The White Rose of Langley Part 21

"Is it d.i.c.kon?" cried the Countess.

"Is it Tom?" said the Dowager.

"There be no news of my Lord, nor from Langley," said Bertram. "But my Lord's Grace of Hereford, and Sir Thomas de Arundel, sometime Archbishop, be landed at Ravenspur."

"Landed at Ravenspur!--Banished men!"

The loyal soul of Elizabeth Le Despenser could imagine nothing more atrocious.

"Well, let them land!" she added in a minute. "The Duke's Grace of York shall wit how to deal with them. Be any gathered to them?"

"Hundreds and thousands," was the ominous answer.

"Ay me!" sighed the Dowager. "Well! 'the Lord reigneth.'"

Constance's only comment on the remarks was a quiet, incredulous shrug of her shoulders. She knew her father.

And she was right. Like many another, literally and figuratively, York went over to the enemy's ground to parley, and ended in staying there.

One of the two was talked over--but that one was not the rebel, but the Regent.

Poor York! Looking back on those days, out of the smoke of the battle, one sees him a man so wretchedly weak and incapable that it is hardly possible to be angry with him. It does not appear to have been conviction, nor cowardice, nor choice in any sense, which caused his desertion, but simply his miserable incapacity to stand alone, or to resist the influence of any stronger character on either side. _He_ go to parley with the enemy! He might as well have sent his baby grandson to parley with a box of sugar-plums.

Fresh news--always bad news--now came into Cardiff nearly every day.

The King hurried back from Ireland to Conway, and there gathered his loyal peers around him. There were only sixteen of them. Dorset, always on the winning side, deserted the sinking ship at once. Aumerle more prudently waited to see which side would eventually prove the winner.

Exeter and Surrey were sent to parley with the traitors. They were both detained, Surrey as a prisoner, Exeter with a show of friendship. The latter was too fertile in resources, and too eloquent in speech, not to be a dangerous foe. He was therefore secured while the opportunity offered.

Then came the treacherous Northumberland as amba.s.sador from Hereford, whom we must henceforth designate by his new t.i.tle of Lancaster.

Northumberland's lips dropped honey, but war was in his heart. He offered the sweetest promises. What did they cost? They were made to be broken. So gentle, so affectionate were his solicitations to the royal hart to enter the leopard's den--so ready was he to pledge word and oath that Lancaster was irrevocably true and faithful--that the King listened, and believed him. He set forth with his little guard, quitting the stronghold of Flint Castle, and in the gorge of Gwrych he was met by Northumberland and his army, seized, and carried a prisoner to Chester.

This was the testing moment for the hitherto loyal sixteen. Aumerle, who had satisfied himself now which way the game was going, went over to his cousin at once. Worcester broke his white wand of office, and retired from the contest. Some fled in terror. When all the faithless had either gone or joined Lancaster, there remained six, who loved their master better than themselves, and followed, voluntary prisoners, outwardly in the train of Henry of Lancaster, but really in that of Richard of Bordeaux.

These six loyal, faithful, honourable men our story follows. They were--Thomas Le Despenser, Earl of Gloucester; John de Montacute, Earl of Salisbury; Thomas de Holand, Duke of Surrey; William Le Scrope, Earl of Wilts; Richard Maudeleyn, chaplain to the King; John Maudeleyn (probably his brother), varlet of the robes.

Slowly the conqueror marched Londonwards, with the royal captive in his train. Westminster was reached on the first of September. From that date the coercion exercised over the King was openly and shamelessly acknowledged. His decrees were declared to be issued "with the a.s.sent of our dearest cousin, Henry Duke of Lancaster." At last, on Michaelmas Day, the orders of that loving and beloved relative culminated in the abdication of the Sovereign.

The little group of loyalists had now grown to seven, by the addition of Exeter, who joined himself to them as soon as he was set at liberty.

They remained in London during that terrible October, and most of them were present when, on the 13th of that month, Henry of Lancaster was crowned King of England.

There stood the vacant throne, draped in gold-spangled red; and by it, on either hand, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal. The hierarchy were, on the right, Arundel at their head, having coolly repossessed himself of the see from which he had been ejected as a traitor; an expression of contemptuous amus.e.m.e.nt hovering about his lips, which might be easily translated into the famous (but rather apocryphal) speech of Queen Elizabeth to the men of Coventry--"Good lack! What fools ye be!" On the left hand of the throne stood Lancaster, his lofty stature conspicuous among his peers, waiting with mock humility for the farce of their acknowledgment of his right. Next him was his uncle of York, wearing a forced smile at that which his conscience disapproved, but his will was impotent to reject. Aumerle came next, his face so plainly a mask to hide his thoughts that it is difficult to judge what they were.

Then Surrey, with a half-astonished, half-puzzled air, as though he had never expected matters really to come to this pa.s.s. His uncle Exeter, who sat next him, looked sullen and discontented. The other peers came in turn, but their faces are not visible in the remarkable painting by an eye-witness from which those above are described, with the exception of the tellers, the traitor Northumberland, and the cheery round-faced Westmoreland. These went round to take the votes of the peers. There were not likely to be many dissenting voices, where to vote No was death.

Henry stated his a.s.sumption of power to rest upon three points. First, he had conquered the kingdom; secondly, his cousin, King Richard, had voluntarily abdicated in his favour; and lastly, he was the true heir male of the crown.

"Ha!" said the little Earl of March, the dispossessed heir general, "_haeres malus_, is he?"

It was not a bad pun for seven years old.

If Henry of Bolingbroke may be credited, the majority of the loyal six, and Thomas Le Despenser among them, not only sat in his first Parliament, but pleaded compulsion as the cause of their pet.i.tion against Gloucester, and consented to the deposition of King Richard, while some earnestly requested the usurper to put the Sovereign to death. While some of these allegations are true, the last certainly is false. One of those named as having joined in the last pet.i.tion is Surrey; and his alleged partic.i.p.ation is proved to be a lie. Knowing how lightly Henry of Bolingbroke could lie, it is hardly possible to believe otherwise of any member of the group, except indeed the time-serving Aumerle.

Note 1. See "Mistress Margery," preface, page six.

Note 2. His mother, Alianora of Lancaster, was the daughter of Earl Henry, son of Prince Edmund, son of Henry the Third.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH.

"Long since we parted!

I to life's stormy wave-- Thou to thy quiet grave, Leal and true-hearted!"

The first regnal act of Henry the Eighth was to strip the loyal lords of the t.i.tles conferred upon them just two years before. Once more, Aumerle became Earl of Rutland; Surrey, Earl of Kent Exeter, Earl of Huntingdon; Wiltshire, Sir William Le Scrope; and Gloucester, Lord Le Despenser.

Hitherto, King Richard had been imprisoned in the Tower, a lonely captive. But now, possessed by jealous fears of insurrection and restoration, the usurper hurried his royal prisoner from dungeon to dungeon:--to Leeds Castle, Pickering, Knaresborough, and lastly, about the middle of December, to Pomfret, which he was never to leave alive.

The guilty fears of Henry were not unfounded; but perhaps the judicial murder of Lord Wiltshire at Bristol quickened the action of the little band, now again reduced to six. They met quietly at Oxford in December, to concert measures for King Richard's release and restoration, resolving that in case of his death they would support the t.i.tle of March. But there was a seventh person present, whom it is incomprehensible that any of the six should have been willing to trust.

This was Aumerle, vexed with the loss of his t.i.tle, and always as ready to join a conspiracy at the outset as he was to play the traitor at the close. The extraordinary manner in which this man was always trusted afresh by the friends whom he perpetually betrayed, is one of the mysteries of psychological history. His plausibility and powers of fascination must have been marvellous. An agreement was drawn up, signed by the six, and entrusted to Aumerle (who cleverly slipped out of the inconvenience of signing it himself), containing promises to raise among them a force estimated at 8,000 archers and 300 lance-men, to meet on the fourth of January at Kingston, and thence march to Colnbrook, where Aumerle was to join them.

On the day appointed for the meeting at Kingston, Aumerle, attired in a handsome furred gown, went to dine with his father. The d.u.c.h.ess appears to have been absent. Aumerle carried the perilous agreement in his bosom, and when he sat down to dinner, he pulled it forth, and ostentatiously placed it by the side of his silver plate. The six seals caught the old Duke's eye, as his son intended they should; and his curiosity was not unnaturally aroused.

"What is that, fair son?" inquired his father.

Aumerle ceremoniously took off his hat--then always worn at dinner--and bowed low.

"Monseigneur," said he obsequiously, "it is not for you."

Of course, after that, York was determined to see it.

"Show it me!" he said impatiently; "I will know what it is."

Aumerle must have laughed in his traitor heart, as with feigned reluctance he handed the doc.u.ment to his father. York read it through; and then rose from the table with one of his stormy bursts of anger.

"Saddle the horses!" he shouted forth to the grooms at the lower end of the hall. And, turning to his son,--"Ha, thou thief! False traitor!

thou wert false to King Richard; well might it be looked for that thou shouldst be false to thy cousin King Henry. And thou well knowest, rascal! that I am pledged for thee in Parliament, and have put my body and mine heritage to p.a.w.n for thy fidelity. I see thou wouldst fain have me hanged; but, by Saint George! I had liefer thou wert hanged than I!"

York strode out of the hall, calling to the grooms to hasten. Aumerle gave him time to mount the stairs to a.s.sume his riding-suit, and then himself went quietly to the stable, saddled a fleet barb, and rode for his life to Windsor.

"Who goes there?" rang the royal warder's challenge.

"The Lord of Rutland, to have instant speech of the King. Is my gracious Lord of York here?"

York had not arrived, and his son was safe. The warder had pushed to the great gates, and was leading the way to the court-yard, when to his astounded dismay, Aumerle's dagger was at his throat.