The Children's Book of London Part 6

Among the games he played indoors were chess and draughts, both of which people still play. One knight had perhaps many squires, and they were all supposed to love him very much, and to be perfectly obedient to him.

The young squires had games among themselves, and the squires of two different knights had little contests, each trying to beat the others.

The squires were able to run and jump straight on to a horse even when they were covered all over with heavy armour. They danced and turned somersaults, and performed many other exercises to make them strong and agile. Even princes had to be squires before they could be knights, and, if you remember, when Edward the Black Prince was fighting the French at Crecy, he was not then a knight, but was made a knight because he had been so brave on that occasion. He took King John of France prisoner, and brought him to London to a great castle called the Savoy; and when he had brought him there he did not treat him as a prisoner at all, but himself took the part of a humble squire, and waited on the French King while he had supper. Very few princes would have done that; they would rather have gloried in showing their superiority to their captive. The palace of the Savoy was in London, further down the river than Westminster. It is all gone now except the chapel, where people still go to church on Sundays.

Down beside this part of the river now runs a street with houses and shops on each side, and it is called the Strand. I wonder if you have ever heard of the strand at the seaside? It is an old word, meaning the beach beside water, and the Strand in London reminds us of the time when there was no embankment, but the houses were right on the edge of the water. Great palaces most of them were, where all the haughty n.o.bles with their following of squires lived. They have all gone now, these great palaces, but one gate remains, a very handsome stone gate with steps, and this was the gate of a great palace belonging to the Duke of Buckingham, and here boats could come up so that the Duke could step into one from his stairs at the water gate; but when the embankment was made the river was hemmed in, and could not come so far up, and now the gate stands back a long way from the river in the middle of a green garden. The people used the river a great deal then, going by water as we go by land, and the water was covered with gaily-coloured barges and boats.

After being a squire, the next thing was to be a knight. It was not every man who could be a knight. A man must have done some brave deed, or shown himself very faithful, or be the son of a powerful n.o.ble, or something of that kind; but when it was decided that a young man might be made a knight, he had to watch his armour alone all night in a church, and pray to be made worthy, and then in the morning he vowed always to help the weak and avenge them, and never to draw back or be afraid, and never to use his sword except for the right. Then the King received him, and he knelt down, and the King gave him a light blow on the shoulder with the flat side of the sword, and this made him a knight and gave him the right to use the t.i.tle 'Sir' before his name.

The knights used to have games that you and I would think were more like real fighting than play. They put on armour and mounted their horses, and then met to try to knock one another off. These fights were called tournaments, and all the ladies came to watch them as nowadays they go to watch men play at polo or cricket. The chief place in London for tournaments was a place we have been to already, called Smithfield. That is where the meat market is now, and it is still a wide, open square. A great many things happened at Smithfield, and we shall hear of it again before this book is finished.

On the day of a grand tournament everything was made ready very early.

There were high wooden seats arranged all round, covered with scarlet or purple cloth, and there were special seats like thrones for the King and Queen; and people came flocking up as if to a fair, dressed in crimson and gold and blue and green, with clothes made of velvet and silk, much brighter than anything we have now, and the men were quite as gay as the ladies. Before the time for the tournament, the knights who were going to take part in it would ride up on their prancing horses; some came from the Tower of London, and there is a street not far from St. Paul's Cathedral still called Knightrider Street, because the knights used to come riding up there to the tournaments at Smithfield.

Cannot you imagine how a young knight's heart would beat when he first took part in a tournament? Perhaps he was just one-and-twenty, and still only a boy in heart, and when he rode into that great open s.p.a.ce everyone cheered him, and he saw the ladies rising, sitting on tiers of seats that rose higher and higher, making a beautiful ma.s.s of colour, like a bed of flowers; and there was one there who he knew would see him, a girl only seventeen, very sweet and fair and shy, who was among the Queen's maids-of-honour, and the young knight could not see her just then for the crowds of other people there. But he knew that she would be watching, and that he was to fight for her. For the glove he wore fixed on to his helmet was hers: she had given it to him the day before; no one else knew it was hers. But if he fell off his horse and rolled in the mud, that glove would be rolled in the mud too, and then he would be so much ashamed he would never dare to look her in the face again.

So he plucked up his courage, and looked round as if he were not at all nervous, and he saw the man he had to fight come riding toward him, a big strong man on a great black horse. The two knights held up their long lances to salute the King and Queen and ladies, and bowed to each other. A trumpet sounded, and the two horses rushed toward one another, the lances came against the strong armour with a crash, and the young knight felt a wrench, for his horse was thrown back on its haunches; but it recovered itself and dashed on, pa.s.sing the other knight, until he wheeled it round and came to meet his opponent again. This time, just as they were going to meet, the horse of the older knight swerved, and his lance, striking crossways, broke in two, and the young knight could easily then have knocked him off his horse. But it was considered disgraceful to strike an unarmed man, so he lowered his lance and rode past without touching him, and all the people cheered. There was one more meeting to be faced, only one, and if he could manage to distinguish himself then, that fair girl would be proud of him, and perhaps smile sweetly when he met her again, and allow him to kiss her hand. The thought so fired the young knight that when his opponent had obtained a new lance and was awaiting him, he came on with such a pace and such a rush that he carried the other man clean out of his saddle, and laid him full length on the ground, where he lay helpless in his heavy armour until his squires ran across the field and raised him up.

Then all the people shouted wildly, and the young knight rode modestly off the field feeling very happy.

If you saw Smithfield now you would not think such things could ever have happened there, for it is so bare and dull, and it was then so magnificent.

Besides the tournaments, the people of London had many other shows. When Queen Elizabeth was crowned there was a wonderful procession. We all heard a great deal about the coronation of King George V. Well, it is rather interesting to think that about three and a half centuries before, Queen Elizabeth, when crowned, had a grand ceremony, and afterwards made a tour round the city, as the King of England always does to this day after the ceremony has taken place. We have accounts of Elizabeth's procession that tells us exactly what it was like. The Queen went very slowly and stopped very often, and whenever she stopped a child came forward and recited dull verses to her. It must have taken a long time and been rather tiresome. But there were all sorts of beautiful things to look at in the meantime. In one place there was a high wooden scaffolding built up, and on it figures of Henry VII. and his Queen Elizabeth, who was the grandmother of the real Queen Elizabeth. You remember how Henry VII. married her because she was the sister of Edward V., and so the York and Lancaster sides were joined in one? Well, to show this there sprouted out of the hands of these two wax figures great boughs of roses, red and white mixed together, as a sign that the red and white roses of York and Lancaster were joined. At one place a child came forth and handed Elizabeth a copy of the Bible in English, the first copy that the English people had ever had in their own language; for, you know, the Bible was not written first in English, but in Hebrew and Greek, and up to this time no one had translated it into English. And everywhere children came out of odd places and said curious verses. I have heard one story, though I do not know if it is true, that a little child had been covered all over with gold paint, and was to be let down in a swing to greet the Queen as she pa.s.sed underneath; and when the time came, and the little gilt child was lowered, it was found to be quite dead, stifled by the gold paint.

That was a sad thing, and I did not want this chapter to be sad, because history is too full of sad things, and tournaments and games ought to be gay.

CHAPTER XIII

SIR THOMAS MORE

Sir Thomas More belongs entirely to London, because he was born there, he lived there, and he died there, so that his story cannot be missed out. But it is a story that is in some ways rather difficult to understand. When Sir Thomas was a little boy he was not Sir Thomas at all, but probably just Tom. He was born in a street called Milk Street, a name not difficult to remember. It is close by St. Paul's Cathedral, and now is a little narrow street full of warehouses, where merchants keep their goods. When Tom was fifteen he was sent, according to the custom of the times, to be a page. And the household to which he went was a very great one indeed, nothing less than that of the Archbishop of Canterbury, whose palace was not far from Westminster, on the other side of the river. At this time Henry VII. was king, and England was resting in peace after the long Wars of the Roses. Thomas waited at table like other pages, and learnt many things, such as riding and tilting, as well as Latin and Greek; but though he was a very bright, sweet-tempered boy, he was always more inclined to learning than to sport, and when he grew a little older it was thought a pity he should not learn more, so he was sent to Oxford University. When he had finished his time at Oxford he came back to London, and became a barrister, and very soon after he began to think about marrying.

He knew at that time three girls, sisters, and he liked the second one very much; but then it was considered rather a disgrace if a younger sister were married before an elder one. And someone told him that the eldest sister liked him very much, so what did he do but propose to the eldest and marry her. She seems to have been a nice girl, and for six years they lived very happily together; and then she died, leaving him with four children--three little daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cicely, and one son, John.

More felt that he could not leave his little ones motherless when they were so young, and so he determined to marry again, and this time he was not so fortunate, for he chose a rather plain, cross woman, many years older than himself, who was a widow. He thought perhaps she would be a careful manager, but the choice was unfortunate for him.

King Henry VII. was now dead, and his son, the Henry VIII. who married six wives one after the other, was on the throne. He was very fond of More, and often had him at the Court at Westminster, and gave him all sorts of honours and dignities, and finally made him a knight, so that he was Sir Thomas, and his cross wife could call herself Lady Alice More, a t.i.tle that pleased her very much.

More had never liked the life of a city, and now that he was richer, owing to the King's kindness, he removed to a place that was then a village three miles from London called Chelsea. It seems odd to think of Chelsea ever being a village by itself, for it is now all a part of London. The houses have crept on and on, and covered up all the s.p.a.ce between until Chelsea is right in London.

It is still a very pretty place beside the river, with shady trees and beautiful houses, and in More's time it must have been charming. He had a large house with a garden stretching right down to the side of the water, and from this he could step into his barge and go down to Westminster to see the King.

His little girls grew up here, and spent a happy childhood. They all, especially the eldest, adored their father. More himself was a very loving father, but he never spoilt his children, and always took care that they learnt their lessons. He used to say: 'Children, virtue and learning are the meat, and play but the sauce.' When any of them grumbled at little hardships, he used to say: 'We must not look to go to heaven on feather beds.' He was very fond of all of the children, but he loved the best his eldest daughter Margaret, Meg as he called her, and every day as Meg grew older she and her father were more and more to each other. Meg was clever, too; when still only a girl she could write letters in Latin and read many very difficult books.

The home life was rather different from that which we know now. There were some pages in the household, boys of good family, who came to learn from More as he had learnt from the Archbishop. One of these, William Roper, was a very nice fellow, and he afterwards married Margaret. Then there was the Fool. It seems to us now such an odd idea to have a man paid to make jokes, but in those days it was the fashion. Some man who had a gift for saying funny things used to live in the household of a great n.o.bleman and be as amusing as he could, and for this he received payment. More's fool was often rather impertinent, and at one time when there was a big dinner, and one of the guests happened to have a particularly large nose, the fool said out loud: 'What a terrible nose that gentleman has got!' So all the family pretended not to hear, and were rather uncomfortable, and when the fool saw that, he said: 'How I lied when I said that gentleman's nose was monstrous; now I come to look at it I really think it's rather a small nose!' Well, of course, no one could help laughing after that, and they all went off into peals of merriment, even the poor gentleman himself.

In the early mornings when the air was fresh and sweet, and in summer the garden full of roses, More would wander round with his dear Meg, and perhaps the other children would come, too, to look at all the pets.

They kept a number of strange animals; there were rabbits, a monkey, a fox, a ferret, a weasel, and many others, and the children themselves kept the cages clean, and were taught to be kind to them. Lady More did not care for these things, she liked better to dress herself very smartly and lace herself very tight; and when her husband laughed at her, she said, 'Tilly, vally, Sir Thomas! tilly, vally!' just as we should say, 'Tut, tut!'

She once found a stray dog, however, to which she took a great fancy, and she petted it and fed it; but after a few days a beggar-girl walking in the street, who met her with the dog, suddenly cried out that it was hers, and the dog knew her, and rushed and danced round her and licked her hands. Lady More was very angry, and said it was her dog, and ordered her footman to pick it up and carry it back home. The beggar-girl followed them all the way, crying; but when she arrived at the house the door was shut, and she was left outside. When Sir Thomas came home that evening in his barge, as he stepped out on the land he saw a poor little dirty girl with her face all stained with tears. He was always kind, so he stopped and asked her what was the matter, and she told him all her story about having lost her dog. Now, Sir Thomas was at that time the head of all the judges in England, having been made Lord Chancellor, and he was a very just man, so he would never let his wife take what did not belong to her. He went, therefore, into his own great hall and sent for Lady More; then he asked her to stand at the top end of the hall, and placed the little dirty girl down at the lower end. Then he ordered a footman to bring in the dog and hold it in the middle between the two, and he said that the dog should decide for itself; it must know its own mistress. And when he gave the word the man must let it go, and both the women who claimed to be its mistress must call it, and whichever it chose to go to should keep it.

So he gave the word, and Lady More cried out all the soft things she could think of; but the little girl just said the one word, the dog's name, and the dog bounded toward her in a moment, for it loved her, and did not care for Lady More. So Sir Thomas said that settled it; the dog clearly belonged to the little girl and not to his wife. Lady More then offered the girl much money if she would sell the dog, and as she was very poor she did sell it at last, and left it behind with its new mistress.

There were always a great many people coming and going in More's house, and the table was always laden with good things, and much money was spent; but Sir Thomas himself did not care about eating and drinking, and liked best to have only vegetables and fruit and brown bread, and perhaps a little salt beef, which was much eaten in England then.

Every day he said good-bye to his little girls, and told them to be good at their lessons, and then he went off in his barge up the river to the Court.

The two elder girls, Meg and Elizabeth, learned very difficult things; but Cicely and little John were not so clever. John seems to have been rather a stupid boy. It is said that the first Mrs. More wanted a boy very much, and when he came and grew a little, and they found he would never be very clever, More said: 'Thou hast wanted a boy, and now thou wilt have one that will be a boy all his life.'

In the evenings, when the barge came sweeping up the river, no doubt the girls watched for it, and ran to greet their father, and then they would all go in together to the house. Perhaps he had brought with him some clever and learned men who were his friends from London, or a young Dutch painter called Holbein, who was hardly at all known then, but is now counted among the greatest painters in the world.

Sometimes, later in the evening, there would be seen a very grand barge indeed, with scarlet and cloth of gold, sweeping up to the landing-place; and then someone would call out 'The King!' and presently King Henry VIII. himself would step out and come up to see his Chancellor, and would walk up and down the garden with his arm round More's neck. He was very fond of More, and asked his advice about all sorts of things. More wanted to show him young Holbein's paintings, so he had his hall hung with many of them, and one day, when the King came in unexpectedly, he took him in there to show them to him. Henry was so delighted with them that he ordered Holbein to paint a picture of himself and others of many of his courtiers, and Holbein was well paid, and made a large fortune.

One day, when the King had been very gracious, and had left Chelsea to go back to Westminster, young Roper said to More how lucky he was to be such a favourite with the King; but More knew what a tyrant Henry was, and how dangerous it was to have anything to do with him, and he answered at once he had no cause to be proud, for if his head would win the King a castle in France it would go. He was quite right; for his head went afterwards for a much less thing than that.

When More was still in the height of his power his daughter Margaret married William Roper. But More could not bear to part with Meg, and the house was large, so he said the young married couple should go on living with him and his wife just the same as before.

More built a chapel on to Chelsea old church--a chapel which is there now, and you may see it--and in it there is a large monument to his memory. Of his great house and garden all is gone except a bit of red-brick wall, which is said to have been the wall of the garden.

Now, just about this time Henry had grown tired of his wife, Catherine of Arragon, and wanted to marry Anne Boleyn, so he thought he would divorce Catherine. But even a king can't get rid of his wives whenever he likes; so he asked all his lords and n.o.bles to say that he was quite right, and that Catherine ought to be divorced, and that he ought never to have married her, because long years before she had been married to his brother, who had died. A great many of the n.o.bles would have said anything Henry wanted, but More was braver than that; he said plainly that it would not be right for Henry to do this thing. So the King was very angry, and More found it impossible to continue to be Lord Chancellor; so he gave up his office, even though it meant that he would have to change all his way of living and be a poor man again. Lady More used to go to service in Chelsea church, and More sat in another part of the same church, and on Sundays she used to wait to hear that her husband was outside before she got up to go, and in order to let her know this a footman used to come and open the pew-door for her, and say: 'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.'

There is a story told that on the Sunday after More had given up being Chancellor he had not spoken to his wife about it, for he knew she would be very angry, and he always loved a joke; so he himself walked up the aisle and held open the pew-door, and said: 'Madam, the Chancellor has gone.' At first Lady More could not understand him, but when she did, and knew that he was no longer Chancellor, she was very angry indeed.

Now, More said they must send away some of their servants and live very plainly, and Margaret and her husband went into a little house near; and so badly off were the Mores that they could not afford fires, and when the weather grew colder, More and his wife and children used to gather together in one room and burn a great bundle of fern just to make a big blaze and send them warm to bed. But through it all More was quite happy. He had never wanted to be a great man: he preferred to live simply with those he loved; but he was not long to be allowed to do even that.

Henry devised a plan by which he could put More in prison. He drew up a long paper saying that the King was the head of the Church, and that whatever he did was right, and that if he chose to divorce his wife he could do it, because the power was in his own hands; and then he summoned all the bishops and More to sign this.

Sir Thomas More knew quite well what this meant, that it was only a plan to get hold of him, for he could not sign what he did not think. It was on a spring morning that he left his house to go down to Lambeth Palace, where the paper was lying ready to be signed, and he knew quite well that it was very likely he should never come back; and he was quite right: he never did come back. He said good-bye to his children and stepped into his barge. When he got to Lambeth he found that all the men there a.s.sembled had signed except one called Bishop Fisher. Now, Fisher and More were Roman Catholics; that is to say, that they still believed in the power of the Pope--and they could not sign the paper without signing what they thought a lie. They had been taught this, and so they believed it, and they acted bravely according to their own consciences.

More was given five days to think it over, but he did not go back to Chelsea, and at the end of five days he was taken to the Tower with old Bishop Fisher.

When he landed at the Traitor's Gate, of which you shall hear more presently, the porter asked him for his outside clothes, according to a very bad custom of the time, which allowed the porters to rob the prisoners thus. More gave him his cap, but the man was not content with that, and he had to give his outside coat as well.

It was just the beginning of the summer when the two men went to the Tower, and they were put in separate cells. At first they were not treated badly, and were allowed pens and paper to write letters; but afterwards these were taken from them, and More had to write his letters with a coal. However, he had one great consolation--his daughter was sometimes allowed to come to see him. Perhaps the King thought that she would persuade him to give in and sign the paper so that he might go back home.

When the summer had pa.s.sed and the weather grew colder, More and Fisher both suffered from the cold, but especially poor old Bishop Fisher, whose clothes were in rags. And it was not until a whole year after they had been sent to the Tower that they were brought up to be tried. More was taken on foot through the streets to Westminster, a very long way--more than three miles. He was dressed in common clothes and surrounded by a guard. Then he was tried at Westminster, and accused of treason in not acknowledging the King's authority, but the real reason was that he would not say the King was right in marrying Anne Boleyn.

He was condemned to death. There was a custom in those days that when a man was condemned to death the executioner walked out of the judgment-hall before the prisoner with the sharp edge of the axe turned backwards towards him.

More had been tried in Westminster Hall, of which you have heard already, and inside there it was very dark; but when he came out into the bright sunshine he was quite dazzled for the moment and could not see. But there was someone else who saw--someone who had been waiting in the crowd in terrible anxiety, and when he saw that axe turned with the sharp edge toward More he knew it meant death; and he gave a great shriek, and thrust himself through the guards and flung himself at More's feet. This was his son-in-law, William Roper, Margaret's husband.

More was allowed to go back to the Tower by boat, and a sorrowful voyage it must have been, not for himself, but for thinking of all those dear ones he must leave.

When he arrived at the Tower he saw standing on the quay two figures--his son John, then a man of twenty-five, and a tall, slight woman in deepest black, his dear Meg. Even the soldiers made way for her as she flung her arms round her father's neck and cried out of her breaking heart, 'My father! oh, my father!'--a cry which so touched some of those rough guards that they turned aside to hide the tears in their own eyes. More tried to comfort her, and presently gently drew himself away. He felt it was almost too much for him; but as she turned away she could not bear to let him go, and once more threw her arms round him with that pitiful cry, and only gave way when at last she sank fainting on the ground.

More then went on and left her so, and when she came to herself she knew it was all over, and that she had no more hope. Six days later, at nine o'clock in the morning, More was led out to suffer beheading, as Bishop Fisher had already suffered. When he had first gone to the Tower he had been a man of middle age with a brown beard and brown hair; now after a year of confinement and anxiety his hair was quite gray. When he was told to make ready for his execution, he put on a silk robe, which when the gaoler saw he asked him to change for a common woollen one. More asked why, and was told that the clothes he was killed in became the property of the executioner, and the clothes he left behind in the Tower were taken by his gaolers, and that this gaoler thought the silk robe too good for the executioner. So More quietly changed to a commoner dress, for it mattered little to him. When he reached the scaffold, he found he was too feeble to climb up the steps without help, and he asked one of the men to give him an arm, adding: 'I pray you see me safe up; as for my coming down, I may shift for myself.' The executioner asked his forgiveness, which was granted; and then More knelt before the block, and carefully put his beard aside, saying: '_That_ at least has committed no treason.' Then with one stroke his head was cut off. His body was buried near the chapel in the Tower; but, according to the custom of that time, his head was stuck up on London Bridge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TRAITOR'S GATE, TOWER OF LONDON.]