Part 6 (2/2)
”The founder of our house,”--thus Mother Joan began her narrative,--”was my grandfather's father, slain, above an hundred years ago, at the battle of Evesham. He left an infant son, not four years old when he died. This was my grandfather, Hugh Le Despenser, Earl of Winchester, who at the age of twenty-five advanced the fortunes of his house by wedding a daughter of Warwick, Isabel, the young widow of the Lord de Chaworth, and the mother's mother of Alianora of Lancaster. Thou and thy father's wife, therefore, are near akin. This Isabel (after whom thy mother was named) was a famed beauty, and brought moreover a very rich dower. My grandfather and she had many children, but I need only speak of one--my hapless father.
”King Edward of Caernarvon loved my father dearly. In truth, so did Edward of Westminster, who bestowed on him, ere he was fully ten years old, the hand of his grand-daughter, my mother, Alianora de Clare, who brought him in dower the mighty earldom of Gloucester. The eldest of us was Hugh my brother; then came I; next followed my other brothers, Edward, Gilbert, and Philip; and last of all, eight years after me, came Isabel thy mother.
”From her birth this child was mine especial care. I was alway a thoughtful, quiet maiden, more meet for cloister than court; and I well remember, though 'tis fifty years ago, the morrow when my baby-sister was put into mine arms, and I was bidden to have a care of her. Have a care of her! Had she never pa.s.sed into any worse care than mine-- well-a-day! Yet, could I have looked forward into the future, and have read Isabel's coming history, I might have thought that the wisest and kindest course I could take would be to smother her in her cradle.
”Before she was three years old, she pa.s.sed from me. My Lord of Arundel--Earl Edmund that then was--was very friendly with my father; and he desired that their families should be drawn closer together by the marriage of Richard Fitzalan, his son and heir--a boy of twelve years--with one of my father's daughters. My father, thus appealed unto, gave him our snowdrop.
”'Not Joan,' said he; 'Joan is G.o.d's. She shall be the spouse of Christ in Shaftesbury Abbey.'
”So it came that ere my darling was three years old, they twined the bride-wreath for her hair, and let it all down flowing, soft and s.h.i.+ning, from beneath her golden fillet. Ah holy Virgin! had it been thy pleasure to give me that cup of gall they mixed that day for her, and to her the draught of pure fresh water thou hast held to me!
Perchance I could have drunk it with less pain than she did; and at least it would have saved the pain to her.
”That was in the fourteenth year of Edward of Caernarvon. [1320.] So long as Earl Edmund of Arundel lived, there was little to fear. He, as I said, loved my father, and was a father to Isabel. The Lady of Arundel likewise was then living, and was careful over her as a mother.
Knowest thou that the Lady Griselda, of such fame for her patient endurance, was an ancestress of thy father? It should have been of thy mother. Hers was a like story; only that to her came no reward, no happy close.
”But ere I proceed, I must speak of one woeful matter, which I do believe to have been the ruin of my father. He was never loved by the people--partly, I think, because he gave counsel to the King to rule, as they thought, with too stern a hand; partly because my grandfather loved money too well, nor was he over careful how he came thereby; partly because the Queen hated him, and she was popular; but far above all these for another reason, which was the occasion of his fall, and the ruin of all who loved him.
”Hast thou ever heard of the Boni-Homines? They have other names-- Albigenses, Waldenses, Cathari, Men of the Valleys. They are a sect of heretics, dwelling originally in the dominions of the Marquis of Monferrato, toward the borders betwixt France, Italy, and Spain: men condemned by the Church, and holding certain evil opinions touching the holy doctrine of grace of condignity, and free-will, and the like. Yet some of them, I must confess, lead not unholy lives.”
Philippa merely answered that she had heard of these heretics.
”Well,” resumed the blind woman, ”my father became entangled with these men. How or wherefore I know not. He might have known that their doctrines had been condemned by the holy Council of Lumbars two hundred years back. But when the Friars Predicants were first set up by the blessed Dominic, under leave of our holy Father the Pope, many of these sectaries crept in among them. A company went forth from Ashridge, and another from Edingdon--the two houses of this brood of serpents. And one of them, named Giles de Edingdon, fell in with my father, and taught him the evil doctrines of these wretches, whom Earl Edmund of Cornwall (of the blood royal), that wedded a daughter of our house, had in his unwisdom brought into this land; for he was a wicked man and an ill liver. [See Note 6.] King Edward of Caernarvon likewise listened to these men, and did but too often according to their counsels.
”Against my grandfather and others, but especially against these men of Edingdon and Ashridge, Dame Isabelle the Queen set herself up. King Edward had himself sent her away on a certain mission touching the homage due to the King of France for Guienne; for he might not adventure to leave the realm at that time. But now this wicked woman gathered together an army, and with Prince Edward, and the King's brother the Earl of Kent, who were deluded by her enchantments, she came back and landed at Orewell, and thence marched with flying colours to Bristol, men gathering everywhere to her standard as she came.
”We were in Bristol on that awful day. My mother, the King had left in charge of the Tower of London; but in Bristol, with the King, were my grandfather and father my Lord and Lady of Arundel, their son Richard, and Isabel, and myself. I was then a maiden of sixteen years. When Dame Isabelle's banners floated over the gates of the city, and her trumpets summoned the citizens to surrender, King Edward, who was a timid man, flung himself into the castle for safety, and with him all of us, saving my grandfather, and my Lord of Arundel, who remained without, directing the defence.
”The citizens of Bristol, thus besieged (for she had surrounded the town), sent to ask Dame Isabelle her will, offering to surrender the city on condition that she would spare their lives and property. But she answered by her trumpeter, that she would agree to nothing unless they would first surrender the Earls of Winchester and Arundel; 'for,'
saith she, 'I am come purposely to destroy them.' Then the citizens consulted together, and determined to save their lives and property by the sacrifice of the n.o.blest blood in England, and (as it was shown afterwards) of the blood royal. They opened their gates, and yielded up my grandfather and thine to her will.”
Note 1. Hilding: a word derived from the Anglo-Saxon, and used indiscriminately to denote a young person of either s.e.x.
Note 2. Wimple: the covering for the neck, worn by secular women as well as nuns, and either with or without a veil or hood. It had been in fas.h.i.+on for two centuries or thereabouts, but was now beginning to be generally discarded.
Note 3. In accordance with the custom of the time, by which persons were commonly named from their birth-places, Edward the First, the Second, and the Third are respectively designated Edward of Westminster, of Caernarvon, and of Windsor.
Note 4. The copped-hat was the high-crowned brimless hat then fas.h.i.+onable, the parent of the modern one. An instance of it will be found in the figure of Bolingbroke, plate xvi. of the ill.u.s.trations to Cretan's History of Richard the Second, Archaeologia, vol. xx.
Note 5. One historian after another has copied Froissart's a.s.sertion that Hugh Le Despenser the elder at his death was an old man of ninety, and none ever took the trouble to verify the statement; yet the _post-mortem_ inquisition of his father is extant, certifying that he was born in the first week in March 1261; so that on October 8, 1326, the day of his execution, he was only sixty-five.
Note 6. It will be understood that this was the light in which the monks regarded Earl Edmund.
CHAPTER FIVE.
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