livery, consoled each other for the popularity of their ribald rival,
by wise reflections on the base nature of common folk.  Farther on,
Marmaduke started to behold what seemed to him the heads of giants at
least six yards high; but on a nearer approach these formidable
apparitions resolved themselves to a company of dancers upon stilts.
There, one joculator exhibited the antics of his well-tutored ape;
there, another eclipsed the attractions of the baboon by a marvellous
horse that beat a tabor with his forefeet; there, the more sombre
Tregetour, before a table raised upon a lofty stage, promised to cut
off and refix the head of a sad-faced little boy, who in the mean time
was preparing his mortal frame for the operation by apparently larding
himself with sharp knives and bodkins.  Each of these wonder-dealers
found his separate group of admirers, and great was the delight and
loud the laughter in the pastime-ground of old Cockaigne.

While Marmaduke, bewildered by this various bustle, stared around him,
his eye was caught by a young maiden, in evident distress, struggling
in vain to extricate herself from a troop of timbrel-girls, or
tymbesteres (as they were popularly called), who surrounded her with
mocking gestures, striking their instruments to drown her
remonstrances, and dancing about her in a ring at every effort towards
escape.  The girl was modestly attired as one of the humbler ranks,
and her wimple in much concealed her countenance; but there was,
despite her strange and undignified situation and evident alarm, a
sort of quiet, earnest self-possession,--an effort to hide her terror,
and to appeal to the better and more womanly feelings of her
persecutors.  In the intervals of silence from the clamour, her voice,
though low, clear, well-tuned, and impressive, forcibly arrested the
attention of young Nevile; for at that day, even more than this
(sufficiently apparent as it now is), there was a marked distinction
in the intonation, the accent, the modulation of voice, between the
better bred and better educated and the inferior classes.  But this
difference, so ill according with her dress and position, only served
to heighten more the bold insolence of the musical Bacchantes, who,
indeed, in the eyes of the sober, formed the most immoral nuisance
attendant on the sports of the time, and whose hardy license and
peculiar sisterhood might tempt the antiquary to search for their
origin amongst the relics of ancient Paganism.  And now, to increase
the girl's distress, some half-score of dissolute apprentices and
journeymen suddenly broke into the ring of the Maenads, and were
accosting her with yet more alarming insults, when Marmaduke, pushing
them aside, strode to her assistance.  "How now, ye lewd varlets! ye
make me blush for my countrymen in the face of day!  Are these the
sports of merry England,--these your manly contests,--to strive which
can best affront a poor maid?  Out on ye, cullions and bezonians!
Cling to me, gentle donzel, and fear not.  Whither shall I lead thee?"
The apprentices were not, however, so easily daunted.  Two of them
approached to the rescue, flourishing their bludgeons about their
heads with formidable gestures.  "Ho, ho!" cried one, "what right hast
thou to step between the hunters and the doe?  The young quean is too
much honoured by a kiss from a bold 'prentice of London."

Marmaduke stepped back, and drew the small dagger which then formed
the only habitual weapon of a gentleman.  [Swords were not worn, in
peace, at that period.]  This movement, discomposing his mantle,
brought the silver arrow he had won (which was placed in his girdle)
in full view of the assailants.  At the same time they caught sight of
the badge on his hat.  These intimidated their ardour more than the
drawn poniard.

"A Nevile!" said one, retreating.  "And the jolly marksman who beat
Nick Alwyn," said the other, lowering his bludgeon, and doffing his
cap.  "Gentle sir, forgive us, we knew not your quality.  But as for
the girl--your gallantry misleads you."

"The Wizard's daughter! ha, ha! the Imp of Darkness!" screeched the
timbrel-girls, tossing up their instruments, and catching them again
on the points of their fingers.  "She has enchanted him with her
glamour.  Foul is fair!  Foul fair thee, young springal, if thou go to
the nets.  Shadow and goblin to goblin and shadow!  Flesh and blood to
blood and flesh!"--and dancing round him, with wanton looks and bare
arms, and gossamer robes that brushed him as they circled, they
chanted,--

    "Come, kiss me, my darling,
       Warm kisses I trade for;
     Wine, music, and kisses
       What else was life made for?"

With some difficulty, and with a disgust which was not altogether
without a superstitious fear of the strange words and the outlandish
appearance of these loathsome Delilahs, Marmaduke broke from the ring
with his new charge; and in a few moments the Nevile and the maiden
found themselves, unmolested and unpursued, in a deserted quarter of
the ground; but still the scream of the timbrel-girls, as they
hurried, wheeling and dancing, into the distance, was borne ominously
to the young man's ear.  "Ha, ha! the witch and her lover!  Foul is
fair! foul is fair!  Shadow to goblin, goblin to shadow,--and the
devil will have his own!"

"And what mischance, my poor girl," asked the Nevile, soothingly,
"brought thee into such evil company?"

"I know not, fair sir," said the girl, slowly recovering her self;
"but my father is poor, and I had heard that on these holiday
occasions one who had some slight skill on the gittern might win a few
groats from the courtesy of the bystanders.  So I stole out with my
serving-woman, and had already got more than I dared hope, when those
wicked timbrel-players came round me, and accused me of taking the
money from them.  And then they called an officer of the ground, who
asked me my name and holding; so when I answered, they called my
father a wizard, and the man broke my poor gittern,--see!"--and she
held it up, with innocent sorrow in her eyes, yet a half-smile on her
lips,--"and they soon drove poor old Madge from my side, and I knew no
more till you, worshipful sir, took pity on me."

"But why," asked the Nevile, "did they give to your father so unholy a
name?"

"Alas, sir! he is a great scholar, who has spent his means in studying
what he says will one day be of good to the people."

"Humph!" said Marmaduke, who had all the superstitions of his time,
who looked upon a scholar, unless in the Church, with mingled awe and
abhorrence, and who, therefore, was but ill-satisfied with the girl's
artless answer,

"Humph! your father--but--" checking what he was about, perhaps
harshly, to say, as he caught the bright eyes and arch, intelligent
face lifted to his own--"but it is hard to punish the child for the
father's errors."

"Errors, sir!" repeated the damsel, proudly, and with a slight disdain
in her face and voice.  "But yes, wisdom is ever, perhaps, the saddest
error!"

This remark was of an order superior in intellect to those which had
preceded it: it contrasted with the sternness of experience the
simplicity of the child; and of such contrasts, indeed, was that
character made up.  For with a sweet, an infantine change of tone and
countenance, she added, after a short pause, "They took the money!
The gittern--see, they left that, when they had made it useless."

"I cannot mend the gittern, but I can refill the gipsire," said
Marmaduke.

The girl coloured deeply.  "Nay, sir, to earn is not to beg."
Marmaduke did not heed this answer; for as they were now passing by
the stunted trees, under which sat several revellers, who looked up at
him from their cups and tankards, some with sneering, some with grave
looks, he began, more seriously than in his kindly impulse he had
hitherto done, to consider the appearance it must have to be thus seen
walking in public with a girl of inferior degree, and perhaps doubtful
repute.  Even in our own day such an exhibition would be, to say the
least, suspicious; and in that day, when ranks and classes were
divided with iron demarcations, a young gallant, whose dress bespoke
him of gentle quality, with one of opposite sex, and belonging to the
humbler orders, in broad day too, was far more open to censure.  The
blood mounted to his brow, and halting abruptly, he said, in a dry and
altered voice: "My good damsel, you are now, I think, out of danger;
it would ill beseem you, so young and so comely, to go farther with
one not old enough to be your protector; so, in God's name, depart
quickly, and remember me when you buy your new gittern, poor child!"
So saying, he attempted to place a piece of money in her hand.  She
put it back, and the coin fell on the ground.  "Nay, this is foolish,"
said he.

"Alas, sir!" said the girl, gravely, "I see well that you are ashamed
of your goodness.  But my father begs not.  And once--but that matters
not."

"Once what?" persisted Marmaduke, interested in her manner, in spite
of himself.

"Once," said the girl, drawing herself up, and with an expression that
altered the whole character of her face--"the beggar ate at my
father's gate.  He is a born gentleman and a knight's son."

"And what reduced him thus?"

"I have said," answered the girl, simply, yet with the same half-scorn
on her lip that it had before betrayed; "he is a scholar, and thought
more of others than himself."

"I never saw any good come to a gentleman from those accursed books,"
said the Nevile,--"fit only for monks and shavelings.  But still, for
your father's sake, though I am ashamed of the poorness of the gift--"

"No; God be with you, sir, and reward you."  She stopped short, drew
her wimple round her face, and was gone.  Nevile felt an uncomfortable
sensation of remorse and disapproval at having suffered her to quit
him while there was yet any chance of molestation or annoyance, and
his eye followed her till a group of trees veiled her from his view.

The young maiden slackened her pace as she found herself alone under
the leafless boughs of the dreary pollards,--a desolate spot, made
melancholy by dull swamps, half overgrown with rank verdure, through
which forced its clogged way the shallow brook that now gives its name
(though its waves are seen no more) to one of the main streets in the
most polished quarters of the metropolis.  Upon a mound formed by the
gnarled roots of the dwarfed and gnome-like oak, she sat down and
wept.  In our earlier years, most of us may remember that there was
one day which made an epoch in life,--that day that separated
Childhood from Youth; for that day seems not to come gradually, but to
be a sudden crisis, an abrupt revelation.  The buds of the heart open
to close no more.  Such a day was this in that girl's fate.  But the
day was not yet gone!  That morning, when she dressed for her
enterprise of filial love, perhaps for the first time Sibyll Warner
felt that she was fair--who shall say whether some innocent, natural
vanity had not blended with the deep, devoted earnestness, which saw
no shame in the act by which the child could aid the father?  Perhaps
she might have smiled to listen to old Madge's praises of her winsome
face, old Madge's predictions that the face and the gittern would not
lack admirers on the gay ground; perhaps some indistinct, vague
forethoughts of the Future to which the sex will deem itself to be
born might have caused the cheek--no, not to blush, but to take a
rosier hue, and the pulse to beat quicker, she knew not why.  At all
events, to that ground went the young Sibyll, cheerful, and almost
happy, in her inexperience of actual life, and sure, at least, that
youth and innocence sufficed to protect from insult.  And now she sat
down under the leafless tree to weep; and in those bitter tears,
childhood itself was laved from her soul forever.

"What ailest thou, maiden?" asked a deep voice; and she felt a hand
laid lightly on her shoulder.  She looked up in terror and confusion,
but it was no form or face to inspire alarm that met her eye.  It was
a cavalier, holding by the rein a horse richly caparisoned; and though
his dress was plainer and less exaggerated than that usually worn by
men of rank, its materials were those which the sumptuary laws
(constantly broken, indeed, as such laws ever must be) confined to
nobles.  Though his surcoat was but of cloth, and the colour dark and
sober, it was woven in foreign looms,--an unpatriotic luxury, above
the degree of knight,--and edged deep with the costliest sables.  The
hilt of the dagger, suspended round his breast, was but of ivory,
curiously wrought, but the scabbard was sown with large pearls.  For
the rest, the stranger was of ordinary stature, well knit and active
rather than powerful, and of that age (about thirty-five) which may be
called the second prime of man.  His face was far less handsome than
Marmaduke Nevile's, but infinitely more expressive, both of
intelligence and command,--the features straight and sharp, the
complexion clear and pale, and under the bright gray eyes a dark shade
spoke either of dissipation or of thought.

"What ailest thou, maiden,--weepest thou some faithless lover?  Tush!
love renews itself in youth, as flower succeeds flower in spring."

Sibyll made no reply; she rose and moved a few paces, then arrested
her steps, and looked around her.  She had lost all clew to her way
homeward, and she saw with horror, in the distance, the hateful
timbrel-girls, followed by the rabble, and weaving their strange
dances towards the spot.

"Dost thou fear me, child?  There is no cause," said the stranger,
following her.  "Again I say, What ailest thou?"  This time his voice
was that of command, and the poor girl involuntarily obeyed it.  She
related her misfortunes, her persecution by the tymbesteres, her
escape,--thanks to the Nevile's courtesy,--her separation from her
attendant, and her uncertainty as to the way she should pursue.

The nobleman listened with interest: he was a man sated and wearied by
pleasure and the world, and the evident innocence of Sibyll was a
novelty to his experience, while the contrast between her language and
her dress moved his curiosity.  "And," said he, "thy protector left
thee, his work half done; fie on his chivalry!  But I, donzel, wear
the spurs of knighthood, and to succour the distressed is a duty my
oath will not let me swerve from.  I will guide thee home, for I know
well all the purlieus of this evil den of London.  Thou hast but to
name the suburb in which thy father dwells."

Sibyll involuntarily raised her wimple, lifted her beautiful eyes to
the stranger, in bewildered gratitude and surprise.  Her childhood had
passed in a court, her eye, accustomed to rank, at once perceived the
high degree of the speaker.  The contrast between this unexpected and
delicate gallantry and the condescending tone and abrupt desertion of
Marmaduke affected her again to tears.

"Ah, worshipful sir!" she said falteringly, "what can reward thee for
this unlooked-for goodness?"

"One innocent smile, sweet virgin!--for such I'll be sworn thou art."

He did not offer her his hand, but hanging the gold-enamelled rein
over his arm, walked by her side; and a few words sufficing for his
guidance, led her across the ground, through the very midst of the
throng.  He felt none of the young shame, the ingenious scruples of
Marmaduke, at the gaze he encountered, thus companioned.  But Sibyll
noted that ever and anon bonnet and cap were raised as they passed
along, and the respectful murmur of the vulgar, who had so lately
jeered her anguish, taught her the immeasurable distance in men's
esteem between poverty shielded by virtue, and poverty protected by
power.

But suddenly a gaudy tinsel group broke through the crowd, and
wheeling round their path, the foremost of them daringly approached
the nobleman, and looking full into his disdainful face, exclaimed,
"Tradest thou, too, for kisses?  Ha, ha! life is short,--the witch is
outwitched by thee!  But witchcraft and death go together, as
peradventure thou mayest learn at the last, sleek wooer."  Then
darting off, and heading her painted, tawdry throng, the timbrel-girl
sprang into the crowd and vanished.

This incident produced no effect upon the strong and cynical intellect
of the stranger.  Without allusion to it, he continued to converse
with his young companion, and artfully to draw out her own singular
but energetic and gifted mind.  He grew more than interested,--he was
both touched and surprised.  His manner became yet more respectful,
his voice more subdued and soft.

On what hazards turns our fate!  On that day, a little, and Sibyll's
pure but sensitive heart had, perhaps, been given to the young Nevile.
He had defended and saved her; he was fairer than the stranger, he was
more of her own years and nearer to her in station; but in showing
himself ashamed to be seen with her, he had galled her heart, and
moved the bitter tears of her pride.  What had the stranger done?
Nothing but reconciled the wounded delicacy to itself; and suddenly he
became to her one ever to be remembered, wondered at,--perhaps more.
They reached an obscure suburb, and parted at the threshold of a
large, gloomy, ruinous house, which Sibyll indicated as her father's
home.

The girl lingered before the porch; and the stranger gazed, with the
passionless admiration which some fair object of art produces on one
who has refined his taste, but who has survived enthusiasm, upon the
downcast cheek that blushed beneath his gaze.  "Farewell!" he said;
and the girl looked up wistfully.  He might, without vanity, have
supposed that look to imply what the lip did not dare to say,--"And
shall we meet no more?"

But he turned away, with formal though courteous salutation; and as he
remounted his steed, and rode slowly towards the interior of the city,
he muttered to himself, with a melancholy smile upon his lips, "Now
might the grown infant make to himself a new toy; but an innocent
heart is a brittle thing, and one false vow can break it.  Pretty
maiden!  I like thee well eno' not to love thee.  So, as my young
Scotch minstrel sings and plays,--

    'Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
     Sic peril lies in paramours!'"

[A Scotch poet, in Lord Hailes's Collection, has the following lines
in the very pretty poem called "Peril in Paramours:"--

    "Wherefore I pray, in termys short,
     Christ keep these birdis bright in bowers,
     Fra false lovers and their disport,
     Sic peril lies in paramours."]

We must now return to Marmaduke.  On leaving Sibyll, and retracing his
steps towards the more crowded quarter of the space, he was agreeably
surprised by encountering Nicholas Alwyn, escorted in triumph by a
legion of roaring apprentices from the victory he had just obtained
over six competitors at the quarter-staff.

When the cortege came up to Marmaduke, Nicholas halted, and fronting
his attendants, said, with the same cold and formal stiffness that had
characterized him from the beginning, "I thank you, lads, for your
kindness.  It is your own triumph.  All I cared for was to show that
you London boys are able to keep up your credit in these days, when
there's little luck in a yard-measure, if the same hand cannot bend a
bow, or handle cold steel.  But the less we think of the strife when
we are in the stall, the better for our pouches.  And so I hope we
shall hear no more about it, until I get a ware of my own, when the
more of ye that like to talk of such matters the better ye will be
welcome,--always provided ye be civil customers, who pay on the nail,
for as the saw saith, 'Ell and tell makes the crypt swell.' For the
rest, thanks are due to this brave gentleman, Marmaduke Nevile, who,
though the son of a knight-banneret who never furnished less to the
battle-field than fifty men-at-arms, has condescended to take part and
parcel in the sports of us peaceful London traders; and if ever you
can do him a kind turn--for turn and turn is fair play--why, you will,
I answer for it.  And so one cheer for old London, and another for
Marmaduke Nevile.  Here goes!  Hurrah, my lads!"  And with this pithy
address Nicholas Alwyn took off his cap and gave the signal for the
shouts, which, being duly performed, he bowed stiffly to his
companions, who departed with a hearty laugh, and coming to the side
of Nevile, the two walked on to a neighbouring booth, where, under a
rude awning, and over a flagon of clary, they were soon immersed in
the confidential communications each had to give and receive.




CHAPTER III.

THE TRADER AND THE GENTLE; OR, THE CHANGING GENERATION.

"No, my dear foster-brother," said the Nevile, "I do not yet
comprehend the choice you have made.  You were reared and brought up
with such careful book-lere, not only to read and to write--the which,
save the mark!  I hold to be labour eno'--but chop Latin and logic and
theology with Saint Aristotle (is not that his hard name?) into the
bargain, and all because you had an uncle of high note in Holy Church.
I cannot say I would be a shaveling myself; but surely a monk with the
hope of preferment is a nobler calling to a lad of spirit and ambition
than to stand out at a door and cry, 'Buy, buy,' 'What d'ye lack?' to
spend youth as a Flat-cap, and drone out manhood in measuring cloth,
hammering metals, or weighing out spices?"

"Fair and softly, Master Marmaduke," said Alwyn, "you will understand
me better anon.  My uncle, the sub-prior, died,--some say of
austerities, others of ale,--that matters not; he was a learned man
and a cunning.  'Nephew Nicholas,' said he on his death-bed, 'think
twice before you tie yourself up to the cloister; it's ill leaping
nowadays in a sackcloth bag.  If a pious man be moved to the cowl by
holy devotion, there is nothing to be said on the subject; but if he
take to the Church as a calling, and wish to march ahead like his
fellows, these times show him a prettier path to distinction.  The
nobles begin to get the best things for themselves; and a learned
monk, if he is the son of a yeoman, cannot hope, without a specialty
of grace, to become abbot or bishop.  The king, whoever he be, must be
so drained by his wars, that he has little land or gold to bestow on
his favourites; but his gentry turn an eye to the temporalities of the
Church, and the Church and the king wish to strengthen themselves by
the gentry.  This is not all; there are free opinions afloat.  The
House of Lancaster has lost ground, by its persecutions and burnings.
Men dare not openly resist, but they treasure up recollections of a
fried grandfather, or a roasted cousin,--recollections which have done
much damage to the Henries, and will shake Holy Church itself one of
these days.  The Lollards lie hid, but Lollardism will never die.
There is a new class rising amain, where a little learning goes a
great way, if mixed with spirit and sense.  Thou likest broad pieces
and a creditable name,--go to London and be a trader.  London begins
to decide who shall wear the crown, and the traders to decide what
king London shall befriend.  Wherefore, cut thy trace from the
cloister, and take thy road to the shop.' The next day my uncle gave
up the ghost.--They had better clary than this at the convent, I must
own; but every stone has its flaw."

"Yet," said Marmaduke, "if you took distaste to the cowl, from reasons
that I pretend not to judge of, but which seem to my poor head very
bad ones, seeing that the Church is as mighty as ever, and King Edward
is no friend to the Lollards, and that your uncle himself was at least
a sub-prior--"

"Had he been son to a baron, he had been a cardinal," interrupted
Nicholas, "for his head was the longest that ever came out of the
north country.  But go on; you would say my father was a sturdy
yeoman, and I might have followed his calling?"

"You hit the mark, Master Nicholas."

"Hout, man.  I crave pardon of your rank, Master Nevile.  But a yeoman
is born a yeoman, and he dies a yeoman--I think it better to die Lord
Mayor of London; and so I craved my mother's blessing and leave, and a
part of the old hyde has been sold to pay for the first step to the
red gown, which I need not say must be that of the Flat-cap.  I have
already taken my degrees, and no longer wear blue.  I am headman to my
master, and my master will be sheriff of London."

"It is a pity," said the Nevile, shaking his head; "you were ever a
tall, brave lad, and would have made a very pretty soldier."

"Thank you, Master Marmaduke, but I leave cut and thrust to the
gentles.  I have seen eno' of the life of a retainer.  He goes out on
foot with his shield and his sword, or his bow and his quiver, while
Sir Knight sits on horseback, armed from the crown to the toe, and the
arrow slants off from rider and horse, as a stone from a tree.  If the
retainer is not sliced and carved into mincemeat, he comes home to a
heap of ashes, and a handful of acres, harried and rivelled into a
common; Sir Knight thanks him for his valour, but he does not build up
his house; Sir Knight gets a grant from the king, or an heiress for
his son, and Hob Yeoman turns gisarme and bill into ploughshares.
Tut, tut, there's no liberty, no safety, no getting on, for a man who
has no right to the gold spurs, but in the guild of his fellows; and
London is the place for a born Saxon like Nicholas Alwyn."

As the young aspirant thus uttered the sentiments, which though others
might not so plainly avow and shrewdly enforce them, tended towards
that slow revolution, which, under all the stormy events that the
superficial record we call HISTORY alone deigns to enumerate, was
working that great change in the thoughts and habits of the people,
--that impulsion of the provincial citywards, that gradual formation
of a class between knight and vassal,--which became first
constitutionally visible and distinct in the reign of Henry VII.,
Marmaduke Nevile, inly half-regretting and half-despising the
reasonings of his foster-brother, was playing with his dagger, and
glancing at his silver arrow.

"Yet you could still have eno' of the tall yeoman and the stout
retainer about you to try for this bauble, and to break half a dozen
thick heads with your quarter-staff!"

"True," said Nicholas; "you must recollect we are only, as yet,
between the skin and the selle,--half-trader, half-retainer.  The old
leaven will out,--'Eith to learn the cat to the kirn,' as they say in
the North.  But that's not all; a man, to get on, must win respect
from those who are to jostle him hereafter, and it's good policy to
show those roystering youngsters that Nick Alwyn, stiff and steady
though he be, has the old English metal in him, if it comes to a
pinch; it's a lesson to yon lords too, save your quality, if they ever
wish to ride roughshod over our guilds and companies.  But eno' of
me.--Drawer, another stoup of the clary--Now, gentle sir, may I make
bold to ask news of yourself?  I saw, though I spake not before of it,
that my Lord Montagu showed a cold face to his kinsman.  I know
something of these great men, though I be but a small one,--a dog is
no bad guide in the city he trots through."

"My dear foster-brother," said the Nevile, "you had ever more brains
than myself, as is meet that you should have, since you lay by the
steel casque,--which, I take it, is meant as a substitute for us
gentlemen and soldiers who have not so many brains to spare; and I
will willingly profit by your counsels.  You must know," he said,
drawing nearer to the table, and his frank, hardy face assuming a more
earnest expression, "that though my father, Sir Guy, at the
instigation of his chief, the Earl of Westmoreland, and of the Lord
Nevile, bore arms at the first for King Henry--"

"Hush! hush! for Henry of Windsor!"

"Henry of Windsor!--so be it! yet being connected, like the nobles I
have spoken of, with the blood of Warwick and Salisbury, it was ever
with doubt and misgiving, and rather in the hope of ultimate
compromise between both parties (which the Duke of York's moderation
rendered probable) than of the extermination of either.  But when, at
the battle of York, Margaret of Anjou and her generals stained their
victory by cruelties which could not fail to close the door on all
conciliation; when the infant son of the duke himself was murdered,
though a prisoner, in cold blood; when my father's kinsman, the Earl
of Salisbury, was beheaded without trial; when the head of the brave
and good duke, who had fallen in the field, was, against all knightly
and king-like generosity, mockingly exposed, like a dishonoured
robber, on the gates of York, my father, shocked and revolted,
withdrew at once from the army, and slacked not bit or spur till he
found himself in his hall at Arsdale.  His death, caused partly by his
travail and vexation of spirit, together with his timely withdrawal
from the enemy, preserved his name from the attainder passed on the
Lords Westmoreland and Nevile; and my eldest brother, Sir John,
accepted the king's proffer of pardon, took the oaths of allegiance to
Edward, and lives safe, if obscure, in his father's halls.  Thou
knowest, my friend, that a younger brother has but small honour at
home.  Peradventure, in calmer times, I might have bowed my pride to
my calling, hunted my brother's dogs, flown his hawks, rented his
keeper's lodge, and gone to my grave contented.  But to a young man,
who from his childhood had heard the stirring talk of knights and
captains, who had seen valour and fortune make the way to distinction,
and whose ears of late had been filled by the tales of wandering
minstrels and dissours, with all the gay wonders of Edward's court,
such a life soon grew distasteful.  My father, on his death-bed (like
thy uncle, the sub-prior), encouraged me little to follow his own
footsteps.  'I see,' said he, 'that King Henry is too soft to rule his
barons, and Margaret too fierce to conciliate the commons; the only
hope of peace is in the settlement of the House of York.  Wherefore,
let not thy father's errors stand in the way of thy advancement;' and
therewith he made his confessor--for he was no penman himself, the
worthy old knight!--indite a letter to his great kinsman, the Earl of
Warwick, commending me to his protection.  He signed his mark, and set
his seal to this missive, which I now have at mine hostelrie, and died
the same day.  My brother judged me too young then to quit his roof;
and condemned me to bear his humours till, at the age of twenty-three,
I could bear no more!  So having sold him my scant share in the
heritage, and turned, like thee, bad land into good nobles, I joined a
party of horse in their journey to London, and arrived yesterday at
Master Sackbut's hostelrie in Eastchepe.  I went this morning to my
Lord of Warwick; but he was gone to the king's, and hearing of the
merry-makings here, I came hither for kill-time.  A chance word of my
Lord of Montagu--whom Saint Dunstan confound!--made me conceit that a
feat of skill with the cloth-yard might not ill preface my letter to
the great earl.  But, pardie! it seems I reckoned without my host, and
in seeking to make my fortunes too rashly, I have helped to mar them."
Wherewith he related the particulars of his interview with Montagu.

Nicholas Alwyn listened to him with friendly and thoughtful interest,
and, when he had done, spoke thus,--

"The Earl of Warwick is a generous man, and though hot, bears little
malice, except against those whom he deems misthink or insult him; he
is proud of being looked up to as a protector, especially by those of
his own kith and name.  Your father's letter will touch the right
string, and you cannot do better than deliver it with a plain story.
A young partisan like thee is not to be despised.  Thou must trust to
Lord Warwick to set matters right with his brother; and now, before I
say further, let me ask thee, plainly, and without offence, Dost thou
so love the House of York that no chance could ever make thee turn
sword against it?  Answer as I ask,--under thy breath; those drawers
are parlous spies!"

And here, in justice to Marmaduke Nevile and to his betters, it is
necessary to preface his reply by some brief remarks, to which we must
crave the earnest attention of the reader.  What we call PATRIOTISM,
in the high and catholic acceptation of the word, was little if at all
understood in days when passion, pride, and interest were motives
little softened by reflection and education, and softened still less
by the fusion of classes that characterized the small States of old,
and marks the civilization of a modern age.  Though the right by
descent of the House of York, if genealogy alone were consulted, was
indisputably prior to that of Lancaster, yet the long exercise of
power in the latter House, the genius of the Fourth Henry, and the
victories of the Fifth, would no doubt have completely superseded the
obsolete claims of the Yorkists, had Henry VI. possessed any of the
qualities necessary for the time.  As it was, men had got puzzled by
genealogies and cavils; the sanctity attached to the king's name was
weakened by his doubtful right to his throne, and the Wars of the
rival Roses were at last (with two exceptions, presently to be noted)
the mere contests of exasperated factions, in which public
considerations were scarcely even made the blind to individual
interest, prejudice, or passion.

Thus, instances of desertion, from the one to the other party, even by
the highest nobles, and on the very eve of battle, had grown so common
that little if any disgrace was attached to them; and any knight or
captain held an affront to himself an amply sufficient cause for the
transfer of his allegiance.  It would be obviously absurd to expect in
any of the actors of that age the more elevated doctrines of party
faith and public honour, which clearer notions of national morality,
and the salutary exercise of a large general opinion, free from the
passions of single individuals, have brought into practice in our more
enlightened days.  The individual feelings of the individual MAN,
strong in himself, became his guide, and he was free in much from the
regular and thoughtful virtues, as well as from the mean and plausible
vices, of those who act only in bodies and corporations.  The two
exceptions to this idiosyncrasy of motive and conduct were, first, in
the general disposition of the rising middle class, especially in
London, to connect great political interests with the more popular
House of York.  The commons in parliament had acted in opposition to
Henry the Sixth, as the laws they wrung from him tended to show, and
it was a popular and trading party that came, as it were, into power
under King Edward.  It is true that Edward was sufficiently arbitrary
in himself; but a popular party will stretch as much as its
antagonists in favour of despotism,--exercised, on its enemies.  And
Edward did his best to consult the interests of commerce, though the
prejudices of the merchants interpreted those interests in a way
opposite to that in which political economy now understands them.  The
second exception to the mere hostilities of individual chiefs and
feudal factions has, not less than the former, been too much
overlooked by historians.  But this was a still more powerful element
in the success of the House of York.  The hostility against the Roman
Church and the tenets of the Lollards were shared by an immense part
of the population.  In the previous century an ancient writer computes
that one half the population were Lollards; and though the sect were
diminished and silenced by fear, they still ceased not to exist, and
their doctrines not only shook the Church under Henry VIII., but
destroyed the throne by the strong arm of their children, the
Puritans, under Charles I.  It was impossible that these men should
not have felt the deepest resentment at the fierce and steadfast
persecution they endured under the House of Lancaster; and without
pausing to consider how far they would benefit under the dynasty of
York, they had all those motives of revenge which are mistaken so
often for the counsels of policy, to rally round any standard raised
against their oppressors.  These two great exceptions to merely
selfish policy, which it remains for the historian clearly and at
length to enforce, these: and these alone will always, to a sagacious
observer, elevate the Wars of the Roses above those bloody contests
for badges which we are at first sight tempted to regard them.  But
these deeper motives animated very little the nobles and the knightly
gentry; [Amongst many instances of the self-seeking of the time, not
the least striking is the subservience of John Mowbray, the great Duke
of Norfolk, to his old political enemy, the Earl of Oxford, the moment
the last comes into power, during the brief restoration of Henry VI.
John Paston, whose family had been sufficiently harassed by this great
duke, says, with some glee, "The Duke and Duchess (of Norfolk) sue to
him (Lord Oxford) as humbly as ever I did to them."--Paston Letters,
cccii.] and with them the governing principles were, as we have just
said, interest, ambition, and the zeal for the honour and advancement
of Houses and chiefs.

"Truly," said Marmaduke, after a short and rather embarrassed pause,
"I am little beholden as yet to the House of York.  There where I see
a noble benefactor, or a brave and wise leader, shall I think my sword
and heart may best proffer allegiance."

"Wisely said," returned Alwyn, with a slight but half sarcastic smile;
"I asked thee the question because--draw closer--there are wise men in
our city who think the ties between Warwick and the king less strong
than a ship's cable; and if thou attachest thyself to Warwick, he will
be better pleased, it may be, with talk of devotion to himself than
professions of exclusive loyalty to King Edward.  He who has little
silver in his pouch must have the more silk on his tongue.  A word to
a Westmoreland or a Yorkshire man is as good as a sermon to men not
born so far north.  One word more, and I have done.  Thou art kind and
affable and gentle, my dear foster-brother, but it will not do for
thee to be seen again with the goldsmith's headman.  If thou wantest
me, send for me at nightfall; I shall be found at Master Heyford's, in
the Chepe.  And if," added Nicholas, with a prudent reminiscence,
"thou succeedest at court, and canst recommend my master,--there is no
better goldsmith,--it may serve me when I set up for myself, which I
look to do shortly."

"But to send for thee, my own foster-brother, at nightfall, as if I
were ashamed!"

"Hout, Master Marmaduke, if thou wert not ashamed of me, I should be
ashamed to be seen with a gay springal like thee.  Why, they would say
in the Chepe that Nick Alwyn was going to ruin.  No, no.  Birds of a
feather must keep shy of those that moult other colours; and so, my
dear young master, this is my last shake of the hand.  But hold: dost
thou know thy way back?"

"Oh, yes,--never fear!" answered Marmaduke; "though I see not why so
far, at least, we may not be companions."

"No, better as it is; after this day's work they will gossip about
both of us, and we shall meet many who know my long visage on the way
back.  God keep thee; avise me how thou prosperest."

So saying, Nicholas Alwyn walked off, too delicate to propose to pay
his share of the reckoning with a superior; but when he had gone a few
paces he turned back, and accosting the Nevile, as the latter was
rebuckling his mantle, said,--

"I have been thinking, Master Nevile, that these gold nobles, which it
has been my luck to bear off, would be more useful in thy gipsire than
mine.  I have sure gains and small expenses; but a gentleman gains
nothing, and his hand must be ever in his pouch, so--"

"Foster-brother," said Marmaduke, haughtily, "a gentleman never
borrows,--except of the Jews, and with due interest. Moreover, I too
have my calling; and as thy stall to thee, so to me my good sword.
Saints keep thee!  Be sure I will serve thee when I can."

"The devil's in these young strips of the herald's tree," muttered
Alwyn, as he strode off; "as if it were dishonest to borrow a broad
piece without cutting a throat for it!  Howbeit, money is a prolific
mother: and here is eno' to buy me a gold chain against I am alderman
of London.  Hout, thus goes the world,--the knight's baubles become
the alderman's badges--so much the better!"




CHAPTER IV.

ILL FARES THE COUNTRY MOUSE IN THE TRAPS OF TOWN.

We trust we shall not be deemed discourteous, either, on the one hand,
to those who value themselves on their powers of reflection, or, on
the other, to those who lay claim to what, in modern phrenological
jargon, is called the Organ of Locality, when we venture to surmise
that the two are rarely found in combination; nay, that it seems to us
a very evident truism, that in proportion to the general activity of
the intellect upon subjects of pith and weight, the mind will be
indifferent to those minute external objects by which a less
contemplative understanding will note, and map out, and impress upon
the memory, the chart of the road its owner has once taken.  Master
Marmaduke Nevile, a hardy and acute forester from childhood, possessed
to perfection the useful faculty of looking well and closely before
him as he walked the earth; and ordinarily, therefore, the path he had
once taken, however intricate and obscure, he was tolerably sure to
retrace with accuracy, even at no inconsiderable distance of time,--
the outward senses of men are usually thus alert and attentive in the
savage or the semi-civilized state.  He had not, therefore, over-
valued his general acuteness in the note and memory of localities,
when he boasted of his power to refind his way to his hostelrie
without the guidance of Alwyn.  But it so happened that the events of
this day, so memorable to him, withdrew his attention from external
objects, to concentrate it within.  And in marvelling and musing over
the new course upon which his destiny had entered, he forgot to take
heed of that which his feet should pursue; so that, after wandering
unconsciously onward for some time, he suddenly halted in perplexity
and amaze to find himself entangled in a labyrinth of scattered
suburbs, presenting features wholly different from the road that had
conducted him to the archery-ground in the forenoon.  The darkness of
the night had set in; but it was relieved by a somewhat faint and
mist-clad moon, and some few and scattered stars, over which rolled,
fleetly, thick clouds, portending rain.  No lamps at that time cheered
the steps of the belated wanderer; the houses were shut up, and their
inmates, for the most part, already retired to rest, and the suburbs
did not rejoice, as the city, in the round of the watchman with his
drowsy call to the inhabitants, "Hang out your lights!"  The
passengers, who at first, in various small groups and parties, had
enlivened the stranger's way, seemed to him, unconscious as he was of
the lapse of time, to have suddenly vanished from the thoroughfares;
and he found himself alone in places thoroughly unknown to him, waking
to the displeasing recollection that the approaches to the city were
said to be beset by brawlers and ruffians of desperate characters,
whom the cessation of the civil wars had flung loose upon the skirts
of society, to maintain themselves by deeds of rapine and plunder.  As
might naturally be expected, most of these had belonged to the
defeated party, who had no claim to the good offices or charity of
those in power.  And although some of the Neviles had sided with the
Lancastrians, yet the badge worn by Marmaduke was considered a pledge
of devotion to the reigning House, and added a new danger to those
which beset his path.  Conscious of this--for he now called to mind
the admonitions of his host in parting from the hostelrie--he deemed
it but discreet to draw the hood of his mantle over the silver
ornament; and while thus occupied, he heard not a step emerging from a
lane at his rear, when suddenly a heavy hand was placed on his
shoulder.  He started, turned, and before him stood a man, whose
aspect and dress betokened little to lessen the alarm of the
uncourteous salutation.  Marmaduke's dagger was bare on the instant.

"And what wouldst thou with me?" he asked.

"Thy purse and thy dagger!" answered the stranger.

"Come and take them," said the Nevile, unconscious that he uttered a
reply famous in classic history, as he sprang backward a step or so,
and threw himself into an attitude of defence.  The stranger slowly
raised a rude kind of mace, or rather club, with a ball of iron at the
end, garnished with long spikes, as he replied, "Art thou mad eno' to
fight for such trifles?"

"Art thou in the habit of meeting one Englishman who yields his goods
without a blow to another?" retorted Marmaduke.  "Go to! thy club does
not daunt me."  The stranger warily drew back a step, and applied a
whistle to his mouth.  The Nevile sprang at him, but the stranger
warded off the thrust of the poniard with a light flourish of his
heavy weapon; and had not the youth drawn back on the instant, it had
been good-night and a long day to Marmaduke Nevile.  Even as it was,
his heart beat quick, as the whirl of the huge weapon sent the air
like a strong wind against his face.  Ere he had time to renew his
attack, he was suddenly seized from behind, and found himself
struggling in the arms of two men.  From these he broke, and his
dagger glanced harmless against the tough jerkin of his first
assailant.  The next moment his right arm fell to his side, useless
and deeply gashed.  A heavy blow on the head--the moon, the stars
reeled in his eyes--and then darkness,--he knew no more.  His
assailants very deliberately proceeded to rifle the inanimate body,
when one of them, perceiving the silver badge, exclaimed, with an
oath, "One of the rampant Neviles!  This cock at least shall crow no
more."  And laying the young man's head across his lap, while he
stretched back the throat with one hand, with the other he drew forth
a long sharp knife, like those used by huntsmen in despatching the
hart.  Suddenly, and in the very moment when the blade was about to
inflict the fatal gash, his hand was forcibly arrested, and a man, who
had silently and unnoticed joined the ruffians, said in a stern
whisper, "Rise and depart from thy brotherhood forever.  We admit no
murderer."

The ruffian looked up in bewilderment.  "Robin--captain--thou here!"
he said falteringly.

"I must needs be everywhere, I see, if I would keep such fellows as
thou and these from the gallows.  What is this?--a silver arrow--the
young archer--Um."

"A Nevile!" growled the would-be murderer.

"And for that very reason his life should be safe.  Knowest thou not
that Richard of Warwick, the great Nevile, ever spares the commons?
Begone! I say."  The captain's low voice grew terrible as he uttered
the last words.  The savage rose, and without a word stalked away.

"Look you, my masters," said Robin, turning to the rest, "soldiers
must plunder a hostile country.  While York is on the throne, England
is a hostile country to us Lancastrians.  Rob, then, rifle, if ye
will; but he who takes life shall lose it.  Ye know me!" The robbers
looked down, silent and abashed.  Robin bent a moment over the youth.
"He will live," he muttered.  "So! he already begins to awaken.  One
of these houses will give him shelter.  Off, fellows, and take care of
your necks!"

When Marmaduke, a few minutes after this colloquy, began to revive, it
was with a sensation of dizziness, pain, and extreme cold.  He strove
to lift himself from the ground, and at length succeeded.  He was
alone; the place where he had lain was damp and red with stiffening
blood.  He tottered on for several paces, and perceived from a
lattice, at a little distance, a light still burning.  Now reeling,
now falling, he still dragged on his limbs as the instinct attracted
him to that sign of refuge.  He gained the doorway of a detached and
gloomy house, and sank on the stone before it to cry aloud; but his
voice soon sank into deep groans, and once more, as his efforts
increased the rapid gush of the blood, became insensible.  The man
styled Robin, who had so opportunely saved his life, now approached
from the shadow of a wall, beneath which he had watched Marmaduke's
movements.  He neared the door of the house, and cried, in a sharp,
clear voice, "Open, for the love of Christ!"

A head was now thrust from the lattice, the light vanished; a minute
more, the door opened; and Robin, as if satisfied, drew hastily back,
and vanished, saying to himself, as he strode along, "A young man's
life must needs be dear to him; yet had the lad been a lord, methinks
I should have cared little to have saved for the people one tyrant
more."

After a long interval, Marmaduke again recovered, and his eyes turned
with pain from the glare of a light held to his face.

"He wakes, Father,--he will live!" cried a sweet voice.  "Ay, he will
live, child!" answered a deeper tone; and the young man muttered to
himself, half audibly, as in a dream, "Holy Mother be blessed! it is
sweet to live."  The room in which the sufferer lay rather exhibited
the remains of better fortunes than testified to the solid means of
the present possessor.  The ceiling was high and groined, and some
tints of faded but once gaudy painting blazoned its compartments and
hanging pendants.  The walls had been rudely painted (for arras [Mr.
Hallam ("History of the Middle Ages," chap. ix. part 2) implies a
doubt whether great houses were furnished with hangings so soon as the
reign of Edward IV.; but there is abundant evidence to satisfy our
learned historian upon that head.  The Narrative of the "Lord of
Grauthuse," edited by Sir F. Madden, specifies the hangings of cloth
of gold in the apartments in which that lord was received by Edward
IV.; also the hangings of white silk and linen in the chamber
appropriated to himself at Windsor.  But long before this period (to
say nothing of the Bayeux Tapestry),--namely, in the reign of Edward
III. (in 1344),--a writ was issued to inquire into the mystery of
working tapestry; and in 1398 Mr. Britton observes that the celebrated
arras hangings at Warwick Castle are mentioned.  (See Britton's
"Dictionary of Architecture and Archaelogy," art. "Tapestry.")] then
was rare, even among the wealthiest); but the colours were half
obliterated by time and damp.  The bedstead on which the wounded man
reclined was curiously carved, with a figure of the Virgin at the
head, and adorned with draperies, in which were wrought huge figures
from scriptural subjects, but in the dress of the date of Richard
II.,--Solomon in pointed upturned shoes, and Goliath, in the armour of
a crusader, frowning grimly upon the sufferer.  By the bedside stood a
personage, who, in reality, was but little past the middle age, but
whose pale visage, intersected with deep furrows, whose long beard and
hair, partially gray, gave him the appearance of advanced age:
nevertheless there was something peculiarly striking in the aspect of
the man.  His forehead was singularly high and massive; but the back
of the head was disproportionately small, as if the intellect too much
preponderated over all the animal qualities for strength in character
and success in life.  The eyes were soft, dark, and brilliant, but
dreamlike and vague; the features in youth must have been regular and
beautiful, but their contour was now sharpened by the hollowness of
the cheeks and temples.  The form, in the upper part, was nobly
shaped, sufficiently muscular, if not powerful, and with the long
throat and falling shoulders which always gives something of grace and
dignity to the carriage; but it was prematurely bent, and the lower
limbs were thin and weak, as is common with men who have sparely used
them; they seemed disproportioned to that broad chest, and still more
to that magnificent and spacious brow.  The dress of this personage
corresponded with the aspect of his abode.  The materials were those
worn by the gentry, but they were old, threadbare, and discoloured
with innumerable spots and stains.  His hands were small and delicate,
with large blue veins, that spoke of relaxed fibres; but their natural
whiteness was smudged with smoke-stains, and his beard--a masculine
ornament utterly out of fashion among the younger race in King
Edward's reign, but when worn by the elder gentry carefully trimmed
and perfumed--was dishevelled into all the spiral and tangled curls
displayed in the sculptured head of some old Grecian sage or poet.

On the other side of the bed knelt a young girl of about sixteen, with
a face exquisitely lovely in its delicacy and expression.  She seemed
about the middle stature, and her arms and neck, as displayed by the
close-fitting vest, had already the smooth and rounded contour of
dawning womanhood, while the face had still the softness, innocence,
and inexpressible bloom of a child.  There was a strong likeness
between her and her father (for such the relationship, despite the
difference of sex and years),--the same beautiful form of lip and
brow, the same rare colour of the eyes, dark-blue, with black fringing
lashes; and perhaps the common expression, at that moment, of gentle
pity and benevolent anxiety contributed to render the resemblance
stronger.

"Father, he sinks again!" said the girl.

"Sibyll," answered the man, putting his finger upon a line in a
manuscript book that he held, "the authority saith, that a patient so
contused should lose blood, and then the arm must be tightly bandaged.
Verily we lack the wherewithal."

"Not so, Father!" said the girl, and blushing, she turned aside, and
took off the partelet of lawn, upon which holiday finery her young
eyes perhaps that morning had turned with pleasure, and white as snow
was the neck which was thus displayed; "this will suffice to bind his
arm."

"But the book," said the father, in great perplexity--"the book
telleth us not how the lancet should be applied.  It is easy to say,
'Do this and do that;' but to do it once, it should have been done
before.  This is not among my experiments."

Luckily, perhaps, for Marmaduke, at this moment there entered an old
woman, the solitary servant of the house, whose life, in those warlike
times, had made her pretty well acquainted with the simpler modes of
dealing with a wounded arm and a broken head.  She treated with great
disdain the learned authority referred to by her master; she bound the
arm, plastered the head, and taking upon herself the responsibility to
promise a rapid cure, insisted upon the retirement of father and
child, and took her solitary watch beside the bed.

"If it had been any other mechanism than that of the vile human body!"
muttered the philosopher, as if apologizing to himself; and with that
he recovered his self-complacency and looked round him proudly.




CHAPTER V.

WEAL TO THE IDLER, WOE TO THE WORKMAN.

As Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, so it possibly might
conform the heads of that day to a thickness suitable for the blows
and knocks to which they were variously subjected; yet it was not
without considerable effort and much struggling that Marmaduke's
senses recovered the shock received, less by his flesh-wound and the
loss of blood, than a blow on the seat of reason that might have
despatched a passable ox of these degenerate days.  Nature, to say
nothing of Madge's leechcraft, ultimately triumphed, and Marmaduke
woke one morning in full possession of such understanding as Nature
had endowed him with.  He was then alone, and it was with much simple
surprise that he turned his large hazel eyes from corner to corner of
the unfamiliar room.  He began to retrace and weave together sundry
disordered and vague reminiscences: he commenced with the
commencement, and clearly satisfied himself that he had been
grievously wounded and sorely bruised; he then recalled the solitary
light at the high lattice, and his memory found itself at the porch of
the large, lonely, ruinous old house; then all became a bewildered and
feverish dream.  He caught at the vision of an old man with a long
beard, whom he associated, displeasingly, with recollections of pain;
he glanced off to a fair face, with eyes that looked tender pity
whenever he writhed or groaned under the tortures that, no doubt, that
old accursed carle had inflicted upon him.  But even this face did not
dwell with pleasure in his memory,--it woke up confused and labouring
associations of something weird and witchlike, of sorceresses and
tymbesteres, of wild warnings screeched in his ear, of incantations
and devilries and doom.  Impatient of these musings, he sought to leap
from his bed, and was amazed that the leap subsided into a tottering
crawl.  He found an ewer and basin, and his ablutions refreshed and
invigorated him.  He searched for his raiment, and discovered it all
except the mantle, dagger, hat, and girdle; and while looking for
these, his eye fell on an old tarnished steel mirror.  He started as
if he had seen his ghost; was it possible that his hardy face could
have waned into that pale and almost femininely delicate visage?  With
the pride (call it not coxcombry) that then made the care of person
the distinction of gentle birth, he strove to reduce into order the
tangled locks of the long hair, of which a considerable portion above
a part that seemed peculiarly sensitive to the touch had been
mercilessly clipped; and as he had just completed this task, with
little satisfaction and much inward chafing at the lack of all
befitting essences and perfumes, the door gently opened, and the fair
face he had dreamed of appeared at the aperture.

The girl uttered a cry of astonishment and alarm at seeing the patient
thus arrayed and convalescent, and would suddenly have retreated; but
the Nevile advanced, and courteously taking her hand--

"Fair maiden," said he, "if, as I trow, I owe to thy cares my tending
and cure--nay, it may be a life hitherto of little worth, save to
myself--do not fly from my thanks.  May Our Lady of Walsingham bless
and reward thee!"

"Sir," answered Sibyll, gently withdrawing her hands from his clasp,
"our poor cares have been a slight return for thy generous protection
to myself."

"To thee! ah, forgive me--how could I be so dull?  I remember thy face
now; and, perchance, I deserve the disaster I met with in leaving thee
so discourteously.  My heart smote me for it as my light footfall
passed from thy side."

A slight blush, succeeded by a thoughtful smile--the smile of one who
recalls and caresses some not displeasing remembrance--passed over
Sibyll's charming countenance, as the sufferer said this with
something of the grace of a well-born man, whose boyhood had been
taught to serve God and the Ladies.

There was a short pause before she answered, looking down, "Nay, sir,
I was sufficiently beholden to you; and for the rest, all molestation
was over.  But I will now call your nurse--for it is to our servant,
not us, that your thanks are due--to see to your state, and administer
the proper medicaments."

"Truly, fair damsel, it is not precisely medicaments that I hunger and
thirst for; and if your hospitality could spare me from the larder a
manchet, or a corner of a pasty, and from the cellar a stoup of wine
or a cup of ale, methinks it would tend more to restore me than those
potions which are so strange to my taste that they rather offend than
tempt it; and, pardie, it seemeth to my poor senses as if I had not
broken bread for a week!"

"I am glad to hear you of such good cheer," answered Sibyll; "wait but
a moment or so, till I consult your physician."

And, so saying, she closed the door, slowly descended the steps, and
pursued her way into what seemed more like a vault than a habitable
room, where she found the single servant of the household.  Time,
which makes changes so fantastic in the dress of the better classes,
has a greater respect for the costume of the humbler; and though the
garments were of a very coarse sort of serge, there was not so great a
difference, in point of comfort and sufficiency, as might be supposed,
between the dress of old Madge and that of some primitive servant in
the North during the last century.  The old woman's face was thin and
pinched; but its sharp expression brightened into a smile as she
caught sight, through the damps and darkness, of the gracious form of
her young mistress.  "Ah, Madge," said Sibyll, with a sigh, "it is a
sad thing to be poor!"

"For such as thou, Mistress Sibyll, it is indeed.  It does not matter
for the like of us.  But it goes to my old heart when I see you shut
up here, or worse, going out in that old courtpie and wimple,--you, a
knight's grandchild; you, who have played round a queen's knees, and
who might have been so well-to-do, an' my master had thought a little
more of the gear of this world.  But patience is a good palfrey, and
will carry us a long day.  And when the master has done what he looks
for, why, the king--sith we must so call the new man on the throne--
will be sure to reward him; but, sweetheart, tarry not here; it's an
ill air for your young lips to drink in.  What brings you to old
Madge?"

"The stranger is recovered, and--"

"Ay, I warrant me, I have cured worse than he.  He must have a
spoonful of broth,--I have not forgot it.  You see I wanted no dinner
myself--what is dinner to old folks!--so I e'en put it all in the pot
for him.  The broth will be brave and strong."

"My poor Madge, God requite you for what you suffer for us!  But he
has asked"--here was another sigh, and a downcast look that did not
dare to face the consternation of Madge, as she repeated, with a half-
smile--"he has asked--for meat, and a stoup of wine, Madge!"

"Eh, sirs!  And where is he to get them?  Not that it will be bad for
the lad, either.  Wine!  There's Master Sancroft of the Oak will not
trust us a penny, the seely hilding, and--"

"Oh, Madge, I forgot!--we can still sell the gittern for something.
Get on your wimple, Madge--quick,--while I go for it."

"Why, Mistress Sibyll, that's your only pleasure when you sit all
alone, the long summer days."

"It will be more pleasure to remember that it supplied the wants of my
father's guest," said Sibyll; and retracing the way up the stairs, she
returned with the broken instrument, and despatched Madge with it,
laden with instructions that the wine should be of the best. She then
once more mounted the rugged steps, and halting a moment at
Marmaduke's door, as she heard his feeble step walking impatiently to
and fro, she ascended higher, where the flight, winding up a square,
dilapidated turret, became rougher, narrower, and darker, and opened
the door of her father's retreat.

It was a room so bare of ornament and furniture that it seemed merely
wrought out of the mingled rubble and rough stones which composed the
walls of the mansion, and was lighted towards the street by a narrow
slit, glazed, it is true,--which all the windows of the house were
not,--but the sun scarcely pierced the dull panes and the deep walls
in which they were sunk.  The room contained a strong furnace and a
rude laboratory.  There were several strange-looking mechanical
contrivances scattered about, several manuscripts upon some oaken
shelves, and a large pannier of wood and charcoal in the corner.  In
that poverty-stricken house, the money spent on fuel alone, in the
height of summer, would have comfortably maintained the inmates; but
neither Sibyll nor Madge ever thought to murmur at this waste,
dedicated to what had become the vital want of a man who drew air in a
world of his own.  This was the first thing to be provided for; and
Science was of more imperative necessity than even Hunger.

Adam Warner was indeed a creature of remarkable genius,--and genius,
in an age where it is not appreciated, is the greatest curse the iron
Fates can inflict on man.  If not wholly without the fond fancies
which led the wisdom of the darker ages to the philosopher's stone and
the elixir, he had been deterred from the chase of a chimera by want
of means to pursue it! for it required the resources or the patronage
of a prince or noble to obtain the costly ingredients consumed in the
alchemist's crucible.  In early life, therefore, and while yet in
possession of a competence derived from a line of distinguished and
knightly ancestors, Adam Warner had devoted himself to the surer and
less costly study of the mathematics, which then had begun to attract
the attention of the learned, but which was still looked upon by the
vulgar as a branch of the black art.  This pursuit had opened to him
the insight into discoveries equally useful and sublime.  They
necessitated a still more various knowledge; and in an age when there
was no division of labour and rare and precarious communication among
students, it became necessary for each discoverer to acquire
sufficient science for his own collateral experiments.

In applying mathematics to the practical purposes of life, in
recognizing its mighty utilities to commerce and civilization, Adam
Warner was driven to conjoin with it, not only an extensive knowledge
of languages, but many of the rudest tasks of the mechanist's art; and
chemistry was, in some of his researches, summoned to his aid.  By
degrees, the tyranny that a man's genius exercises over his life,
abstracted him from all external objects.  He had loved his wife
tenderly, but his rapid waste of his fortune in the purchase of
instruments and books, then enormously dear, and the neglect of all
things not centred in the hope to be the benefactor of the world, had
ruined her health and broken her heart.  Happily Warner perceived not
her decay till just before her death; happily he never conceived its
cause, for her soul was wrapped in his.  She revered, and loved, and
never upbraided him.  Her heart was the martyr to his mind.  Had she
foreseen the future destinies of her daughter, it might have been
otherwise.  She could have remonstrated with the father, though not
with the husband.  But, fortunately, as it seemed to her, she (a
Frenchwoman by birth) had passed her youth in the service of Margaret
of Anjou, and that haughty queen, who was equally warm to friends and
inexorable to enemies, had, on her attendant's marriage, promised to
ensure the fortunes of her offspring.  Sibyll at the age of nine--
between seven and eight years before the date the story enters on, and
two years prior to the fatal field of Towton, which gave to Edward the
throne of England--had been admitted among the young girls whom the
custom of the day ranked amidst the attendants of the queen; and in
the interval that elapsed before Margaret was obliged to dismiss her
to her home, her mother died.  She died without foreseeing the
reverses that were to ensue, in the hope that her child, at least, was
nobly provided for, and not without the belief (for there is so much
faith in love!) that her husband's researches, which in his youth had
won favour of the Protector Duke of Gloucester, the most enlightened
prince of his time, would be crowned at last with the rewards and
favours of his king.  That precise period was, indeed, the fairest
that had yet dawned upon the philosopher.  Henry VI., slowly
recovering from one of those attacks which passed for imbecility, had
condescended to amuse himself with various conversations with Warner,
urged to it first by representations of the unholy nature of the
student's pursuits; and, having satisfied his mind of his learned
subject's orthodoxy, the poor monarch had taken a sort of interest,
not so much, perhaps, in the objects of Warner's occupations, as in
that complete absorption from actual life which characterized the
subject, and gave him in this a melancholy resemblance to the king.
While the House of Lancaster was on the throne, the wife felt that her
husband's pursuits would be respected, and his harmless life safe from
the fierce prejudices of the people; and the good queen would not
suffer him to starve, when the last mark was expended in devices how
to benefit his country:--and in these hopes the woman died!

A year afterwards, all at court was in disorder,--armed men supplied
the service of young girls, and Sibyll, with a purse of broad pieces,
soon converted into manuscripts, was sent back to her father's
desolate home.  There had she grown a flower amidst ruins, with no
companion of her own age, and left to bear, as her sweet and
affectionate nature well did, the contrast between the luxuries of a
court and the penury of a hearth which, year after year, hunger and
want came more and more sensibly to invade.

Sibyll had been taught, even as a child, some accomplishments little
vouchsafed then to either sex,--she could read and write; and Margaret
had not so wholly lost, in the sterner North, all reminiscence of the
accomplishments that graced her father's court as to neglect the
education of those brought up in her household.  Much attention was
given to music, for it soothed the dark hours of King Henry; the
blazoning of missals or the lives of saints, with the labours of the
loom, were also among the resources of Sibyll's girlhood, and by these
last she had, from time to time, served to assist the maintenance of
the little family of which, child though she was, she became the
actual head.  But latterly--that is, for the last few weeks--even
these sources failed her; for as more peaceful times allowed her
neighbours to interest themselves in the affairs of others, the dark
reports against Warner had revived.  His name became a by-word of
horror; the lonely light at the lattice burning till midnight, against
all the early usages and habits of the day; the dark smoke of the
furnace, constant in summer as in winter, scandalized the religion of
the place far and near.  And finding, to their great dissatisfaction,
that the king's government and the Church interfered not for their
protection, and unable themselves to volunteer any charges against the
recluse (for the cows in the neighbourhood remained provokingly
healthy), they came suddenly, and, as it were by one of those common
sympathies which in all times the huge persecutor we call the PUBLIC
manifests when a victim is to be crushed, to the pious resolution of
starving where they could not burn.  Why buy the quaint devilries of
the wizard's daughter?--no luck could come of it.  A missal blazoned
by such hands, an embroidery worked at such a loom, was like the
Lord's Prayer read backwards.  And one morning, when poor Sibyll stole
out as usual to vend a month's labour, she was driven from door to
door with oaths and curses.

Though Sibyll's heart was gentle, she was not without a certain
strength of mind.  She had much of the patient devotion of her mother,
much of the quiet fortitude of her father's nature.  If not
comprehending to the full the loftiness of Warner's pursuits, she
still anticipated from them an ultimate success which reconciled her
to all temporary sacrifices.  The violent prejudices, the ignorant
cruelty, thus brought to bear against existence itself, filled her
with sadness, it is true, but not unmixed with that contempt for her
persecutors, which, even in the meekest tempers, takes the sting from
despair.  But hunger pressed.  Her father was nearing the goal of his
discoveries, and in a moment of that pride which in its very contempt
for appearances braves them all, Sibyll had stolen out to the pastime-
ground,--with what result has been seen already.  Having thus
accounted for the penury of the mansion, we return to its owner.

Warner was contemplating with evident complacency and delight the
model of a machine which had occupied him for many years, and which he
imagined he was now rapidly bringing to perfection.  His hands and
face were grimed with the smoke of his forge, and his hair and beard,
neglected as usual, looked parched and dried up, as if with the
constant fever that burned within.

"Yes, yes!" he muttered, "how they will bless me for this!  What Roger
Bacon only suggested I shall accomplish!  How it will change the face
of the globe!  What wealth it will bestow on ages yet unborn!"

"My father," said the gentle voice of Sibyll, "my poor father, thou
hast not tasted bread to-day."

Warner turned, and his face relaxed into a tender expression as he saw
his daughter.

"My child," he said, pointing to his model, "the time comes when it
will live!  Patience! patience!"

"And who would not have patience with thee, and for thee, Father?"
said Sibyll, with enthusiasm speaking on every feature.  "What is the
valour of knight and soldier--dull statues of steel--to thine?  Thou,
with thy naked breast, confronting all dangers,--sharper than the
lance and glaive, and all--"

"All to make England great!"

"Alas! what hath England merited from men like thee?  The people, more
savage than their rulers, clamour for the stake, the gibbet, and the
dungeon, for all who strive to make them wiser.  Remember the death of
Bolingbroke, [A mathematician accused as an accomplice, in sorcery, of
Eleanor Cobham, wife of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and hanged upon
that charge.  His contemporary (William Wyrcestre) highly extols his
learning.]--a wizard, because, O Father!--because his pursuits were
thine!"

Adam, startled by this burst, looked at his daughter with more
attention than he usually evinced to any living thing.  "Child," he
said at length, shaking his head in grave reproof, "let me not say to
thee, 'O thou of little faith!'  There were no heroes were there no
martyrs!"

"Do not frown on me, Father," said Sibyll, sadly; "let the world
frown,--not thou!  Yes, thou art right.  Thou must triumph at last."
And suddenly, her whole countenance changing into a soft and caressing
endearment, she added, "But now come, Father.  Thou hast laboured well
for this morning.  We shall have a little feast for thee in a few
minutes.  And the stranger is recovered, thanks to our leechcraft.  He
is impatient to see and thank thee."

"Well, well, I come, Sibyll," said the student, with a regretful,
lingering look at his model, and a sigh to be disturbed from its
contemplation; and he slowly quitted the room with Sibyll.

"But not, dear sir and father, not thus--not quite thus--vill you go
to the stranger, well-born like yourself?  Oh, no! your Sibyll is
proud, you know,--proud of her father."  So saying, she clung to him
fondly, and drew him mechanically, for he had sunk into a revery, and
heeded her not, into an adjoining chamber, in which he slept.  The
comforts even of the gentry, of men with the acres that Adam had sold,
were then few and scanty.  The nobles and the wealthy merchants,
indeed, boasted many luxuries that excelled in gaud and pomp those of
their equals now.  But the class of the gentry who had very little
money at command were contented with hardships from which a menial of
this day would revolt.  What they could spend in luxury was usually
consumed in dress and the table they were obliged to keep.  These were
the essentials of dignity.  Of furniture there was a woful stint.  In
many houses, even of knights, an edifice large enough to occupy a
quadrangle was composed more of offices than chambers inhabited by the
owners; rarely boasting more than three beds, which were bequeathed in
wills as articles of great value.  The reader must, therefore, not be
surprised that Warner's abode contained but one bed, properly so
called, and that was now devoted to Nevile.  The couch which served
the philosopher for bed was a wretched pallet, stretched on the floor,
stuffed with straw,--with rough say, or serge, and an old cloak for
the coverings.  His daughter's, in a room below, was little better.
The walls were bare; the whole house boasted but one chair, which was
in Marmaduke's chamber; stools or settles of rude oak elsewhere
supplied their place.  There was no chimney except in Nevile's room,
and in that appropriated to the forge.

To this chamber, then, resembling a dungeon in appearance, Sibyll drew
the student, and here, from an old worm-eaten chest, she carefully
extracted a gown of brown velvet, which his father, Sir Armine, had
bequeathed to him by will,--faded, it is true, but still such as the
low-born wore not, [By the sumptuary laws only a knight was entitled
to wear velvet.] trimmed with fur, and clasped with a brooch of gold.
And then she held the ewer and basin to him, while, with the docility
of a child, he washed the smoke-soil from his hands and face.  It was
touching to see in this, as in all else, the reverse of their natural
position,--the child tending and heeding and protecting, as it were,
the father; and that not from his deficiency, but his greatness; not
because he was below the vulgar intelligences of life, but above them.
And certainly, when, his patriarchal hair and beard smoothed into
order, and his velvet gown flowing in majestic folds around a figure
tall and commanding, Sibyll followed her father into Marmaduke's
chamber, she might well have been proud of his appearance; and she
felt the innocent vanity of her sex and age in noticing the half-start
of surprise with which Marmaduke regarded his host, and the tone of
respect in which he proffered him his salutations and thanks.  Even
his manner altered to Sibyll; it grew less frank and affable, more
courtly and reserved: and when Madge came to announce that the
refection was served, it was with a blush of shame, perhaps, at his
treatment of the poor gittern-player on the pastime-ground, that the
Nevile extended his left hand, for his right was still not at his
command, to lead the damsel to the hall.

This room, which was divided from the entrance by a screen, and,
except a small closet that adjoined it, was the only sitting-room in a
day when, as now on the Continent, no shame was attached to receiving
visitors in sleeping apartments, was long and low; an old and very
narrow table, that might have feasted thirty persons, stretched across
a dais raised upon a stone floor; there was no rere-dosse, or
fireplace, which does not seem at that day to have been an absolute
necessity in the houses of the metropolis and its suburbs, its place
being supplied by a movable brazier.  Three oak stools were placed in
state at the board, and to one of these Marmaduke, in a silence
unusual to him, conducted the fair Sibyll.

"You will forgive our lack of provisions," said Warner, relapsing into
the courteous fashions of his elder days, which the unwonted spectacle
of a cold capon, a pasty, and a flask of wine brought to his mind by a
train of ideas that actively glided by the intervening circumstances,
which ought to have filled him with astonishment at the sight, "for my
Sibyll is but a young housewife, and I am a simple scholar, of few
wants."

"Verily," answered Marmaduke, finding his tongue as he attacked the
pasty, "I see nothing that the most dainty need complain of; fair
Mistress Sibyll, your dainty lips will not, I trow, refuse me the
waisall.  [I.e. waissail or wassal; the spelling of the time is
adopted in the text.]  To you also, worshipful sir!  Gramercy! it
seems that there is nothing which better stirs a man's appetite than a
sick bed.  And, speaking thereof, deign to inform me, kind sir, how
long I have been indebted to your hospitality.  Of a surety, this
pasty hath an excellent flavour, and if not venison, is something
better.  But to return, it mazes me much to think what time hath
passed since my encounter with the robbers."

"They were robbers, then, who so cruelly assailed thee?" observed
Sibyll.

"Have I not said so--surely, who else?  And, as I was remarking to
your worshipful father, whether this mischance happened hours, days,
months, or years ago, beshrew me if I can venture the smallest guess."

Master Warner smiled, and observing that some reply was expected from
him, said, "Why, indeed, young sir, I fear I am almost as oblivious as
yourself.  It was not yesterday that you arrived, nor the day before,
nor--Sibyll, my child, how long is it since this gentleman hath been
our guest?"

"This is the fifth day," answered Sibyll.

"So long! and I like a senseless log by the wayside, when others are
pushing on, bit and spur, to the great road.  I pray you, sir, tell me
the news of the morning.  The Lord Warwick is still in London, the
court still at the Tower?"

Poor Adam, whose heart was with his model, and who had now satisfied
his temperate wants, looked somewhat bewildered and perplexed by this
question.  "The king, save his honoured head," said he, inclining his
own, "is, I fear me, always at the Tower, since his unhappy detention,
but he minds it not, sir,--he heeds it not; his soul is not on this
side Paradise."

Sibyll uttered a faint exclamation of fear at this dangerous
indiscretion of her father's absence of mind; and drawing closer to
Nevile, she put her hand with touching confidence on his arm, and
whispered, "You will not repeat this, Sir! my father lives only in his
studies, and he has never known but one king!"

Marmaduke turned his bold face to the maid, and pointed to the salt-
cellar, as he answered in the same tone, "Does the brave man betray
his host?"

There was a moment's silence.  Marmaduke rose.  "I fear," said he,
"that I must now leave you; and while it is yet broad noon, I must
indeed be blind if I again miss my way."

This speech suddenly recalled Adam from his meditations; for whenever
his kindly and simple benevolence was touched, even his mathematics
and his model were forgotten.  "No, young sir," said he, "you must not
quit us yet; your danger is not over.  Exercise may bring fever.
Celsus recommends quiet.  You must consent to tarry with us a day or
two more."

"Can you tell me," said the Nevile, hesitatingly, "what distance it is
to the Temple-gate, or the nearest wharf on the river?"

"Two miles, at the least," answered Sibyll.

"Two miles!--and now I mind me, I have not the accoutrements that
beseem me.  Those hildings have stolen my mantle (which, I perceive,
by the way, is but a rustic garment, now laid aside for the super-
tunic), and my hat and dague, nor have they left even a half groat to
supply their place.  Verily, therefore, since ye permit me to burden
your hospitality longer, I will not say ye nay, provided you,
worshipful sir, will suffer one of your people to step to the house of
one Master Heyford, goldsmith, in the Chepe, and crave one Nicholas
Alwyn, his freedman, to visit me.  I can commission him touching my
goods left at mine hostelrie, and learn some other things which it
behooves me to know."

"Assuredly.  Sibyll, tell Simon or Jonas to put himself under our
guest's order."

Simon or Jonas!  The poor Adam absolutely forgot that Simon and Jonas
had quitted the house these six years!  How could he look on the
capon, the wine, and the velvet gown trimmed with fur, and not fancy
himself back in the heyday of his wealth?

Sibyll half smiled and half sighed, as she withdrew to consult with
her sole counsellor, Madge, how the guest's orders were to be obeyed,
and how, alas! the board was to be replenished for the evening meal.
But in both these troubles she was more fortunate than she
anticipated.  Madge had sold the broken gittern, for musical
instruments were then, comparatively speaking, dear (and this had been
a queen's gift), for sufficient to provide decently for some days;
and, elated herself with the prospect of so much good cheer, she
readily consented to be the messenger to Nicholas Alwyn.  When with a
light step and a lighter heart Sibyll tripped back to the hall, she
was scarcely surprised to find the guest alone.  Her father, after her
departure, had begun to evince much restless perturbation.  He
answered Marmaduke's queries but by abstracted and desultory
monosyllables; and seeing his guest at length engaged in contemplating
some old pieces of armour hung upon the walls, he stole stealthily and
furtively away, and halted not till once more before his beloved
model.

Unaware of his departure, Marmaduke, whose back was turned to him,
was, as he fondly imagined, enlightening his host with much soldier-
like learning as to the old helmets and weapons that graced the hall.
"Certes, my host," said he, musingly, "that sort of casque, which has
not, I opine, been worn this century, had its merits; the vizor is
less open to the arrows.  But as for these chain suits, they suited
only--I venture, with due deference, to declare--the Wars of the
Crusades, where the enemy fought chiefly with dart and scymetar.  They
would be but a sorry defence against the mace and battle-axe;
nevertheless, they were light for man and horse, and in some service,
especially against foot, might be revived with advantage.  Think you
not so?"

He turned, and saw the arch face of Sibyll.

"I crave pardon for my blindness, gentle damsel," said he, in some
confusion, "but your father was here anon."

"His mornings are so devoted to labour," answered Sibyll, "that he
entreats you to pardon his discourtesy.  Meanwhile if you would wish
to breathe the air, we have a small garden in the rear;" and so
saying, she led the way into the small withdrawing-room, or rather
closet, which was her own favourite chamber, and which communicated,
by another door, with a broad, neglected grassplot, surrounded by high
walls, having a raised terrace in front, divided by a low stone Gothic
palisade from the green sward.

On the palisade sat droopingly, and half asleep, a solitary peacock;
but when Sibyll and the stranger appeared at the door, he woke up
suddenly, descended from his height, and with a vanity not wholly
unlike his young mistress's wish to make the best possible display in
the eyes of a guest, spread his plumes broadly in the sun.  Sibyll
threw him some bread, which she had taken from the table for that
purpose; but the proud bird, however hungry, disdained to eat, till he
had thoroughly satisfied himself that his glories had been
sufficiently observed.

"Poor proud one," said Sibyll, half to herself, "thy plumage lasts
with thee through all changes."

"Like the name of a brave knight," said Marmaduke, who overheard her.

"Thou thinkest of the career of arms."

"Surely,--I am a Nevile!"

"Is there no fame to be won but that of a warrior?"

"Not that I weet of, or heed for, Mistress Sibyll."

"Thinkest thou it were nothing to be a minstrel, who gave delight; a
scholar, who dispelled darkness?"

"For the scholar?  Certes, I respect holy Mother Church, which they
tell me alone produces that kind of wonder with full safety to the
soul, and that only in the higher prelates and dignitaries.  For the
minstrel, I love him, I would fight for him, I would give him at need
the last penny in my gipsire; but it is better to do deeds than to
sing them."

Sibyll smiled, and the smile perplexed and half displeased the young
adventurer.  But the fire of the young man had its charm.

By degrees, as they walked to and fro the neglected terrace, their
talk flowed free and familiar; for Marmaduke, like most young men full
of himself, was joyous with the happy egotism of a frank and careless
nature.  He told his young confidante of a day his birth, his history,
his hopes, and fears; and in return he learned, in answer to the
questions he addressed to her, so much, at least, of her past and
present life, as the reverses of her father, occasioned by costly
studies, her own brief sojourn at the court of Margaret, and the
solitude, if not the struggles, in which her youth was consumed.  It
would have been a sweet and grateful sight to some kindly bystander to
hear these pleasant communications between two young persons so
unfriended, and to imagine that hearts thus opened to each other might
unite in one.  But Sibyll, though she listened to him with interest,
and found a certain sympathy in his aspirations, was ever and anon
secretly comparing him to one, the charm of whose voice still lingered
in her ears; and her intellect, cultivated and acute, detected in
Marmaduke deficient education, and that limited experience which is
the folly and the happiness of the young.

On the other hand, whatever admiration Nevile might conceive was
strangely mixed with surprise, and, it might almost be said, with
fear.  This girl, with her wise converse and her child's face, was a
character so thoroughly new to him.  Her language was superior to what
he had ever heard, the words more choice, the current more flowing:
was that to be attributed to her court-training or her learned
parentage?

"Your father, fair mistress," said he, rousing himself in one of the
pauses of their conversation--"your father, then, is a mighty scholar,
and I suppose knows Latin like English?"

"Why, a hedge-priest pretends to know Latin," said Sibyll, smiling;
"my father is one of the six men living who have learned the Greek and
the Hebrew."

"Gramercy!" cried Marmaduke, crossing himself.  "That is awsome
indeed!  He has taught you his lere in the tongues?"

"Nay, I know but my own and the French; my mother was a native of
France."

"The Holy Mother be praised!" said Marmaduke, breathing more freely;
"for French I have heard my father and uncle say is a language fit for
gentles and knights, specially those who come, like the Neviles, from
Norman stock.  This Margaret of Anjou--didst thou love her well,
Mistress Sibyll?"

"Nay," answered Sibyll, "Margaret commanded awe, but she scarcely
permitted love from an inferior: and though gracious and well-governed
when she so pleased, it was but to those whom she wished to win.  She
cared not for the heart, if the hand or the brain could not assist
her.  But, poor queen, who could blame her for this?--her nature was
turned from its milk; and, when, more lately, I have heard how many
she trusted most have turned against her, I rebuked myself that--"

"Thou wert not by her side?" added the Nevile, observing her pause,
and with the generous thought of a gentleman and a soldier.

"Nay, I meant not that so expressly, Master Nevile, but rather that I
had ever murmured at her haste and shrewdness of mood.  By her side,
said you?--alas! I have a nearer duty at home; my father is all in
this world to me!  Thou knowest not, Master Nevile, how it flatters
the weak to think there is some one they can protect.  But eno' of
myself.  Thou wilt go to the stout earl, thou wilt pass to the court,
thou wilt win the gold spurs, and thou wilt fight with the strong
hand, and leave others to cozen with the keen head."

"She is telling my fortune!" muttered Marmaduke, crossing himself
again.  "The gold spurs--I thank thee, Mistress Sibyll!--will it be on
the battle-field that I shall be knighted, and by whose hand?"

Sibyll glanced her bright eye at the questioner, and seeing his
wistful face, laughed outright.

"What, thinkest thou, Master Nevile, I can read thee all riddles
without my sieve and my shears?"

"They are essentials, then, Mistress Sibyll?" said the Nevile, with
blunt simplicity.  "I thought ye more learned damozels might tell by
the palm, or the--why dost thou laugh at me?"

"Nay," answered Sibyll, composing herself.  "It is my right to be
angered.  Sith thou wouldst take me to be a witch, all that I can tell
thee of thy future" (she added touchingly) "is from that which I have
seen of thy past. Thou hast a brave heart, and a gentle; thou hast a
frank tongue, and a courteous; and these qualities make men honoured
and loved,--except they have the gifts which turn all into gall, and
bring oppression for honour, and hate for love."

"And those gifts, gentle Sibyll?"

"Are my father's," answered the girl, with another and a sadder change
in her expressive countenance.  And the conversation flagged till
Marmaduke, feeling more weakened by his loss of blood than he had
conceived it possible, retired to his chamber to repose himself.




CHAPTER VI.

MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE FEARS FOR THE SPIRITUAL WEAL OF HIS HOST AND
HOSTESS.

Before the hour of supper, which was served at six o'clock, Nicholas
Alwyn arrived at the house indicated to him by Madge.  Marmaduke,
after a sound sleep, which was little flattering to Sibyll's
attractions, had descended to the hall in search of the maiden and his
host, and finding no one, had sauntered in extreme weariness and
impatience into the little withdrawing-closet, where as it was now
dusk, burned a single candle in a melancholy and rustic sconce;
standing by the door that opened on the garden, he amused himself with
watching the peacock, when his friend, following Madge into the
chamber, tapped him on the shoulder.

"Well, Master Nevile.  Ha! by Saint Thomas, what has chanced to thee?
Thine arm swathed up, thy locks shorn, thy face blanched!  My honoured
foster-brother, thy Westmoreland blood seems over-hot for Cockaigne!"

"If so, there are plenty in this city of cut-throats to let out the
surplusage," returned Marmaduke; and he briefly related his adventure
to Nicholas.

When he had done, the kind trader reproached himself for having
suffered Marmaduke to find his way alone.  "The suburbs abound with
these miscreants," said he; "and there is more danger in a night walk
near London than in the loneliest glens of green Sherwood--more shame
to the city!  An' I be Lord Mayor one of these days, I will look to it
better.  But our civil wars make men hold human life very cheap, and
there's parlous little care from the great of the blood and limbs of
the wayfarers.  But war makes thieves--and peace hangs them!  Only
wait till I manage affairs!"

"Many thanks to thee, Nicholas," returned the Nevile; "but foul befall
me if ever I seek protection from sheriff or mayor!  A man who cannot
keep his own life with his own right hand merits well to hap-lose it;
and I, for one, shall think ill of the day when an Englishman looks
more to the laws than his good arm for his safety; but, letting this
pass, I beseech thee to avise me if my Lord Warwick be still in the
city?"

"Yes, marry, I know that by the hostelries, which swarm with his
badges, and the oxen, that go in scores to the shambles!  It is a
shame to the Estate to see one subject so great, and it bodes no good
to our peace.  The earl is preparing the most magnificent embassage
that ever crossed the salt seas--I would it were not to the French,
for our interests lie contrary; but thou hast some days yet to rest
here and grow stout, for I would not have thee present thyself with a
visage of chalk to a man who values his kind mainly by their thews and
their sinews.  Moreover, thou shouldst send for the tailor, and get
thee trimmed to the mark.  It would be a long step in thy path to
promotion, an' the earl would take thee in his train; and the gaudier
thy plumes, why, the better chance for thy flight.  Wherefore, since
thou sayest they are thus friendly to thee under this roof, bide yet a
while peacefully; I will send thee the mercer, and the clothier, and
the tailor, to divert thy impatience.  And as these fellows are
greedy, my gentle and dear Master Nevile, may I ask, without offence,
how thou art provided?"

"Nay, nay, I have moneys at the hostelrie, an' thou wilt send me my
mails.  For the rest, I like thy advice, and will take it."

"Good!" answered Nicholas.  "Hem! thou seemest to have got into a poor
house,--a decayed gentleman, I wot, by the slovenly ruin!"

"I would that were the worst," replied Marmaduke, solemnly, and under
his breath; and therewith he repeated to Nicholas the adventure on the
pastime-ground, the warnings of the timbrel-girls, and the "awsome"
learning and strange pursuits of his host. As for Sibyll, he was
evidently inclined to attribute to glamour the reluctant admiration
with which she had inspired him.  "For," said he, "though I deny not
that the maid is passing fair, there be many with rosier cheeks, and
taller by this hand!"

Nicholas listened, at first, with the peculiar expression of shrewd
sarcasm which mainly characterized his intelligent face, but his
attention grew more earnest before Marmaduke had concluded.

"In regard to the maiden," said he, smiling and shaking his head, "it
is not always the handsomest that win us the most,--while fair Meg
went a maying, black Meg got to church; and I give thee more
reasonable warning than thy timbrel-girls, when, in spite of thy cold
language, I bid thee take care of thyself against her attractions;
for, verily, my dear foster-brother, thou must mend and not mar thy
fortune, by thy love matters; and keep thy heart whole for some fair
one with marks in her gipsire, whom the earl may find out for thee.
Love and raw pease are two ill things in the porridge-pot.  But the
father!--I mind me now that I have heard of his name, through my
friend Master Caxton, the mercer, as one of prodigious skill in the
mathematics.  I should like much to see him, and, with thy leave (an'
he ask me), will tarry to supper.  But what are these?"--and Nicholas
took up one of the illuminated manuscripts which Sibyll had prepared
for sale.  "By the blood! this is couthly and marvellously blazoned."

The book was still in his hands when Sibyll entered.  Nicholas stared
at her, as he bowed with a stiff and ungraceful embarrassment, which
often at first did injustice to his bold, clear intellect, and his
perfect self-possession in matters of trade or importance.

"The first woman face," muttered Nicholas to himself, "I ever saw that
had the sense of a man's.  And, by the rood, what a smile!"

"Is this thy friend, Master Nevile?" said Sibyll, with a glance at the
goldsmith.  "He is welcome.  But is it fair and courteous, Master
Nelwyn--"

"Alwyn, an' it please you, fair mistress.  A humble name, but good
Saxon,--which, I take it, Nelwyn is not," interrupted Nicholas.

"Master Alwyn, forgive me; but can I forgive thee so readily for thy
espial of my handiwork, without license or leave?"

"Yours, comely mistress!" exclaimed Nicholas, opening his eyes, and
unheeding the gay rebuke--"why, this is a master-hand.  My Lord
Scales--nay, the Earl of Worcester himself--hath scarce a finer in all
his amassment."

"Well, I forgive thy fault for thy flattery; and I pray thee, in my
father's name, to stay and sup with thy friend."  Nicholas bowed low,
and still riveted his eyes on the book with such open admiration, that
Marmaduke thought it right to excuse his abstraction; but there was
something in that admiration which raised the spirits of Sibyll, which
gave her hope when hope was well-nigh gone; and she became so
vivacious, so debonair, so charming, in the flow of a gayety natural
to her, and very uncommon with English maidens, but which she took
partly, perhaps, from her French blood, and partly from the example of
girls and maidens of French extraction in Margaret's court, that
Nicholas Alwyn thought he had never seen any one so irresistible.
Madge had now served the evening meal, put in her head to announce it,
and Sibyll withdrew to summon her father.

"I trust he will not tarry too long, for I am sharp set!" muttered
Marmaduke.  "What thinkest thou of the damozel?" "Marry," answered
Alwyn, thoughtfully, "I pity and marvel at her.  There is eno' in her
to furnish forth twenty court beauties.  But what good can so much wit
and cunning do to an honest maiden?"

"That is exactly my own thought," said Marmaduke; and both the young
men sunk into silence, till Sibyll re-entered with her father.

To the surprise of Marmaduke, Nicholas Alwyn, whose less gallant
manner he was inclined to ridicule, soon contrived to rouse their host
from his lethargy, and to absorb all the notice of Sibyll; and the
surprise was increased, when he saw that his friend appeared not
unfamiliar with those abstruse and mystical sciences in which Adam was
engaged.

"What!" said Adam, "you know, then, my deft and worthy friend Master
Caxton!  He hath seen notable things abroad--"

"Which, he more than hints," said Nicholas, "will lower the value of
those manuscripts this fair damozel has so couthly enriched; and that
he hopes, ere long, to show the Englishers how to make fifty, a
hundred,--nay even five hundred exemplars of the choicest book, in a
much shorter time than a scribe would take in writing out two or three
score pages in a single copy."

"Verily," said Marmaduke, with a smile of compassion, "the poor man
must be somewhat demented; for I opine that the value of such
curiosities must be in their rarity; and who would care for a book, if
five hundred others had precisely the same?--allowing always, good
Nicholas, for thy friend's vaunting and over-crowing.  Five hundred!
By'r Lady, there would be scarcely five hundred fools in merry England
to waste good nobles on spoilt rags, specially while bows and mail are
so dear."

"Young gentleman," said Adam, rebukingly, "meseemeth that thou
wrongest our age and country, to the which, if we have but peace and
freedom, I trust the birth of great discoveries is ordained.  Certes,
Master Alwyn," he added, turning to the goldsmith, "this achievement
maybe readily performed, and hath existed, I heard an ingenious
Fleming say years ago, for many ages amongst a strange people [Query,
the Chinese?] known to the Venetians!  But dost thou think there is
much appetite among those who govern the State to lend encouragement
to such matters?"

"My master serves my Lord Hastings, the king's chamberlain, and my
lord has often been pleased to converse with me, so that I venture to
say, from my knowledge of his affection to all excellent craft and
lere, that whatever will tend to make men wiser will have his
countenance and favour with the king."

"That is it, that is it!" exclaimed Adam, rubbing his hands.  "My
invention shall not die!"

"And that invention--"

"Is one that will multiply exemplars of books without hands; works of
craft without 'prentice or journeyman; will move wagons and litters
without horses; will direct ships without sails; will--But, alack! it
is not yet complete, and, for want of means, it never may be."

Sibyll still kept her animated countenance fixed on Alwyn, whose
intelligence she had already detected, and was charmed with the
profound attention with which he listened.  But her eye glancing from
his sharp features to the handsome, honest face of the Nevile, the
contrast was so forcible, that she could not restrain her laughter,
though, the moment after, a keen pang shot through her heart.  The
worthy Marmaduke had been in the act of conveying his cup to his lips;
the cup stood arrested midway, his jaws dropped, his eyes opened to
their widest extent, an expression of the most evident consternation
and dismay spoke in every feature; and when he heard the merry laugh
of Sibyll, he pushed his stool from her as far as he well could, and
surveyed her with a look of mingled fear and pity.

"Alas! thou art sure my poor father is a wizard now?"

"Pardie!" answered the Nevile.  "Hath he not said so?  Hath he not
spoken of wagons without horses, ships without sails?  And is not all
this what every dissour and jongleur tells us of in his stories of
Merlin?  Gentle maiden," he added earnestly, drawing nearer to her,
and whispering in a voice of much simple pathos, "thou art young, and
I owe thee much.  Take care of thyself.  Such wonders and derring-do
are too solemn for laughter."

"Ah," answered Sibyll, rising, "I fear they are.  How can I expect the
people to be wiser than thou, or their hard natures kinder in their
judgment than thy kind heart?" Her low and melancholy voice went to
the heart thus appealed to.  Marmaduke also rose, and followed her
into the parlour, or withdrawing-closet, while Adam and the goldsmith
continued to converse (though Alwyn's eye followed the young hostess),
the former appearing perfectly unconscious of the secession of his
other listeners.  But Alwyn's attention occasionally wandered, and he
soon contrived to draw his host into the parlour.

When Nicholas rose, at last, to depart, he beckoned Sibyll aside.
"Fair mistress," said he, with some awkward hesitation, "forgive a
plain, blunt tongue; but ye of the better birth are not always above
aid, even from such as I am.  If you would sell these blazoned
manuscripts, I can not only obtain you a noble purchaser in my Lord
Scales, or in my Lord Hastings, an equally ripe scholar, but it may be
the means of my procuring a suitable patron for your father; and, in
these times, the scholar must creep under the knight's manteline."

"Master Alwyn," said Sibyll, suppressing her tears, "it was for my
father's sake that these labours were wrought.  We are poor and
friendless.  Take the manuscripts, and sell them as thou wilt, and God
and Saint Mary requite thee!"

"Your father is a great man," said Alwyn, after a pause.

"But were he to walk the streets, they would stone him," replied
Sibyll, with a quiet bitterness.

Here the Nevile, carefully shunning the magician, who, in the nervous
excitement produced by the conversation of a mind less uncongenial
than he had encountered for many years, seemed about to address him--
here, I say, the Nevile chimed in, "Hast thou no weapon but thy
bludgeon?  Dear foster-brother, I fear for thy safety."

"Nay, robbers rarely attack us mechanical folk; and I know my way
better than thou.  I shall find a boat near York House; so pleasant
night and quick cure to thee, honoured foster-brother.  I will send
the tailor and other craftsmen to-morrow."

"And at the same time," whispered Marmaduke, accompanying his friend
to the door, "send me a breviary, just to patter an ave or so.  This
gray-haired carle puts my heart in a tremble.  Moreover, buy me a
gittern--a brave one--for the damozel.  She is too proud to take
money, and, 'fore Heaven, I have small doubts the old wizard could
turn my hose into nobles an' he had a mind for such gear.  Wagons
without horses, ships without sails, quotha!"

As soon as Alwyn had departed, Madge appeared with the final
refreshment, called "the Wines," consisting of spiced hippocras and
confections, of the former of which the Nevile partook in solemn
silence.




CHAPTER VII.

THERE IS A ROD FOR THE BACK OF EVERY FOOL WHO WOULD BE WISER THAN HIS
GENERATION.

The next morning, when Marmaduke descended to the hall, Madge,
accosting him on the threshold, informed him that Mistress Sibyll was
unwell, and kept her chamber, and that Master Warner was never visible
much before noon.  He was, therefore, prayed to take his meal alone.
"Alone" was a word peculiarly unwelcome to Marmaduke Nevile, who was
an animal thoroughly social and gregarious.  He managed, therefore, to
detain the old servant, who, besides the liking a skilful leech
naturally takes to a thriving patient, had enough of her sex about her
to be pleased with a comely face and a frank, good-humoured voice.
Moreover, Marmaduke, wishing to satisfy his curiosity, turned the
conversation upon Warner and Sibyll, a theme upon which the old woman
was well disposed to be garrulous.  He soon learned the poverty of the
mansion and the sacrifice of the gittern; and his generosity and
compassion were busily engaged in devising some means to requite the
hospitality he had received, without wounding the pride of his host,
when the arrival of his mails, together with the visits of the tailor
and mercer, sent to him by Alwyn, diverted his thoughts into a new
channel.

Between the comparative merits of gowns and surcoats, broad-toed shoes
and pointed, some time was disposed of with much cheerfulness and
edification; but when his visitors had retired, the benevolent mind of
the young guest again recurred to the penury of his host. Placing his
marks before him on the table in the little withdrawing parlour, he
began counting them over, and putting aside the sum he meditated
devoting to Warner's relief.  "But how," he muttered, "how to get him
to take the gold.  I know, by myself, what a gentleman and a knight's
son must feel at the proffer of alms--pardie!  I would as lief Alwyn
had struck me as offered me his gipsire,--the ill-mannered,
affectionate fellow!  I must think--I must think--"

And while still thinking, the door softly opened, and Warner himself,
in a high state of abstraction and revery, stalked noiselessly into
the room, on his way to the garden, in which, when musing over some
new spring for his invention, he was wont to peripatize.  The sight of
the gold on the table struck full on the philosopher's eyes, and waked
him at once from his revery.  That gold--oh, what precious
instruments, what learned manuscripts it could purchase!  That gold,
it was the breath of life to his model!  He walked deliberately up to
the table, and laid his hand upon one of the little heaps.  Marmaduke
drew back his stool, and stared at him with open mouth.

"Young man, what wantest thou with all this gold?" said Adam, in a
petulant, reproachful tone.  "Put it up! put it up!  Never let the
poor see gold; it tempts them, sir,--it tempts them."  And so saying,
the student abruptly turned away his eyes, and moved towards the
garden.  Marmaduke rose and put himself in Adam's way.  "Honoured
sir," said the young man, "you say justly what want I with all this
gold?  The only gold a young man should covet is eno' to suffice for
the knight's spurs to his heels.  If, without offence, you would--that
is--ahem!--I mean,--Gramercy!  I shall never say it, but I believe my
father owed your father four marks, and he bade me repay them.  Here,
sir!"  He held out the glittering coins; the philosopher's hand closed
on them as the fish's maw closes on the bait.  Adam burst into a
laugh, that sounded strangely weird and unearthly upon Marmaduke's
startled ear.

"All this for me!" he exclaimed.  "For me!  No, no, no! for me, for
IT--I take it--I take it, sir!  I will pay it back with large usury.
Come to me this day year, when this world will be a new world, and
Adam Warner will be--ha! ha!  Kind Heaven, I thank thee!"  Suddenly
turning away, the philosopher strode through the hall, opened the
front door, and escaped into the street.

"By'r Lady," said Marmaduke, slowly recovering his surprise, "I need
not have been so much at a loss; the old gentleman takes to my gold as
kindly as if it were mother's milk.  'Fore Heaven, mine host's laugh
is a ghastly thing!"  So soliloquizing, he prudently put up the rest
of his money, and locked his mails.

As time went on, the young man became exceedingly weary of his own
company.  Sibyll still withheld her appearance; the gloom of the old
hall, the uncultivated sadness of the lonely garden, preyed upon his
spirits.  At length, impatient to get a view of the world without, he
mounted a high stool in the hall, and so contrived to enjoy the
prospect which the unglazed wicker lattice, deep set in the wall,
afforded.  But the scene without was little more animated than that
within,--all was so deserted in the neighbourhood,--the shops mean and
scattered, the thoroughfare almost desolate.  At last he heard a
shout, or rather hoot, at a distance; and, turning his attention
whence it proceeded, he beheld a figure emerge from an alley opposite
the casement, with a sack under one arm, and several books heaped
under the other.  At his heels followed a train of ragged boys,
shouting and hallooing, "The wizard! the wizard!--Ah!  Bah!  The old
devil's kin!"  At this cry the dull neighbourhood seemed suddenly to
burst forth into life.  From the casements and thresholds of every
house curious faces emerged, and many voices of men and women joined,
in deeper bass, with the shrill tenor of the choral urchins, "The
wizard! the wizard! out at daylight!"  The person thus stigmatized, as
he approached the house, turned his face with an expression of wistful
perplexity from side to side.  His lips moved convulsively, and his
face was very pale, but he spoke not.  And now, the children, seeing
him near his refuge, became more outrageous.  They placed themselves
menacingly before him, they pulled his robe, they even struck at him;
and one, bolder than the rest, jumped up, and plucked his beard.  At
this last insult, Adam Warner, for it was he, broke silence; but such
was the sweetness of his disposition, that it was rather with pity
than reproof in his voice, that he said,--

"Fie, little one!  I fear me thine own age will have small honour if
thou thus mockest mature years in me."

This gentleness only served to increase the audacity of his
persecutors, who now, momently augmenting, presented a formidable
obstacle to further progress.  Perceiving that he could not advance
without offensive measures on his own part, the poor scholar halted;
and looking at the crowd with mild dignity, he asked, "What means
this, my children?  How have I injured you?"

"The wizard! the wizard!" was the only answer he received.  Adam
shrugged his shoulders, and strode on with so sudden a step, that one
of the smaller children, a curly-headed laughing rogue, of about eight
years old, was thrown down at his feet, and the rest gave way.  But
the poor man, seeing one of his foes thus fallen, instead of pursuing
his victory, again paused, and forgetful of the precious burdens he
carried, let drop the sack and books, and took up the child in his
arms.  On seeing their companion in the embrace of the wizard, a
simultaneous cry of horror broke from the assemblage, "He is going to
curse poor Tim!"

"My child!  my boy!" shrieked a woman, from one of the casements; "let
go my child!"

On his part, the boy kicked and shrieked lustily, as Adam, bending his
noble face tenderly over him, said, "Thou art not hurt, child.  Poor
boy! thinkest thou I would harm thee?"  While he spoke a storm of
missiles--mud,  dirt,  sticks, bricks, stones--from the enemy, that
had now fallen back in the rear, burst upon him.  A stone struck him
on the shoulder.  Then his face changed; an angry gleam shot from his
deep, calm eyes; he put down the child, and, turning steadily to the
grown people at the windows, said, "Ye train your children ill;"
picked up his sack and books, sighed, as he saw the latter stained by
the mire, which he wiped with his long sleeve, and too proud to show
fear, slowly made for his door.  Fortunately Sibyll had heard the
clamour, and was ready to admit her father, and close the door upon
the rush which instantaneously followed his escape.  The baffled rout
set up a yell of wrath, and the boys were now joined by several foes
more formidable from the adjacent houses; assured in their own minds
that some terrible execration had been pronounced upon the limbs and
body of Master Tim, who still continued bellowing and howling,
probably from the excitement of finding himself raised to the dignity
of a martyr, the pious neighbours poured forth, with oaths and curses,
and such weapons as they could seize in haste, to storm the wizard's
fortress.

From his casement Marmaduke Nevile had espied all that had hitherto
passed, and though indignant at the brutality of the persecutors, he
had thought it by no means unnatural.  "If men, gentlemen born, will
read uncanny books, and resolve to be wizards, why, they must reap
what they sow," was the logical reflection that passed through the
mind of that ingenuous youth; but when he now perceived the arrival of
more important allies, when stones began to fly through the wicker
lattice, when threats of setting fire to the house and burning the
sorcerer who muttered spells over innocent little boys were heard,
seriously increasing in depth and loudness, Marmaduke felt his
chivalry called forth, and with some difficulty opening the rusty
wicket in the casement, he exclaimed: "Shame on you, my countrymen,
for thus disturbing in broad day a peaceful habitation!  Ye call mine
host a wizard.  Thus much say I on his behalf: I was robbed and
wounded a few nights since in your neighbourhood, and in this house
alone I found shelter and healing."

The unexpected sight of the fair young face of Marmaduke Nevile, and
the healthful sound of his clear ringing voice, produced a momentary
effect on the besiegers, when one of them, a sturdy baker, cried out,
"Heed him not,--he is a goblin.  Those devil-mongers can bake ye a
dozen such every moment, as deftly as I can draw loaves from the
oven!"

This speech turned the tide, and at that instant a savage-looking man,
the father of the aggrieved boy, followed by his wife, gesticulating
and weeping, ran from his house, waving a torch in his right hand, his
arm bare to the shoulder; and the cry of "Fire the door!" was
universal.

In fact, the danger now grew imminent: several of the party were
already piling straw and fagots against the threshold, and Marmaduke
began to think the only chance of life to his host and Sibyll was in
flight by some back way, when he beheld a man, clad somewhat in the
fashion of a country yeoman, a formidable knotted club in his hand,
pushing his way, with Herculean shoulders, through the crowd; and
stationing himself before the threshold and brandishing aloft his
formidable weapon, he exclaimed, "What!  In the devil's name, do you
mean to get yourselves all hanged for riot?  Do you think that King
Edward is as soft a man as King Henry was, and that he will suffer any
one but himself to set fire to people's houses in this way?  I dare
say you are all right enough in the main, but by the blood of Saint
Thomas, I will brain the first man who advances a step,--by way of
preserving the necks of the rest!"

"A Robin! a Robin!" cried several of the mob.  "It is our good friend
Robin.  Harken to Robin.  He is always right."

"Ay, that I am!" quoth the defender; "you know that well enough.  If I
had my way, the world should be turned upside down, but what the poor
folk should get nearer to the sun!  But what I say is this, never go
against law, while the law is too strong.  And it were a sad thing to
see fifty fine fellows trussed up for burning an old wizard.  So, be
off with you, and let us, at least all that can afford it, make for
Master Sancroft's hostelrie and talk soberly over our ale.  For
little, I trow, will ye work now your blood's up."

This address was received with a shout of approbation.  The father of
the injured child set his broad foot on his torch, the baker chucked
up his white cap, the ragged boys yelled out, "A Robin! a Robin!" and
in less than two minutes the place was as empty as it had been before
the appearance of the scholar.  Marmaduke, who, though so ignorant of
books, was acute and penetrating in all matters of action, could not
help admiring the address and dexterity of the club-bearer; and the
danger being now over, withdrew from the casement, in search of the
inmates of the house.  Ascending the stairs, he found on the landing-
place, near his room, and by the embrasure of a huge casement which
jutted from the wall, Adam and his daughter.  Adam was leaning against
the wall, with his arms folded, and Sibyll, hanging upon him, was
uttering the softest and most soothing words of comfort her tenderness
could suggest.

"My child," said the old man, shaking his head sadly, "I shall never
again have heart for these studies,--never!  A king's anger I could
brave, a priest's malice I could pity; but to find the very children,
the young race for whose sake I have made thee and myself paupers, to
find them thus--thus--"  He stopped, for his voice failed him, and the
tears rolled down his cheeks.

"Come and speak comfort to my father, Master Nevile," exclaimed
Sibyll; "come and tell him that whoever is above the herd, whether
knight or scholar, must learn to despise the hootings that follow
Merit.  Father, Father, they threw mud and stones at thy king as he
passed through the streets of London.  Thou art not the only one whom
this base world misjudges."

"Worthy mine host!" said Marmaduke, thus appealed to, "Algates, it
were not speaking truth to tell thee that I think a gentleman of birth
and quality should walk the thoroughfares with a bundle of books under
his arm; yet as for the raptril vulgar, the hildings and cullions who
hiss one day what they applaud the next, I hold it the duty of every
Christian and well-born man to regard them as the dirt on the
crossings.  Brave soldiers term it no disgrace to receive a blow from
a base hind.  An' it had been knights and gentles who had insulted
thee, thou mightest have cause for shame.  But a mob of lewd
rascallions and squalling infants--bah! verily, it is mere matter for
scorn and laughter."

These philosophical propositions and distinctions did not seem to have
their due effect upon Adam.  He smiled, however, gently upon his
guest, and with a blush over his pale face, said, "I am rightly
chastised, good young man; mean was I, methinks, and sordid to take
from thee thy good gold.  But thou knowest not what fever burns in the
brain of a man who feels that, had he wealth, his knowledge could do
great things,--such things!--I thought to repay thee well.  Now the
frenzy is gone, and I, who an hour ago esteemed myself a puissant
sage, sink in mine own conceit to a miserable blinded fool.  Child, I
am very weak; I will lay me down and rest."

So saying, the poor philosopher went his way to his chamber, leaning
on his daughter's arm.

In a few minutes Sibyll rejoined Marmaduke, who had returned to the
hall, and informed him that her father had lain down a while to
compose himself.

"It is a hard fate, sir," said the girl, with a faint smile,--"a hard
fate, to be banned and accursed by the world, only because one has
sought to be wiser than the world is."

"Douce maiden," returned the Nevile, "it is happy for thee that thy
sex forbids thee to follow thy father's footsteps, or I should say his
hard fate were thy fair warning."

Sibyll smiled faintly, and after a pause, said, with a deep blush,--

"You have been generous to my father; do not misjudge him.  He would
give his last groat to a starving beggar.  But when his passion of
scholar and inventor masters him, thou mightest think him worse than
miser.  It is an overnoble yearning that ofttimes makes him mean."

"Nay," answered Marmaduke, touched by the heavy sigh and swimming eyes
with which the last words were spoken; "I have heard Nick Alwyn's
uncle, who was a learned monk, declare that he could not constrain
himself to pray to be delivered from temptation, seeing that he might
thereby lose an occasion for filching some notable book!  For the
rest," he added, "you forget how much I owe to Master Warner's
hospitality."

He took her hand with a frank and brotherly gallantry as he spoke; but
the touch of that small, soft hand, freely and innocently resigned to
him, sent a thrill to his heart--and again the face of Sibyll seemed
to him wondrous fair.

There was a long silence, which Sibyll was the first to break.  She
turned the conversation once more upon Marmaduke's views in life.  It
had been easy for a deeper observer than he was to see that, under all
that young girl's simplicity and sweetness, there lurked something of
dangerous ambition.  She loved to recall the court-life her childhood
had known, though her youth had resigned it with apparent
cheerfulness.  Like many who are poor and fallen, Sibyll built herself
a sad consolation out of her pride; she never forgot that she was
well-born.  But Marmaduke, in what was ambition, saw but interest in
himself, and his heart beat more quickly as he bent his eyes upon that
downcast, thoughtful, earnest countenance.

After an hour thus passed, Sibyll left the guest, and remounted to her
father's chamber.  She found Adam pacing the narrow floor, and
muttering to himself.  He turned abruptly as she entered, and said,
"Come hither, child; I took four marks from that young man, for I
wanted books and instruments, and there are two left; see, take them
back to him."

"My father, he will not receive them.  Fear not, thou shalt repay him
some day."

"Take them, I say, and if the young man says thee nay, why, buy
thyself gauds and gear, or let us eat, and drink, and laugh.  What
else is life made for?  Ha, ha!  Laugh, child, laugh!"

There was something strangely pathetic in this outburst, this terrible
mirth, born of profound dejection.  Alas for this guileless, simple
creature, who had clutched at gold with a huckster's eagerness! who,
forgetting the wants of his own child, had employed it upon the
service of an Abstract Thought, and whom the scorn of his kind now
pierced through all the folds of his close-webbed philosophy and self
forgetful genius.  Awful is the duel between MAN and THE AGE in which
he lives!  For the gain of posterity, Adam Warner had martyrized
existence,--and the children pelted him as he passed the streets!
Sibyll burst into tears.

"No, my father, no," she sobbed, pushing back the money into his
hands.  "Let us both starve rather than you should despond.  God and
man will bring you justice yet."

"Ah," said the baffled enthusiast, "my whole mind is one sore now!  I
feel as if I could love man no more.  Go, and leave me.  Go, I say!"
and the poor student, usually so mild and gall-less, stamped his foot
in impotent rage.  Sibyll, weeping as if her heart would break, left
him.

Then Adam Warner again paced to and fro restlessly, and again muttered
to himself for several minutes.  At last he approached his Model,--the
model of a mighty and stupendous invention, the fruit of no chimerical
and visionary science; a great Promethean THING, that, once matured,
would divide the Old World from the New, enter into all operations of
Labour, animate all the future affairs, colour all the practical
doctrines of active men.  He paused before it, and addressed it as if
it heard and understood him: "My hair was dark, and my tread was firm,
when, one night, a THOUGHT passed into my soul,--a thought to make
Matter the gigantic slave of Mind.  Out of this thought, thou, not yet
born after five-and-twenty years of travail, wert conceived.  My
coffers were then full, and my name was honoured; and the rich
respected and the poor loved me.  Art thou a devil, that has tempted
me to ruin, or a god, that has lifted me above the earth?  I am old
before my time, my hair is blanched, my frame is bowed, my wealth is
gone, my name is sullied.  And all, dumb idol of Iron and the Element,
all for thee!  I had a wife whom I adored; she died,--I forgot her
loss in the hope of thy life.  I have a child still--God and our Lady
forgive me! she is less dear to me than thou hast been.  And now"--the
old man ceased abruptly, and folding his arms, looked at the deaf iron
sternly, as on a human foe.  By his side was a huge hammer, employed
in the toils of his forge; suddenly he seized and swung it aloft.  One
blow, and the labour of years was shattered into pieces!  One blow!--
But the heart failed him, and the hammer fell heavily to the ground.

"Ay!" he muttered, "true, true! if thou, who hast destroyed all else,
wert destroyed too, what were left me?  Is it a crime to murder Alan?
--a greater crime to murder Thought, which is the life of all men!
Come, I forgive thee!"

And all that day and all that night the Enthusiast laboured in his
chamber, and the next day the remembrance of the hooting, the pelting,
the mob, was gone,--clean gone from his breast. The Model began to
move, life hovered over its wheels; and the Martyr of Science had
forgotten the very world for which he, groaning and rejoicing, toiled!




CHAPTER VIII.

MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE MAKES LOVE, AND IS FRIGHTENED.

For two or three days Marmaduke and Sibyll were necessarily brought
much together.  Such familiarity of intercourse was peculiarly rare in
that time, when, except perhaps in the dissolute court of Edward IV.,
the virgins of gentle birth mixed sparingly, and with great reserve,
amongst those of opposite sex.  Marmaduke, rapidly recovering from the
effect of his wounds, and without other resource than Sibyll's society
in the solitude of his confinement, was not proof against the
temptation which one so young and so sweetly winning brought to his
fancy or his senses.  The poor Sibyll--she was no faultless paragon,--
she was a rare and singular mixture of many opposite qualities in
heart and in intellect!  She was one moment infantine in simplicity
and gay playfulness; the next a shade passed over her bright face, and
she uttered some sentence of that bitter and chilling wisdom, which
the sense of persecution, the cruelty of the world, had already taught
her.  She was, indeed, at that age when the Child and the Woman are
struggling against each other.  Her character was not yet formed,--a
little happiness would have ripened it at once into the richest bloom
of goodness.  But sorrow, that ever sharpens the intellect, might only
serve to sour the heart.  Her mind was so innately chaste and pure,
that she knew not the nature of the admiration she excited; but the
admiration pleased her as it pleases some young child; she was vain
then, but it was an infant's vanity, not a woman's.  And thus, from
innocence itself, there was a fearlessness, a freedom, a something
endearing and familiar in her manner, which might have turned a wiser
head than Marmaduke Nevile's.  And this the more, because, while
liking her young guest, confiding in him, raised in her own esteem by
his gallantry, enjoying that intercourse of youth with youth so
unfamiliar to her, and surrendering herself the more to its charm from
the joy that animated her spirits, in seeing that her father had
forgotten his humiliation, and returned to his wonted labours,--she
yet knew not for the handsome Nevile one sentiment that approached to
love.  Her mind was so superior to his own, that she felt almost as if
older in years, and in their talk her rosy lips preached to him in
grave advice.

On the landing, by Marmaduke's chamber, there was a large oriel
casement jutting from the wall.  It was only glazed at the upper part,
and that most imperfectly, the lower part being closed at night or in
inclement weather with rude shutters.  The recess formed by this
comfortless casement answered, therefore, the purpose of a balcony; it
commanded a full view of the vicinity without, and gave to those who
might be passing by the power also of indulging their own curiosity by
a view of the interior.

Whenever he lost sight of Sibyll, and had grown weary of the peacock,
this spot was Marmaduke's favourite haunt.  It diverted him, poor
youth, to look out of the window upon the livelier world beyond.  The
place, it is true, was ordinarily deserted, but still the spires and
turrets of London were always discernible,--and they were something.

Accordingly, in this embrasure stood Marmaduke, when one morning,
Sibyll, coming from her father's room, joined him.

"And what, Master Nevile," said Sibyll, with a malicious yet charming
smile, "what claimed thy meditations?  Some misgiving as to the
trimming of thy tunic, or the length of thy shoon?"

"Nay," returned Marmaduke, gravely, "such thoughts, though not without
their importance in the mind of a gentleman, who would not that his
ignorance of court delicacies should commit him to the japes of his
equals, were not at that moment uppermost. I was thinking--"

"Of those mastiffs, quarrelling for a bone.  Avow it."

"By our Lady, I saw them not, but now I look, they are brave dogs.
Ha! seest thou how gallantly each fronts the other, the hair
bristling, the eyes fixed, the tail on end, the fangs glistening?  Now
the lesser one moves slowly round and round the bigger, who, mind you,
Mistress Sibyll, is no dullard, but moves, too, quick as thought, not
to be taken unawares.  Ha! that is a brave spring!  Heigh, dogs,
Neigh! a good sight!--it makes the blood warm!  The little one hath
him by the throat!"

"Alack," said Sibyll, turning away her eyes, "can you find pleasure in
seeing two poor brutes mangle each other for a bone?"

"By Saint Dunstan! doth it matter what may be the cause of quarrel, so
long as dog or man bears himself bravely, with a due sense of honour
and derring-do?  See! the big one is up again.  Ah, foul fall the
butcher, who drives them away!  Those seely mechanics know not the
joyaunce of fair fighting to gentle and to hound.  For a hound, mark
you, hath nothing mechanical in his nature.  He is a gentleman all
over,--brave against equal and stranger, forbearing to the small and
defenceless, true in poverty and need where he loveth, stern and
ruthless where he hateth, and despising thieves, hildings, and the
vulgar as much as e'er a gold spur in King Edward's court!  Oh,
certes, your best gentleman is the best hound!"

"You moralize to-day; and I know not how to gainsay you," returned
Sibyll, as the dogs, reluctantly beaten off, retired each from each,
snarling and reluctant, while a small black cur, that had hitherto sat
unobserved at the door of a small hostelrie, now coolly approached and
dragged off the bone of contention.  "But what sayst thou now?  See!
see! the patient mongrel carries off the bone from the gentleman-
hounds.  Is that the way of the world?"

"Pardie! it is a naught world, if so, and much changed from the time
of our fathers, the Normans.  But these Saxons are getting uppermost
again, and the yard measure, I fear me, is more potent in these
holiday times than the mace or the battle-axe."  The Nevile paused,
sighed, and changed the subject: "This house of thine must have been a
stately pile in its day.  I see but one side of the quadrangle is
left, though it be easy to trace where the other three have stood."

"And you may see their stones and their fittings in the butcher's and
baker's stalls over the way," replied Sibyll.

"Ay!" said the Nevile, "the parings of the gentry begin to be the
wealth of the varlets."

"Little ought we to pine at that," returned Sibyll, "if the varlets
were but gentle with our poverty; but they loathe the humbled fortunes
on which they rise, and while slaves to the rich, are tyrants to the
poor."

This was said so sadly, that the Nevile felt his eyes overflow; and
the humble dress of the girl, the melancholy ridges which evinced the
site of a noble house, now shrunk into a dismal ruin, the remembrance
of the pastime-ground, the insults of the crowd, and the broken
gittern, all conspired to move his compassion, and to give force to
yet more tender emotions.

"Ah," he said suddenly, and with a quick faint blush over his handsome
and manly countenance,--"ah, fair maid--fair Sibyll--God grant that I
may win something of gold and fortune amidst yonder towers, on which
the sun shines so cheerly.  God grant it, not for my sake,--not for
mine; but that I may have something besides a true heart and a
stainless name to lay at thy feet.  Oh,  Sibyll!  By this hand, by my
father's soul, I love thee, Sibyll!  Have I not said it before?  Well,
hear me now,--I love thee!"

As he spoke, he clasped her hand in his own, and she suffered it for
one instant to rest in his.  Then withdrawing it, and meeting his
enamoured eyes with a strange sadness in her own darker, deeper, and
more intelligent orbs, she said,--

"I thank thee,--thank thee for the honour of such kind thoughts; and
frankly I answer, as thou hast frankly spoken.  It was sweet to me,
who have known little in life not hard and bitter,--sweet to wish I
had a brother like thee, and, as a brother, I can love and pray for
thee.  But ask not more, Marmaduke.  I have aims in life which forbid
all other love."

"Art thou too aspiring for one who has his spurs to win?"

"Not so; but listen.  My mother's lessons and my own heart have made
my poor father the first end and object of all things on earth to me.
I live to protect him, work for him, honour him; and for the rest, I
have thoughts thou canst not know, an ambition thou canst not feel.
Nay," she added, with that delightful smile which chased away the
graver thought which had before saddened her aspect, "what would thy
sober friend Master Alwyn say to thee, if he heard thou hadst courted
the wizard's daughter?"

"By my faith," exclaimed Marmaduke, "thou art a very April,--smiles
and clouds in a breath!  If what thou despisest in me be my want of
bookcraft, and such like, by my halidame I will turn scholar for thy
sake; and--"

Here, as he had again taken Sibyll's hand, with the passionate ardour
of his bold nature, not to be lightly daunted by a maiden's first
"No," a sudden shrill, wild burst of laughter, accompanied with a
gusty fit of unmelodious music from the street below, made both maiden
and youth start, and turn their eyes; there, weaving their immodest
dance, tawdry in their tinsel attire, their naked arms glancing above
their heads, as they waved on high their instruments, went the
timbrel-girls.

"Ha, ha!" cried their leader, "see the gallant and the witch-leman!
The glamour has done its work!  Foul is fair! foul is fair! and the
devil will have his own!"

But these creatures, whose bold license the ancient chronicler
records, were rarely seen alone.  They haunted parties of pomp and
pleasure; they linked together the extremes of life,--the grotesque
Chorus that introduced the terrible truth of foul vice and abandoned
wretchedness in the midst of the world's holiday and pageant.  So now,
as they wheeled into the silent, squalid street, they heralded a
goodly company of dames and cavaliers on horseback, who were passing
through the neighbouring plains into the park of Marybone to enjoy the
sport of falconry.  The splendid dresses of this procession, and the
grave and measured dignity with which it swept along, contrasted
forcibly with the wild movements and disorderly mirth of the timbrel-
players.  These last darted round and round the riders, holding out
their instruments for largess, and retorting, with laugh and gibe, the
disdainful look or sharp rebuke with which their salutations were
mostly received.

Suddenly, as the company, two by two, paced up the street, Sibyll
uttered a faint exclamation, and strove to snatch her hand from the
Nevile's grasp.  Her eye rested upon one of the horsemen, who rode
last, and who seemed in earnest conversation with a dame, who, though
scarcely in her first youth, excelled all her fair companions in
beauty of face and grace of horsemanship, as well as in the costly
equipments of the white barb that caracoled beneath her easy hand.  At
the same moment the horseman looked up and gazed steadily at Sibyll,
whose countenance grew pale, and flushed, in a breath.  His eye then
glanced rapidly at Marmaduke; a half-smile passed his pale, firm lips;
he slightly raised the plumed cap from his brow, inclined gravely to
Sibyll, and, turning once more to his companion, appeared to answer
some question she addressed to him as to the object of his salutation,
for her look, which was proud, keen, and lofty, was raised to Sibyll,
and then dropped somewhat disdainfully, as she listened to the words
addressed her by the cavalier.

The lynx eyes of the tymbesteres had seen the recognition; and their
leader, laying her bold hand on the embossed bridle of the horseman,
exclaimed, in a voice shrill and loud enough to be heard in the
balcony above, "Largess! noble lord, largess! for the sake of the lady
thou lovest best!"

The fair equestrian turned away her head at these words; the nobleman
watched her a moment, and dropped some coins into the timbrel.

"Ha, ha!" cried the tymbestere, pointing her long arm to Sibyll, and
springing towards the balcony,--

                "The cushat would mate
                 Above her state,
     And she flutters her wings round the falcon's beak;
                 But death to the dove
                 Is the falcon's love!
     Oh, sharp is the kiss of the falcon's beak!"

Before this rude song was ended, Sibyll had vanished from the place;
the cavalcade had disappeared.  The timbrel-players, without deigning
to notice Marmaduke, darted elsewhere to ply their discordant trade,
and the Nevile, crossing himself devoutly, muttered, "Jesu defend us!
Those she Will-o'-the-wisps are eno' to scare all the blood out of
one's body.  What--a murrain on them!--do they portend, flitting round
and round, and skirting off, as if the devil's broomstick was behind
them!  By the Mass! they have frighted away the damozel, and I am not
sorry for it.  They have left me small heart for the part of Sir
Launval."

His meditations were broken off by the sudden sight of Nicholas Alwyn,
mounted on a small palfrey, and followed by a sturdy groom on
horseback, leading a steed handsomely caparisoned.  In another moment,
Marmaduke had descended, opened the door, and drawn Alwyn into the
hall.




CHAPTER IX.

MASTER MARMADUKE NEVILE LEAVES THE WIZARD'S HOUSE FOR THE GREAT WORLD.

"Right glad am I," said Nicholas, "to see you so stout and hearty, for
I am the bearer of good news.  Though I have been away, I have not
forgotten you; and it so chanced that I went yesterday to attend my
Lord of Warwick with some nowches [buckles and other ornaments] and
knackeries, that he takes out as gifts and exemplars of English work.
They were indifferently well wrought, specially a chevesail, of which
the--"

"Spare me the fashion of thy mechanicals, and come to the point,"
interrupted Marmaduke, impatiently.

"Pardon me, Master Nevile.  I interrupt thee not when thou talkest of
bassinets and hauberks,--every cobbler to his last. But, as thou
sayest, to the point: the stout earl, while scanning my workmanship,
for in much the chevesail was mine, was pleased to speak graciously of
my skill with the bow, of which he had heard; and he then turned to
thyself, of whom my Lord Montagu had already made disparaging mention.
When I told the earl somewhat more about thy qualities and disposings,
and when I spoke of thy desire to serve him, and the letter of which
thou art the bearer, his black brows smoothed mighty graciously, and
he bade me tell thee to come to him this afternoon, and he would judge
of thee with his own eyes and ears.  Wherefore I have ordered the
craftsman to have all thy gauds and gear ready at thine hostelrie, and
I have engaged thee henchmen and horses for thy fitting appearance.
Be quick: time and the great wait for no man.  So take whatever thou
needest for present want from thy mails, and I will send a porter for
the rest ere sunset."

"But the gittern for the damozel?"

"I have provided that for thee, as is meet."  And Nicholas, stepping
back, eased the groom of a case which contained a gittern, whose
workmanship and ornaments delighted the Nevile.

"It is of my lord the young Duke of Gloucester's own musical-vendor;
and the duke, though a lad yet, is a notable judge of all appertaining
to the gentle craft.  [For Richard III.'s love of music, and patronage
of musicians and minstrels, see the discriminating character of that
prince in Sharon Turner's "History of England," vol. IV. p. 66.]  So
despatch, and away!"

Marmaduke retired to his chamber, and Nicholas, after a moment spent
in silent thought, searched the room for the hand-bell, which then
made the mode of communication between the master and domestics.  Not
finding this necessary luxury, he contrived at last to make Madge hear
his voice from her subterranean retreat; and on her arrival, sent her
in quest of Sibyll.

The answer he received was, that Mistress Sibyll was ill, and unable
to see him.  Alwyn looked disconcerted at this intelligence, but,
drawing from his girdle a small gipsire, richly broidered, he prayed
Madge to deliver it to her young mistress, and inform her that it was
the fruit of the commission with which she had honoured him.

"It is passing strange," said he, pacing the hall alone,--"passing
strange, that the poor child should have taken such hold on me.  After
all, she would be a bad wife for a plain man like me.  Tush! that is
the trader's thought all over.  Have I brought no fresher feeling out
of my fair village-green?  Would it not be sweet to work for her, and
rise in life, with her by my side?  And these girls of the city, so
prim and so brainless!--as well marry a painted puppet.  Sibyll!  Am I
dement?  Stark wode?  What have I to do with girls and marriage?
Humph!  I marvel what Marmaduke still thinks of her,--and she of him."

While Alwyn thus soliloquized, the Nevile having hastily arranged his
dress, and laden himself with the moneys his mails contained, summoned
old Madge to receive his largess, and to conduct him to Warner's
chamber, in order to proffer his farewell.

With somewhat of a timid step he followed the old woman (who kept
muttering thanks and benedicites as she eyed the coin in her palm) up
the ragged stairs, and for the first time knocked at the door of the
student's sanctuary.  No answer came.  "Eh, sir! you must enter," said
Madge; "an' you fired a bombard under his ear he would not heed you."
So, suiting the action to the word, she threw open the door, and
closed it behind him, as Marmaduke entered.

The room was filled with smoke, through which mirky atmosphere the
clear red light of the burning charcoal peered out steadily like a
Cyclop's eye.  A small, but heaving, regular, labouring, continuous
sound, as of a fairy hammer, smote the young man's ear.  But as his
gaze, accustoming itself to the atmosphere, searched around, he could
not perceive what was its cause.  Adam Warner was standing in the
middle of the room, his arms folded, and contemplating something at a
little distance, which Marmaduke could not accurately distinguish.
The youth took courage, and approached.  "Honoured mine host," said
he, "I thank thee for hospitality and kindness, I crave pardon for
disturbing thee in thy incanta--ehem!--thy--thy studies, and I come to
bid thee farewell."

Adam turned round with a puzzled, absent air, as if scarcely
recognizing his guest; at length, as his recollection slowly came back
to him, he smiled graciously, and said: "Good youth, thou art richly
welcome to what little it was in my power to do for thee.
Peradventure a time may come when they who seek the roof of Adam
Warner may find less homely cheer, a less rugged habitation,--for look
you!" he exclaimed suddenly, with a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm
--and laying his hand on Nevile's arm, as, through all the smoke and
grime that obscured his face, flashed the ardent soul of the
triumphant Inventor,--"look you! since you have been in this house,
one of my great objects is well-nigh matured,--achieved.  Come
hither," and he dragged the wondering Marmaduke to his model, or
Eureka, as Adam had fondly named his contrivance.  The Nevile then
perceived that it was from the interior of this machine that the sound
which had startled him arose; to his eye the THING was uncouth and
hideous; from the jaws of an iron serpent, that, wreathing round it,
rose on high with erect crest, gushed a rapid volume of black smoke,
and a damp spray fell around.  A column of iron in the centre kept in
perpetual and regular motion, rising and sinking successively, as the
whole mechanism within seemed alive with noise and action.

"The Syracusan asked an inch of earth, beyond the earth, to move the
earth," said Adam; "I stand in the world, and lo! with this engine the
world shall one day be moved."

"Holy Mother!" faltered Marmaduke; "I pray thee, dread sir, to ponder
well ere thou attemptest any such sports with the habitation in which
every woman's son is so concerned.  Bethink thee, that if in moving
the world thou shouldst make any mistake, it would--"

"Now stand there and attend," interrupted Adam, who had not heard one
word of this judicious exhortation.

"Pardon me, terrible sir!" exclaimed Marmaduke, in great trepidation,
and retreating rapidly to the door; "but I have heard that the fiends
are mighty malignant to all lookers-on not initiated."

While he spoke, fast gushed the smoke, heavily heaved the fairy
hammers, up and down, down and up, sank or rose the column, with its
sullen sound.  The young man's heart sank to the soles of his feet.

"Indeed and in truth," he stammered out, "I am but a dolt in these
matters; I wish thee all success compatible with the weal of a
Christian, and bid thee, in sad humility, good day:" and he added, in
a whisper--"the Lord's forgiveness!  Amen!"

Marmaduke then fairly rushed through the open door, and hurried out of
the chamber as fast as possible.

He breathed more freely as he descended the stairs.  "Before I would
call that gray carle my father, or his child my wife, may I feel all
the hammers of the elves and sprites he keeps tortured within that
ugly little prison-house playing a death's march on my body!  Holy
Saint Dunstan, the timbrel-girls came in time!  They say these wizards
always have fair daughters, and their love can be no blessing!"

As he thus muttered, the door of Sibyll's chamber opened, and she
stood before him at the threshold.  Her countenance was very pale, and
bore evidence of weeping.  There was a silence on both sides, which
the girl was the first to break.

"So, Madge tells me thou art about to leave us?"

"Yes, gentle maiden!  I--I--that is, my Lord of Warwick has summoned
me.  I wish and pray for all blessings on thee! and--and--if ever it
be mine to serve or aid thee, it will be--that is--verily, my tongue
falters, but my heart--that is--fare thee well, maiden!  Would thou
hadst a less wise father; and so may the saints (Saint Anthony
especially, whom the Evil One was parlous afraid of) guard and keep
thee!"

With this strange and incoherent address, Marmaduke left the maiden
standing by the threshold of her miserable chamber.  Hurrying into the
hall, he summoned Alwyn from his meditations, and, giving the gittern
to Madge, with an injunction to render it to her mistress, with his
greeting and service, he vaulted lightly on his steed; the steady and
more sober Alwyn mounted his palfrey with slow care and due caution.
As the air of spring waved the fair locks of the young cavalier, as
the good horse caracoled under his lithesome weight, his natural
temper of mind, hardy, healthful, joyous, and world-awake, returned to
him.  The image of Sibyll and her strange father fled from his
thoughts like sickly dreams.