Hereward, the Last of the English Part 72

There fayled never so lytell a byrde, That ever was bred on brere."

With the same friendly yeoman "that was a good felawe," they would lodge by twos and threes during the sharp frosts of midwinter, in the lonely farm-house which stood in the "field" or forest-clearing; but for the greater part of the year their "lodging was on the cold ground" in the holly thickets, or under the hanging rock, or in a lodge of boughs.

And then, after a while, the life which began in terror, and despair, and poverty, and loss of land and kin, became not only tolerable, but pleasant. Bold men and hardy, they cared less and less for

"The thornie wayes, the deep valleys, The snowe, the frost, the rayne, The colde, the hete; for dry or wete We must lodge on the plaine, And us above, none other roofe, But a brake bushe, or twayne."

And they found fair la.s.ses, too, in time, who, like Torfrida and Maid Marian, would answer to their warnings against the outlaw life, with the nut-browne maid, that--

"Amonge the wylde dere, such an archere As men say that ye be, He may not fayle of good vitayle Where is so great plente: And water clere of the rivere, Shall be full swete to me, With which in hele, I shall right wele, Endure, as ye may see."

Then called they themselves "merry men," and the forest the "merry greenwood"; and sang, with Robin Hood,--

"A merrier man than I, belyye There lives not in Christentie."

They were coaxed back, at times, to civilized life; they got their grace of the king, and entered the king's service; but the craving after the greenwood was upon them. They dreaded and hated the four stone walls of a Norman castle, and, like Robin Hood, slipt back to the forest and the deer.

Gradually, too, law and order rose among them, lawless as they were; the instinct of discipline and self-government, side by side with that of personal independence, which is the peculiar mark and peculiar strength of the English character. Who knows not how, in the "Lytell Geste of Robin Hood," they shot at "pluck-buffet," the king among them, disguised as an abbot; and every man who missed the rose-garland, "his tackle he should tyne";--

"And bere a buffet on his head, Iwys ryght all bare, And all that fell on Robyn's lote, He smote them wonder sair.

"Till Robyn fayled of the garlonde, Three fyngers and mair."

Then good Gilbert bids him in his turn

"'Stand forth and take his pay.'

"'If it be so,' sayd Robyn, 'That may no better be, Syr Abbot, I delyver thee myn arrowe, I pray thee, Syr, serve thou me.'

"'It falleth not for myne order,' saith the kynge, 'Robyn, by thy leve, For to smyte no good yeman, For doute I should hym greve.'

"'Smyte on boldly,' sayd Robyn, 'I give thee large leve.'

Anon our kynge, with that word, He folde up his sleve.

"And such a buffet he gave Robyn, To grounde he yode full nere.

'I make myn avowe,' sayd Robyn, 'Thou art a stalwarte frere.

"'There is pyth in thyn arme,' sayd Robyn, 'I trowe thou canst well shoote.'

Thus our kynge and Hobyn Hode Together they are met."

Hard knocks in good humor, strict rules, fair play, and equal justice, for high and low; this was the old outlaw spirit, which has descended to their inlawed descendants; and makes, to this day, the life and marrow of an English public school.

One fixed idea the outlaw had,--hatred of the invader. If "his herde were the king's deer," "his treasure was the earl's purse"; and still oftener the purse of the foreign churchman, Norman or Italian, who had expelled the outlaw's English cousins from their convents; shamefully scourged and cruelly imprisoned them, as the blessed Archbishop Lanfranc did at Canterbury, because they would not own allegiance to a French abbot; or murdered them at the high altar, as did the new abbot of Glas...o...b..ry, because they would not change their old Gregorian chant for that of William of Fecamp. [Footnote: See the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle".]

On these mitred tyrants the outlaw had no mercy, as far as their purses were concerned. Their persons, as consecrated, were even to him sacred and inviolable,--at least, from wounds and death; and one may suppose Hereward himself to have been the first author of the laws afterward attributed to Robin Hood. As for "robbing and reving, beting and bynding," free warren was allowed against the Norman.

"'Thereof no fors,' said Robyn, 'We shall do well enow.

But look ye do no housbonde harme, That tilleth wyth his plough.

"'No more ye shall no good yeman, That walketh by grene wood shawe; Ne no knyght, ne no squyer, That will be good felawe.

"'These bysshoppes, and these archbysshoppes, Ye shall them bete and binde; The hye sheryff of Nottingham, Hym holde in your mynde.'

"Robyn loved our dere Ladye, For doubt of dedely synne, Wolde he never do company harme That any woman was ynne."

And even so it was with Hereward in the Bruneswald, if the old chroniclers, Leofric especially, are to be believed.

And now Torfrida was astonished. She had given way utterly at Ely, from woman's fear, and woman's disappointment. All was over. All was lost. What was left, save to die?

But--and it was a new and unexpected fact to one of her excitable Southern blood, easily raised, and easily depressed--she discovered that neither her husband, nor Winter, nor Geri, nor Wenoch, nor Ra.n.a.ld of Ramsey, nor even the romancing harping Leofric, thought that all was lost. She argued it with them, not to persuade them into base submission, but to satisfy her own surprise.

"But what will you do?"

"Live in the greenwood."

"And what then?"

"Burn every town which a Frenchman holds, and kill every Frenchman we meet."

"But what plan have you?"

"Who wants a plan, as you call it, while he has the green hollies overhead, the dun deer on the lawn, bow in his hand, and sword by his side?"

"But what will be the end of it all?"

"We shall live till we die."

"But William is master of all England."

"What is that to us? He is not our master."

"But he must be some day. You will grow fewer and fewer. His government will grow stronger and stronger."

"What is that to us? When we are dead, there will be brave yeomen in plenty to take our place. You would not turn traitor?"

"I? Never! never! I will live and die with you in your greenwood, as you call it. Only--I did not understand you English."

Torfrida did not. She was discovering the fact, which her nation have more than once discovered since, that the stupid valor of the Englishman never knows when it is beaten; and sometimes, by that self-satisfied ignorance, succeeds in not being beaten after all.

So Hereward--if the chronicles speak truth--a.s.sembled a formidable force, well-nigh, at last, four hundred men. Winter, Geri, Wenoch, Grogan, one of the Azers of Lincoln, were still with him. Ra.n.a.ld the butler still carried his standard. Of Duti and Outi, the famous brothers, no more is heard. A valiant Matelgar takes their place; Alfric and s.e.xwold and many another gallant fugitive cast up, like scattered hounds, at the sound of "The Wake's" war-horn. There were those among them (says Gaimar) who scorned to fight single-handed less than three Normans. As for Hereward, he would fight seven.

"Les quatre oscist, les treis fuirent; Naffrez, sanglant, cil s'en partirent En plusurs lius issi avint, K'encontre seit tres bien se tuit De seit hommes avait vertu, Un plus hardi ne fu veu."

They ranged up the Bruneswald, dashing out to the war-cry of "A Wake! a Wake!" laying all waste with fire and sword, that is, such towns as were in the hands of Normans. And a n.o.ble range they must have had for gallant sportsmen. Away south, between the Nene and Welland, stretched from Stamford and Peterborough the still vast forests of Rockingham, nigh twenty miles in length as the crow flies, down beyond Rockingham town, and Geddington Chase. To the west, they had the range of the "hunting counties," dotted still, in the more eastern part, with innumerable copses and shaughs, the remnants of the great forest, out of which, as out of Rockinghamshire, have been cut those fair parks and

"Handsome houses, Where the wealthy n.o.bles dwell";

past which the Lord of Burleigh led his Welsh bride to that Burghley House by Stamford town, well-nigh the n.o.blest of them all, which was, in Hereward's time, deep wood, and freestone down. Round Exton, and Normanton, and that other Burley on the Hill; on through those Morkery woods, which still retain the name of Hereward's ill-fated nephew; north by Irnham and Corby; on to Belton and Syston (_par n.o.bile_), and southwest again to those still wooded heights, whence all-but-royal Belvoir looks out over the rich green vale below, did Hereward and his men range far and wide, harrying the Frenchman, and hunting the dun deer.

Stags there were in plenty. There remain to this day, in Grimsthorpe Park by Bourne, the descendants of the very deer which Earl Leofric and Earl Algar, and after them Hereward the outlaw, hunted in the Bruneswald.