The White Rose of Langley Part 46

"Ay, so far as my judgment serveth, 'tis so soothly."

"But that were sacrilege!"

"Were it?" asked Hugh coolly.

For the extreme Lollards, of whom he was one, looked upon the two political acts which we have learned to call disestablishment and disendowment, as not only permissible, but desirable. In so saying, I speak of the political Lollards. All political Lollards, however, were not religious ones, nor were all religious Lollards sharers in these political views. John of Gaunt, a strong political Lollard, was never a religious one in his life; while King Richard, who decidedly leaned to them in religion, disliked their politics exceedingly. In fact, it was rather the fervent, energetic, practical reformers who took up with such aims; while those among them who walked quietly with G.o.d let the matter alone. Hugh Calverley had been drawn into these questions rather by circ.u.mstances than choice. While he was emphatically one that "sighed and that cried for all the abominations that were done in the midst of"

his Israel, he was sagacious enough to know that even from his own point of view, the abolition of the hierarchy, or the suppression of the monastic orders, were no more than lopping off branches, while the root remained.

It was perfectly true that Henry the Fifth seriously contemplated the policy of disendowment, which Parliament had in vain suggested to his father. And it continued to be true for some six months longer. The clue has not yet been discovered to the mysterious and sudden change which at that date came over, not only the policy, but the whole character of Henry of Monmouth. Up to that date he had himself been something very like a political Lollard; ever after it he was fervently orthodox. The suddenness of the change was not less remarkable than its completeness. It took place about the first of October, 1413; and it exactly coincides in date with a visit from Archbishop Arundel, to urge upon the reluctant King the apprehension of his friend Lord Cobham.

Whatever may have been the means of the alteration, there can be but little question as to who was the agent.

The King's confirmation of grants to his cousin Constance occurred before this ominous date; and, revoking the last penalty inflicted, it restored her son to her custody. Richard therefore came home in July, where he remained until September. His attendance was then commanded at Court, and he left Cardiff accordingly.

"Farewell, Madam!" he said brightly, as his mother gave him her farewell kiss and blessing. "G.o.d allowing, I trust to be at home again ere Christmas; and from London I will seek to bring your Grace and my sisters some gear of pleasance."

"Farewell, my d.i.c.kon!" said Constance, lovingly. "Have a care of thyself, fair son. Remember, thou art now my dearest treasure."

"No fear, sweet Lady!"

So he sailed off, waving his hand or his cap from the boat, so long as he could be seen.

A letter came from him three weeks later--a doubtful, uneasy letter, showing that the mind of the writer was by no means at rest concerning the future. The King had received him most graciously, and every one at Court was kind to him; but the sky was lowering ominously over the struggling Church of G.o.d--that little section of the Holy Catholic Church, on which the "mother and mistress of all churches" looked down with such supreme contempt. The waves of persecution were rising higher now than to the level of poor tailors like John Badby, or even of priestly graduates like William Sautre.

"Lady, I do you to wit," wrote young Richard, "that as this day, Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, was put to his trial, and being convinced [convicted], was cast [sentenced]; the beginning and end of whose offence is that he is a Lollard confessed, and hath harboured other men of the like opinions. And the said Lord is now close prisoner in the Tower of London, nor any of his kin ne lovers [friends] suffered to come anigh him. And at the Court it is rumoured that Sir William Hankeford (whom your Ladyship shall well remember) should be sent into our parts of South Wales, there to put down both heresy and sedition: which sedition, methinks, your Ladyship's favour allowing, shall point at Sir Owain Glendordy [the name is usually spelt thus in contemporary records]; and the heresy so called, both your Ladyship and I, your humble son and servant, do well know what it doth signify. So no more at this present writing; but praying our Lord that He would have your Ladyship in His good keeping, and that all we may do His good pleasure, I rest."

Twelve days later came another letter, written in a strange hand. It was dated from Merton Abbey, in Surrey, was attested by the Abbot's official cross and seal, and contained only a few lines. But never throughout her troubled life had any letter so wrung the heart of Constance Le Despenser. For those few formal lines brought the news that never again would her eyes be gladdened by her heart's dearest treasure--that the Angel of Death had claimed for his own her bright, loving, fair-haired Richard.

No details have been handed down concerning that early and lamented death of the last Lord Le Despenser. We do not even know how the boy died--whether by the visitation of G.o.d in sudden illness, or by the fiat of Thomas de Arundel, making the twelfth murder which lay upon that black, seared soul. He was buried where he died, in the Abbey of Merton--far from his home, far from his mother's tears and his father's grave. It was always the lot of the hapless buds of the White Rose to be scattered in death.

There was only one person at Cardiff who did not mourn bitterly for its young Lord. To his sister Isabel, the inheritance to which she now became sole heiress--the change of her t.i.tle from "Lady Isabel de Beauchamp" to "The Lady Le Despenser"--were amply sufficient compensation to outweigh the loss of a brother. But little Alianora wept bitterly.

"Ay me! what a break is this in our Lady's line!" lamented Maude to Bertram. "G.o.d grant it the last, _if_ His will is!"

It was only one funeral of a long procession.

The Issue Roll for Michaelmas, 1413 to 1414, bears two terribly significant entries--the expenses for the custody of Katherine Mortimer and her daughters, who were "in the King's keeping"--and the costs of the funerals of the same persons, buried in Saint Swithin's Church, London. This was the hapless daughter of Owain Glyndwr, the wife of Edmund Mortimer, uncle of the Earl of March. A mother and two or more daughters do not usually require burial together, unless they die of contagious disease. Of course that may have been the case; but the entry looks miserably like a judicial murder.

Stirring events followed in rapid succession. Lord Cobham escaped mysteriously from the Tower, and as mysteriously from an armed band sent to apprehend him by Abbot Heyworth of Saint Albans. Old Judge Hankeford made his antic.i.p.ated visit to South Wales, and ceremoniously paid his respects to the Lady of Cardiff, whose a.s.sociations with his name were not of the most agreeable order. With the new year came the unfortunate insurrection of the political Lollards, goaded to revolt partly by the fierce persecution, partly by a chivalrous desire to restore the beloved King Richard, whom many of them believed to be still living in Scotland.

Wales and its Marches were their head-quarters. Thomas Earl of Arundel--son of a persecutor--was sent to the Princ.i.p.ality at the head of an army, to "subdue the rebels;" Sir Roger Acton and Sir John Beverley, two of the foremost Lollards of the new generation, were put to death; and strict watch was set in every quarter for Lord Cobham, once more escaped as if by miracle.

And then suddenly came another death--this time by the distinct and awful sentence of G.o.d Almighty. He stooped to disconcert for a moment the puny plans of men who had set themselves in array against the Lord and His Christ. On the chief of all the persecutors, Sir Thomas de Arundel himself, the angel of G.o.d's vengeance laid his irresistible hand. Cut off in the blossom of his sin--struck down in a moment by paralysis of the throat, which deprived him of all power of speech or swallowing--the dreaded Archbishop pa.s.sed to that awful tribunal where his earthly eloquence was changed to silence and shame. He died, probably, not unabsolved; they could still lay the consecrated wafer upon the silent tongue, and touch with the chrism the furrowed brow and brilliant eyes: but he must have died unconfessed--a terrible thing to him, if he really believed himself the doctrines which he spent his life in forcing upon others.

Arundel was dead; but the infernal generalissimo of the persecutors, who could not die, was ready with a worthy successor. Henry Chichele stepped into the vacant seat, and the fierce battle against the saints went on.

The nephew of the deceased Archbishop, Thomas Earl of Arundel, presented himself at Cardiff early in the year. He lost no time in delicate insinuations, but came at once to his point. Was the Lady of Cardiff ready to give all possible aid to himself and his troops, against those traitors and heretics called Lollards? The answer was equally distinct.

With some semblance of the old fire flashing in her eyes, the Lady of Cardiff refused to give him any aid whatever.

The Earl hinted in answer, with a sarcastic smile, that judging by the rumours which had reached the Court, he had scarcely expected any other conduct from her.

"Look ye for what ye will," returned the dauntless Princess. "Never yet furled I my colours in peace; and I were double craven if I should do it in war!"

Her words were reported to the relentless hearts at Westminster. The result was an order to seize all the manors of the Despenser heritage, and to deliver them to Edward Duke of York, the King's dearly beloved cousin, by way of compensation (said the grant) for the loss which he had sustained by the death of Richard Le Despenser. But the compensation was estimated at a high figure.

There were some curious contradictory statutes pa.s.sed this year. A hundred and ten monasteries were suppressed by order of Council, and at the same time another order was issued for the extirpation of heresy.

But, as usual, "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church."

Wycliffism increased rapidly among the common people. Meanwhile Henry was preparing for his French campaign; and at Constance the seventeenth General Council of Christendom was just gathering, and John Huss, with the Emperor's worthless safe-conduct in his pocket, was hastening towards his prison--not much larger than a coffin--in the Monastery of Saint Maurice. The Council ended their labours by burning Huss. They would have liked to burn Wycliffe; but as he had been at rest with G.o.d for over thirty years, they took refuge in the childish revenge of disinterring and burning his senseless bones. And "after that, they had no more that they could do."

The day that heard Huss's sentence p.r.o.nounced in the white-walled Cathedral of Constance, Edward Duke of York--accompanied by a little group of knights and squires, one of whom was Hugh Calverley--walked his oppressed horse across the draw-bridge at Cardiff. Life had agreed so well with York that he had become very fat upon it. He had no children, his wife never contradicted him, and he did not keep that troublesome article called a conscience; so his sorrows and perplexities were few.

On the whole, he had found treachery an excellent investment--for one life; and York left the consideration of the other to his death-bed. It may be that at times, even to this Dives, the voice from Heaven mercifully whispered, "Thou fool!" But he never stayed his chariot-wheels to listen--until one autumn evening, by Southampton Water, when the end loomed full in view, the Angel of Death came very near, and there rose before him, suddenly and awfully, the dread possibility of a life which might not close with a death-bed. But it was yet bright summer when he reached Cardiff; and not yet had come that dark, solemn August hour, when Edward Duke of York should dictate his true character as "of all sinners the most wicked."

On this particular summer day at Cardiff, York was, for him, especially gay and bright. Yet that night in the Cathedral of Constance stood John Huss before his judges; and in the Convent of Coimbra an English Princess [Philippa Queen of Portugal, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt], long ago forgotten in England, yet gentlest and best daughters of Lancaster, lay waiting for death. Somewhere in this troublesome world the bridal is always matched by the burial, the festal song by the funeral dirge. Men and women are always mourning, somewhere.

York's mind was full of one subject, the forthcoming campaign in France.

He was to sail from Southampton with his royal master in August.

Bedford was to be left Regent, the King's brother--Bedford, who, whatever else he were, was no Lollard, and was not likely to let a Lollard escape his fangs. And on this interesting topic York's tongue ran on glibly--how King Henry meant to march at once upon Paris, proclaim himself King of France, be crowned at Saint Denis, marry one of the French Princesses--which, it did not much signify--and return home a conquering hero, mighty enough to brave even the Emperor himself on any European battle-plain.

A little lower down the table, Hugh Calverley's mind was also full of one subject.

"Nay," he whispered earnestly to Bertram: "he is yet hid some whither,-- here, in Wales. Men wit not where; and G.o.d forbid too many should!"

"Then men be yet a-searching for him?"

"High and low, leaving no stone unturned. G.o.d keep His true servant safe, unto His honour!"

It needs no far-fetched conjecture to divine that they were speaking of Lord Cobham.

"And goest unto these French wars, sweet Hugh?"

"Needs must; my Lord's Grace hath so bidden me."

"But thou wert wont to hold that no Christian man should of right bear arms, neither fight."

"Truth; and yet do," said Hugh quietly. This was the view of the extreme Lollards.

"Then how shall thine opinion serve in the thick of fight?"

"As it hath aforetime. I cannot fight."

"But how then?" asked Bertram, opening his eyes.

"I can die, Bertram Lyngern," answered the calm, resolute voice. "And it may be that I should die as truly for my Master Christ there, as at the martyr's stake. For sith G.o.d's will hath made yonder n.o.ble Lord my master, and hath set me under him to do his bidding, in all matters not sinful, his will is G.o.d's will for me; and I can follow him to yonder battle-plain with as easy an heart and light as though I went to lie down on my bed to sleep. Not to fight, good friend; not to resist nor contend with any man; only to do G.o.d's will. And is that not worth dying for?"

Bertram made no reply. But his memory ran far back to the olden days at Langley--to a scriptorius who had laid down his pen to speak of two lads, both of whom he looked to see great men, but he deemed him the greater who was not ashamed of his deed. And Bertram's heart whispered to him that, knight as he was, while Hugh remained only a simple squire, yet now as ever, Hugh was the greater hero. For he knew that it would have cost him a very bitter struggle to accept an unhonoured grave such as Hugh antic.i.p.ated, only because he thought it was G.o.d's will.

They parted the next morning. Edward's last words to his sister were "Adieu, Custance, I will send thee a fleur-de-lis banner as trophy from the fight. The oriflamme [Note 1], if the saints will have it so!"

But Hugh's were--"Farewell, dear friend Bertram. Remember, both thou and I may do G.o.d's will!"