The Plantagenets: The Three Edwards Part 21

The fifth daughter, Margaret, was married to a commoner, John, the son and heir of Lawrence Hastings, Earl of Pembroke. It was a love match and she was very happy for the brief time it lasted. The princess died after two years of married life at the English court.

CHAPTER XIII.

The Black Death

1.

IT was not called the Black Death at the time but it was feared as the worst scourge ever to visit the earth. The symptoms mentioned in the scanty records make it clear that it was the bubonic plague or a very close variation. To the terror-stricken people who heard of its appearance, vaguely at first, it was a visitation of G.o.d, perhaps even the first manifestation of the end of the world. Men in these days lived in dread of many things, but it was the fear of the second coming which gripped them most firmly; a state of mind which was intensified by the paintings on the walls of so many churches depicting the tortures of the d.a.m.ned.

Rumors reached England first from the Far East. It was said that it started in India and that the visitation had been heralded by strange occurrences on three successive days. On the first day there was a rain of frogs, serpents, and lizards. The second brought thunder and lightning and sheets of fire from the heavens. On the third day there was more fire and a great cloud of heavy, stinking smoke which moved across the earth and blotted out everything. On the fourth day came the plague.

From that time on the people of Europe talked of little else, although there was not as yet any fear that it would reach them. It was conjectured that the terrible visitation was due to an earthquake which opened up graves and filled the air with infection from the uncovered corpses. The tales which white-faced men exchanged in the taverns were all of natural catastrophies. Great winds straight from heaven or h.e.l.l were sweeping over Asia and carrying the disease with them. There were floods which converted lowlands into swamps from which noxious odors arose.

Then the conjectures, which had been casual before, turned into panic. The plague had come to Europe. Could anything stop it? Would it loose all its wild terrors on country after country?

It first appeared at a port called Caffa on the Black Sea in 1346. This was a busy shipping center and the vessels there hurriedly spread their sails to escape from this terrible visitation which filled the inns and the crowded houses with bodies carrying the black sign. They spread the disease to every port on the Mediterranean. It manifested itself in an earthquake of unexampled fury which shook Greece and Italy. The air became so heavy and noxious that wine spoiled in tight casks, becoming sour and undrinkable. Then the "thick, stinking mist," which had been described before, advanced over the land and sea and mountain, obscuring everything-the sun, the moon, and the stars. It spread over Italy and the crops wilted and died and the fruit rotted on the trees. There was no food for the poor until in Florence large bake ovens were built from which as many as ninety-four thousand loaves of bread were distributed daily to the starving people.

All of western Europe waited and trembled while this supernatural visitor came closer and closer. A pillar of fire appeared for an hour at sunset over the Palace of the Popes at Avignon. Large meteors were seen in the skies in many countries. A ball of fire was seen over Paris one August evening.

When the plague reached France, the people of England became aware for the first time that it was universal. Word of strange and fearful things came over the water to the island. At Avignon the churchyards could not hold the dead and the Pope consecrated the Rhone so that bodies might be committed to the waters. The French people were said to be adopting strange methods to escape the contagion. Some were wearing small lions carved out of gold. The gates of Paris were erupting with people seeking escape. Only in houses with windows opening to the north could there be safety. The doctors, who were completely in the dark, were advising people to avoid the sun and warm winds. Stay inside, they were saying, and fill the air with the scent of burning juniper and ash and young oak.

But even with France in the grip of this monstrous visitor from the East, the people of England lived in hope. At its narrowest point, the Channel was twenty miles wide, filled with fast and turbulent water and bringing winds which swept strongly westward. How could the contagion spread over this natural barrier, this clean rampart of wind and water?

2.

But not the fast-flowing waves of the Channel nor the winds which swept all before them could prevail in the end. There was no cessation of shipping between the island and the mainland, because there was no hint of the strange truth: that there were always rats in the holds of ships and that on the bodies of the rats were black flies which carried the contagion. It might have been a reasonable precaution for the government to stop all shipping from the mainland, and this might have saved England from the Black Death. But of course nothing of the kind was done.

The first indication of trouble came from the port of Melcombe on the Dorsetshire coast in August 1348. A sailor died there after three days of intense suffering, pitching and moaning in a high fever and spitting blood. People who had been near him came down with the disease at once, the foul symptoms repeating themselves and their faces wearing a black mask of death. Sometimes the agony was prolonged to five days, with tumors appearing outwardly on the groin and under the armpits.

There could be no doubt about it. This was the plague. The people of Melcombe began to die by the hundreds. The terror spread with amazing speed, sweeping over Dorset, Devon, and Somerset, reaching Bristol by the middle of the month. Efforts were made to cut the great western port off from adjoining districts, but nothing could check a wave of death carried, seemingly, on the wind. It spread quickly to Oxford. On All Saints' Day it reached London.

London, of course, was ripe for it. The sanitary conditions there could not have been worse, with people jammed together in little wooden tenements, the streets rank with offal, and swine roaming about at will. The death list mounted so fast that the victims died untended. Those who could get away did so with a haste which filled the roads with galloping horses, and women on couches swung from saddle to saddle. The poor tramped with furious haste, their belongings on their backs. Even members of the priesthood were fleeing, for every report had spoken of the mortality among the clergy. Master Gaddesden, the royal physician, got away with the king's family to the cool seclusion of Eltham Castle. He would not have remained in London at any cost, for this disease was the most disagreeable of all and the one which could profit a man of medicine nothing. A meeting of Parliament had been set for the summer, but the officials at Westminster, prior to packing up themselves, issued a hasty notice of prorogation.

Before leaving London it became the custom to visit Westminster and go to the south transept, where a painting of St. Christopher, the kindly patron saint of travelers, occupied one wall. Here they would pause and study a promise printed under the painting, Non Morte mala Morietur. With this a.s.surance of immunity from an evil death they would then depart in a less agitated frame of mind. The greatest dread inspired by the plague was the threat of a death so sudden that the last rites could not be administered.

The toll in London grew so high there was soon no s.p.a.ce left in cemeteries. A toft of land was obtained near East Smithfield and enclosed with a high wall of stone, and most of the bodies were buried there. Sir Walter Manny, who seems to have been more charitably disposed than most military leaders, bought thirteen acres next to no man's land, called Spittle Croft. Some reports have it that fifty thousand bodies were buried here in the first year of the plague, but this obviously is an exaggeration. Authorities place the population of London at the time very little above that figure.

The Black Death followed close on the heels of England's greatest period of prosperity and success. The victory at Crecy had put national prestige on the highest level, the country was rich and the harvests ample. When faced with the likelihood of death, men looked at one another with wonder as well as fear. "What have we done that this punishment is visited on us?" they asked. "Have we allowed ourselves to become so proud that the wrath of G.o.d has been aroused?"

The archers had returned after Crecy with their bows on their backs and ropes of flowers around their necks. Proudly they carried the spoils of victory. They knew full well that they had won the great battle and they proclaimed the fact long and loud. So sure had they become of themselves that if Robin Hood were alive (it has never been established that he actually lived) he would have had hundreds of challenges from these new champions of the longbow, and undoubtedly would have lost some of them.

It seemed impossible that the bowmen of Crecy could die like ordinary men. They enjoyed some immunity, in addition, by living in the small villages where the plague was less likely to strike. But this loathsome disease, produced in the reeking slums of the Far East, was no respecter of locale. The stout yeomen living on the edges of cool green glades and by the clear water of streams caught the infection as quickly as other men and the loss among them ran as high as one in two.

In the larger cities, such as Bristol, Oxford, Norwich, and of course London, the victims were buried in layers in deep pits. In Yarmouth the total stood at 7,052. English statistics seem small, nevertheless, when compared with the records in continental cities. In Florence the death total ran as high as 60,000, Venice 100,000, Paris 50,000. In Ma.r.s.eilles 16,000 people died in one month.

The Black Death reached its peak in England in August of the following year. It subsided then but returned with somewhat lessened fury in 1361 and 1368.

There was no escape possible, even by the method of seclusion made famous by Boccaccio. To go to sea seemed the surest way to invite fate, for the contagion spread more quickly aboard ships than anywhere else. It was not uncommon to see along the southern sh.o.r.es of England ships under full sail being driven by the waters of the Channel, tossing about aimlessly and making it clear that all on board had died. They would vanish finally beyond the horizon into the rough embrace of the Atlantic.

3.

One of the most astonishing phases of what has been called the Great Emergence (the trend toward modern conditions of living) came about as a result of the Black Death. England, for the first time, began to have labor troubles.

It happened because the population of the island had been cut almost in half. Most of the great landowners had survived, by immuring themselves behind the thick stone walls of their castles, but after 1349 there were not enough laborers to go around. Much of the land remained untilled and crops were not harvested, while untended flocks and herds ran wild. It followed naturally that a compet.i.tion developed for the services of the yeomen. Wages went higher and higher, but the laborers, finding such things sweet on the tongue, showed little tendency to work at the beck of the once omnipotent landlord. Labor had gained the upper hand, an extraordinary thing to happen in a country which was still feudal by instinct.

This could not continue beyond a brief, a very brief, period. The land magnates were stirred to fury, and in the cities the prominent merchants swore they could not pay such wages as were demanded. They overlooked the fact that whatever advantage the poorer cla.s.ses had gained was swallowed up in the increased cost of living. Not being organized, the people could not make themselves heard at Westminster.

The solution reached by the government made it very clear that the tendency toward better conditions had not touched the minds of the ruling cla.s.ses. A royal proclamation was issued making it inc.u.mbent on all unemployed to accept work at the wages which had prevailed before the plague. When this failed to have the desired effect, a Statute of Laborers was pa.s.sed by Parliament which read: Every man or woman, of whatsoever condition, free or bond, able of body, and within the age of threescore years-and not having of his own whereof he may live, nor land of his own about the tillage of which he may occupy himself, and not serving any other, shall be bound to serve the employer who shall require him to do so, and shall take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken ...

This meant that the laborer was in a worse position than he had been for a century at least. While his pay went back to the low levels of previous years, the costs of living remained at the highest peak. The sorriest aspect, however, was that again the agrarian laborer was bound to the land. It was specifically forbidden him to quit the parish where he lived in search of better employment. If he disobeyed, he was regarded as a fugitive and was subject to imprisonment. Later the punishment was raised to branding on the forehead with a hot iron. The free men of England had been reduced again to slavery.

If they had been organized sufficiently to hold meetings of protest in all quarters of the kingdom, they might have compelled some amelioration of this great injustice; but the day of labor unions and parties was far in the future. They lived in smoldering discontent under the conditions which had been forced upon them, growing unhappier with each pa.s.sing year. This led inevitably to trouble, to the Peasants' Revolt which occurred in the reign following that of Edward. It was a sanguinary failure from the standpoint of the leaders who died on the gallows. But it opened the way to later reforms.

It is probably incorrect to say that the laboring cla.s.ses lacked all organization. Delving into the records of the day, one is likely to stumble over certain odd circ.u.mstances which suggest that there were stirrings continuously under the surface. These seem to trace back to one man, a friar named John Ball, who had the habit of a.s.sembling the people in the market place after they had heard ma.s.s, and haranguing them about their wrongs. He was called the Mad Priest by Froissart, but instead he was a man of a fine and high courage and with such an eloquent tongue that no one could hear him without being persuaded to believe. Twice he was thrown into Canterbury Prison by the archbishop, but word of him got about through all the shires by a system of whispers. "The angel of the Lord will open the prison as he did for Peter" and "Be of good cheer for soon the bell will be rungen by John Ball." It was clear that the men of the soil waited for a signal which was to come from the wandering priest, and this was known and planned for whenever the plowmen got together in secret.

The signal came in time, but that is a story in the future and does not belong here.

The Black Death brought many changes in conditions, mostly for the worse. Farm laborers who refused to accept the hard laws imposed on them formed themselves into bands and lived by waylaying those who pa.s.sed on the highways. So many priests had died that many churches were closed and people fell easily into immoral ways. The ownership of lands became so involved by death that the number of lawyers increased by leaps and bounds. In one district the number of wills for probate rose from 22 to 222 in a single year.

One circ.u.mstance is cited as a great boon. Fecundity in women became most p.r.o.nounced, and the birth rate began to increase as soon as the Black Death had pa.s.sed. Twins and even triplets became almost commonplace. Thus, according to medical authorities who had shown a complete ignorance about everything else, did nature find a remedy for the evils of the plague.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Battle of Poictiers and the Peace of Bretigny

1.

THROUGH all these years of strife the king had one aide on whom he could always depend, his cousin, Henry of Lancaster. This n.o.bleman was not only a fine soldier but a man of great courage, honesty, and tolerance; a scholar of sorts, moreover, and deeply religious. Having raised him to the rank of duke, Edward sent this cousin on a mission to Avignon in 1353 to discuss with Pope Innocent VI the possibility of a lasting peace between England and France.

The duke had two hundred men-at-arms in his party, and when he arrived on Christmas Eve he was met by such a host of churchmen and soldiers, not to mention curious townspeople, that it was difficult to cross the bridge into the papal city. Lancaster had seen the need to make friends and, with a prodigality worthy of Edward himself, had ordered that one hundred casks of wine be ready in the building he was to make his headquarters. After seven weeks of fruitless discussion, there was nothing left in any of them but a hollow sound.

The first impression gained of Avignon by this urbane amba.s.sador was that the term "Babylonish captivity" was a complete misnomer. It should have been called the "French captivity," for the papal court at Avignon was overrun with Frenchmen. There were French cardinals everywhere he turned, favoring him with sharp looks out of the corners of their eyes and questioning him to find what he proposed to say to the pontiff. French officials of all kinds were doing the same with the members of his train. Outside there were French architects, French builders, French sculptors, French merchants of Eastern goods, all trying to get their share of the enormous wealth which had been left by John XXII, so much of which had already been spent on the Palace of the Popes.

"Peace?" said Innocent VI. "That will depend on the terms you bring me."

BATTLE OF POICTIERS 1356.

Innocent was a man of impartial and judicial mind, although he had been born etienne Aubert at Mons in Limousin. He wanted above everything to stop the war, but he knew the temper of French royalty too well to see any chance when he heard the terms that Edward was proposing: to give up his claim to the throne of France in return for having his possessions in that country confirmed to him in full sovereignty. The wise Pope knew this would not be acceptable, so it was clear from the start that the mission would not succeed.

The popes at Avignon had all been Frenchmen, and all of them, even the present inc.u.mbent with his real desire to be impartial, had found it necessary to favor the French cause. The miraculous victories won by the English had begun to suggest to quizzical and irreverent minds that the Lord on high was not in accord with His vicar on earth. The court at Avignon, where rumor and tattle were always rife, had fallen into the habit of discussing this in sly whispers. Even bits of doggerel were coined and pa.s.sed from ear to ear. One of these was current when Lancaster paid his visit. A translation into English runs as follows: The Pope is on the Frenchmen's side, With England Jesus doth abide; 'Twill soon be seen who'll now prevail, For Jesus, or the Pope, must fail.

The only result was that at Avignon Lancaster met Charles, the King of Navarre. The Navarrese king was young but he had already earned the name of Charles the Bad. It was well deserved, for Charles of Navarre was crafty, unscrupulous, cruel, and notoriously unfaithful in affairs of the heart. Although he was married to Joan, a daughter of the King of France, he was on the worst of terms with that monarch. His royal cousin, he informed Lancaster, meaning his father-in-law, had an eye on his possessions in Normandy which were strategically important. He proposed to the English amba.s.sador an alliance between England and Navarre, with a promise on his part to join any army of invasion they sent into France. This alliance was confirmed later.

In the meantime King Philip had died, with no one to lament his pa.s.sing. He had not been a success as a king; a glum, proud, and bitterly suspicious figure, whose defeat at Crecy had left France prostrate. He had been succeeded by his son John, who is known in history as John the Good for no visible reason except perhaps his personal bravery in battle. Otherwise he was credulous, vain, and cruel, and with all the incapacity to rule wisely which his father had displayed. One of his first acts was to behead the constable of France, a brave and loyal man named Raoul, Count of Eu. The new king showed Raoul a letter and demanded to know if he had ever seen it before. When the constable protested he knew nothing about it, the king cried, "Ha, wicked traitor, you have well deserved death!" So the constable went to the block without the formality of a trial and not knowing what the letter had contained.

John, it seems, liked only one man in his train, a naturalized Castilian called Charles of Spain. When he gave to this favorite some of the Norman properties of Charles of Navarre, the latter had the Castilian murdered in his bed. This led at once to hostilities.

Edward was not anxious for war at this stage. He had sent his chamberlain to ask Parliament if they would favor the making of a permanent peace, and the members had responded with loud cries of "Yes! Yes!" England, clearly, had no more stomach for war. Still, there was the obligation to support Charles the Bad.

An army was raised and sent across the Channel under the command of the Duke of Lancaster, and word was sent to the Black Prince at Bordeaux to support the move by advancing against the French flank. The prince had just completed a drive up the Garonne River for the purpose of paying his troops (being completely out of funds) with the spoils of that rich and quiet country. It was said that after the sacking of Carca.s.sonne and Norbonne the horses of his army were so heavily laden they could hardly move. As Charles the Bad in the meantime had made his peace with France and left the English in the lurch, the Black Prince now found it necessary to march again to aid the hard-pressed army of Lancaster. He was slow in getting under way and did not reach the Loire country until much later than had been planned. In the meantime the duke had been forced back on Cherbourg and seemed about to suffer a major reverse. Word of the movements of the Black Prince came just in time, and the French king, who was eager to wipe the score of Crecy off the slate, moved his troops south to meet the heir to the English throne.

The Prince of Wales dallied along the Loire in an attack on Romorantin. A favorite squire was killed by a stone from the battlements, and Edward swore to avenge him by burning the place to the ground. This was accomplished by the use of Greek fire but not before the French army crossed the Loire south of him. When he became fully aware of their movements, the French had swung around him and were across his line of retreat to Bordeaux.

Prince Edward's army was a small one. He had in all about ten thousand men, including two thousand cavalry and four thousand bowmen. It was certain that the French were out in force, and the situation looked desperate for the English. Falling back toward Poictiers, the prince sent out a party to reconnoiter. When they returned after a brush with a party of French horse, he dispatched the Captal de Buch with a strong force and with instructions to get as close as he could to the French lines. The Captal, who was a brave and resourceful soldier, gained a position on a high hill, from which he saw the royal banners of France waving over Poictiers. The whole countryside was covered with troops. Realizing that they had the full strength of France against them (some prisoners placed John's army at sixty thousand), the Gascon rode back with his information.

"G.o.d help us!" said the Black Prince. But he spoke in reverent terms and not in fear.

2.

The prince resembled his father in his tendency to loose planning, but he also had the king's great tactical skill in ordering a battle and in fighting it through. He placed his meager forces as skillfully as Edward had done at Crecy. He took up his position on the field of Maupertuis on the crest of a slope so thickly covered with grapevines that the presence of the English was hard to detect. The ground here was unfit for cavalry and only a narrow lane gave access to the crest where the tiny English army waited. The bowmen were placed behind the hedges and in the thick vineyards, with the rest of the troops on foot behind them. The prince lacked one advantage that his father had enjoyed at Crecy: he had no protection on either flank, for the wood and abbey of Nouaille on his right offered no effective cover, and a ravine on the left might delay but not halt an attack. All that John of France had to do, in fact, was to divide his forces and push divisions of his men around both English flanks until the Black Prince would have only two courses: to retreat, which would be to invite complete disaster, or to surrender.

Fortunately for the English, the French king had no more sense of generalship than his father. He does not seem to have thought of the obvious and certain way of beating a small army with a large one, that of surrounding it. At the same time he did not like the look of the field at Maupertuis. It was not a fair and open field where knighthood could perform to advantage. He decided, on that account, to propose terms and sent the Cardinal Talleyrand de Perigord to discuss the matter with the English.

Edward had no illusions about the danger which faced him and he agreed to give up what he had won during the campaign. In addition he promised not to fight against the French for a period of seven years. John scoffed at these terms.

"First," he cried, "he must surrender himself to me with one hundred of his best knights. Then we shall talk of other conditions."

It was Edward's turn to laugh. Had the French king forgotten Crecy that he allowed himself to entertain such a degree of confidence? He, Edward, would never give himself up.

Back and forth all day rode the Cardinal Talleyrand, striving to reconcile the two viewpoints and making no progress whatever. In the meantime the Black Prince had his men hard at work digging ditches and erecting ramparts of earth back of the encompa.s.sing vines. He even had time to do something about his vulnerable flanks in case a flash of military intelligence might come to the French king or his overconfident knightly advisers.

It was a Sunday, September 18, 1356, a bright and cheerful day. The French, sitting in their tents, were a happy and rather noisy lot. The late King Philip had created a brotherhood called Our Lady of the n.o.ble House in opposition to the English Order of the Garter. The membership was limited to five hundred knights who had sworn never to retreat in battle but, if necessary, to die on the field. There was some rigmarole as well about never yielding more than four acres of land under any circ.u.mstances. They were all on hand, these five hundred bold knights, and it did not enter the head of anyone that on the morrow things would happen to make a mockery of their oaths. All they could see was that the English were trapped and must come to terms or be crushed.

The English remained stubborn and the bright sun sank in the west with no advance in the negotiations.

The battle began early next morning. The Black Prince stationed himself on the level ground above, where he could command a view of the narrow path winding crookedly up the hill. Sir John Chandos stood beside him as usual. This English knight, the finest the wars had produced, was tall, clean-shaven, with a nose like the beak of an eagle, and a disfiguration caused by the loss of an eye in battle. He was the ablest lieutenant of them all and his advice was always good.

As they stood together waiting for the French to advance, a scout brought word that the French king had donned black armor with a white plume in his helmet. A shout of laughter arose when it was reported soon after that nineteen French knights were also wearing black armor and with the same kind of plume in their head guards in order to protect the king from identification during the battle.

The talk between the prince and John Chandos was directed to one point. How much had the French learned from the battle of Crecy? Had they become convinced of the futility of sending knights against English archers before making an effort to rout the men of the longbow?

It soon became apparent that John of France had learned nothing. On a field covered with thick hedges and screened by vines, the stubborn king ordered an attack by his knights. He sent them up the narrow path, four abreast, and the English bowmen, shooting from cover, cut them down as fast as they appeared. The French army had been divided into three divisions. The king commanded one, his three oldest sons shared the leadership of the second, and his brother, the Duke of Orleans, led the third; five Bourbons who had forgotten nothing and learned nothing.

When the attack was broadened, the English archers shot down the horses of the charging knights, throwing the line into complete confusion. The English foot troops could now creep forward through the thick vines and with their long knives dispatch the knights before they could get themselves disentangled. It was Crecy all over again, but with the English in a still firmer command of the field. The division led by the three princes was thrown into such a turmoil that the marshals, who were actually in charge, saw nothing to be done but to get the royal sons off the field. The result was that the one division fell back on the next and the sanguinary chaos of Crecy was re-enacted.

It remained for the Captal de Buch to complete the wreckage of French morale. Charging from ambush with a small force of mounted men, he drove headlong into the flank of the second French division. Forgetting their oaths and perhaps confused as to how much land const.i.tuted four acres, the knights of the n.o.ble House took to flight, prepared to yield not only four acres but the whole of France.

"Sir Prince!" said John Chandos quietly. "Push forward: the day is yours. G.o.d has given it into your hands."

Mounting their horses, the English knights charged down the slope after the prince, crying, "St. George, for Guienne!" The retreat of the French became general, and one body of eight hundred lances galloped off the field without having struck a blow. Soon there was nothing left of that huge and confident army but the troops under the direct charge of the king. These were still capable of winning the battle, being double the size of the whole English army, but for some reason they had no thought but to escape or to sell their lives as dearly as possible. King John cried out to his men to alight and then dismounted himself. His youngest son, Philip (who would survive to cuff a cup-bearer at the English court), was beside him and behaving with great coolness for a lad of fourteen.

The king finally yielded himself a prisoner to a French knight who had been fighting on the English side, having been banished earlier. There had been excited rumors in the English lines during the battle about the nineteen French knights in black armor, and many of them had been captured or killed. The mystery as to the ident.i.ty of the king was now solved. The king removed his helmet.

"Where is my cousin, the Prince Edward?" he asked. Then to the English men-at-arms, who were scuffling to get possession of his person, recognizing the value of the prize, he said: "I pray you take me peaceably to my cousin. I am great enough to enrich you all."

The Black Prince had seen to it that his standard was brought down from the crest to serve as a new rallying point. His silk pavilion was raised and here a supper was served to the captive king, the prince waiting on him personally and doing everything possible to set him at ease. During the meal a survey was made of the field and it was learned that the French had left eleven thousand dead, over two thousand of them men of knightly rank. The English loss was low in the hundreds.

A curious anecdote of the battle has survived. A Welsh soldier named Howell y Twyell had performed so bravely that the Black Prince knighted him on the field and endowed him with a pension. As a further honor, the battle-ax of the Welshman was taken to the Tower of London and every day a full meal was placed beside it for the owner if he should appear. As soon as it was certain that Sir Howell would not come, the food would be distributed to the poor, with instructions to pray for the soul of the rightful partaker. This custom was followed for over two hundred years and was ended with the Reformation.