wanted: and he was astute enough to see that if he once got hold of her,
the property could be agitated for at leisure.

Not many days after this news had been a nine days’ wonder, Lady Darcy
informed Frideswide that my Lady Anne Grey had petitioned her mother for
her, and she was to be transferred to her service. Frideswide was
exceedingly pleased, the rather because she could thus serve the Duke
far better than at Coldharbour.  She had heard something of Lady Anne
from Agnes: but she was hardly prepared for the thin white face and
burning eyes which struck to her heart when she saw her new mistress.
She might keep in her service as long as Lady Anne should live, and not
defer her wedding.  The interview in the presence of the Duchess was
very short, and question and answer were brief on both sides.  But the
engagement was effected, and Lord Marnell was fully satisfied with the
transfer.  He was glad, he said, to win both his poor doves from the
clutches of that kite of a woman.  Had Frideswide remained at
Coldharbour, he would have hastened her marriage in order to get her
away. Now there was no need to do it.

The first night that Frideswide spent in her new home, she was required
to attend her young lady at her _coucher_.  Mr. Grey was not at home; he
rarely was so.  Noble ladies never had the privilege of a room to
themselves in the Middle Ages. When their husbands were away, and often
when they were not, a female attendant must occupy the pallet bed, which
ran on castors underneath the state bed, and was pulled out when
required. Frideswide found herself appointed to the pallet bed this
first night—an unusual promotion, since it argued some amount of
attachment and confidence on the part of the mistress.  The _coucher_
was very silent, the only remarks made having reference to the business
in hand.  But when Frideswide, having finished her duties, had hastily
undressed and lain down, the silence was broken.

"Frideswide, art thou in Agnes’ secrets?"

"That is somewhat more than I can answer, my Lady.  I wis a thing or
twain of hers."

"Did she ever speak unto thee of—of my Lord my father?"

"I think it was I that spake to her," answered Frideswide, softly.

"Hast thou seen him?"  The tone was painfully eager.

"My Lady, may I speak out?"

"That is it I would have thee do."

"Doth your Ladyship mind a certain even in winter that his Lordship came
to Coldharbour, and, as I think, had speech of yourself?"

"Mind it?  Yes, and shall while my life lasts!"

"My Lady, his Lordship had ere that been tarrying with the Queen at
Harfleur, and he was pleased to require of me a letter to my sister the
which should serve him as a passport to your Ladyship’s presence."

"He came hither by thy means, Frideswide?"

"Mine and hers, my Lady."

"Which of you knows him better?"

"Methinks, I, by much, Madam."

"Frideswide, art thou willing to be his true friend and mine?"

"Trust me, my Lady."

"Which Rose dost thou wear?"

A delicate question to answer, when the questioner was a daughter of the
House of York!  But Frideswide Marston never hesitated.

"The Red, Madam, from my cradle; and shall so do to my coffin."

"So do I," said Lady Anne, quietly, "down in mine heart, Frideswide.  He
wears it; and what he is, I am.  Ah, would I could pass further!—’Where
thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.’  I had
asked God no more. Yet at the least, his people can be my people, as his
God is my God.  And may-be, when he dies, if not where, then may I die
and be buried."

"My Lady, you are young to count on dying."

"It seems long since I counted on living," she said in a low voice.
"Life is not worth much, Frideswide."

Frideswide knew too much to ask why.  But she knew that for her, under
similar circumstances, life would have gone on; and she wondered whether
her physical nature were stronger than that of Lady Anne, or her moral
nature more blunt and hard.

"I mind," said Lady Anne, in the same tone, "once hearing my Lady of
Clarence my aunt to say that none save weak folks brake their hearts. I
reckon I must be weak.  For mine is broken. I misdoubt if it were ever
otherwise than weak and easily shattered.  It has not taken much to
break it.  Thou mayest despise me if thou wilt."

"None less, Madam!  It would be impossible."

"Would it?" she answered, rather wistfully. "Yet methinks thy nature is
far stronger than mine. The blows which have crushed me into a poor
handful of dust should have rebounded from thee with scarce a bruise.  I
can see it in thy face; and thy sister is like thee."

"It may be so, my Lady.  But I take it, He told us to pity the weak, who
is a God so strong and patient, and who was crucified through weakness
for our sakes.  Is it not in His strength we can do all things?"

"Dost thou know Him, Frideswide?"

"Aye so, my Lady."

"Then thou wilt be a comfort to me—in what is coming.  It will not be
long, Frideswide.  Dost thou know that?"

Frideswide’s voice was very low and tender as she said, "Ay, my Lady.  I
think it will not be long."  She had more hardihood than Agnes, and
spoke out her thoughts instead of feeling them in silence.

"And I shall be glad," said Lady Anne gently. "Only I hope my father may
not be long after me. Though we have met of late but so seldom, yet I
know the world will seem darker and colder to him when I am gone out of
it.  I am all he has save God; and he is all that I have."

Frideswide’s eyes were wet; but she made no reply.

"I used to have a fair dream once—too fair to be true.  I reckoned that
we might have dwelt together, he and I, in some quiet cot in a green
glade, where no strangers should come near us, and none seek to take us
from each other.  But—it was not to be."

"Not here, Madam.  Yet will it not be—hereafter?"

"I feel as though I knew little of what will be hereafter.  It will be
as God wills; and His will is good.  I lack rest sorely—so does my
father: and we miss each other very, very much.  I suppose our Lord can
give us what we need; and as to how, and when, and where—He will know.
We have only to wait.  Only—I am so weary!"

And she turned on her pillow with a heavy sigh. Weary of life and all
that was in it—and she only just eighteen!  Frideswide would have given
much to comfort her: but she did not know what to say.

"Our Lord was weary Himself," she said at last.

"Aye, and the memory should rest me.  But it doth not so.  I seem to
have sunk beneath all that—down into the great depths where no words can
reach me.  Only His own voice, when He shall come and lay His hand upon
me, and say, ’Arise, and come away.’  I reckon I shall be strong enough
to rise up then.  Now, I only want to lie and wait for it.  Frideswide,
dost thou know what gladness feels like?  It is so long sithence I have
felt it, that I can barely remember."

"Yes, Madam, I know it well."

"And I do not, save in flashes," said Lady Anne again in that wistful
tone.  "I marvel how it will come to me.  I suppose it will come."

She spoke as if she thought it hardly possible.

"Madam, saith not the Psalmist, ’Thou hast put gladness in mine heart?’
Methinks that is God’s gift as much as grace or mercy."

"Then I will ask Him to put it there," she said, with that childlike
simplicity which was a part of her character.  "Frideswide, methinks it
shall be another way of saying to Him, ’Lord, let me die!’"

And Frideswide knew it was so.

"My maid," said the mistress after a moment’s pause, "who was it led
thee into the ways of God?"

Frideswide could hardly tell.  It had always been so, as it seemed to
her.  She could barely remember her mother; but first her aunt, and then
her stepmother, and always her father, had brought her up in the Lollard
faith since her world began.  But friends, after all, however faithful
and loving, can only lead us into the Court of Israel: the Lord of the
Temple must draw aside the veil, and admit His priests Himself into the
holy place.

"I can tell thee who it was that led me," resumed Lady Anne, "and let it
cheer thee, my maid, to do God’s work on them that thou hast opportunity
to reach.  It was one that I cannot in any wise remember—my Lady my
grandmother.  She was sometime the Lady Anne de Montacute, a daughter of
my Lord of Salisbury that died for King Richard at Cirencester: and she
bred up first my father, and after, me, in that which she had learned
from her father.  I cannot recall her face, essay it as I may: but her
doctrine abides with me.  ’Tis true, I might have minded it less had not
my father kept me thereto belike: for the which reason, may-be, it hath
alway seemed me that to love him and to love God went together.  They
were diverse sides of the same medal.  I might say that either came of
itself, as I learned the other.  Once on a time I seemed to come at God
through him: and now—I can come at him only through God.  And the day
when I shall have both, Frideswide, will be the day when I shall know
what like it is to feel glad.  But, O my God, was there no other way to
bring it?—was there no other way!"

"’There are delights in Thy right hand unto the end,’"[#] softly quoted
Frideswide.  "And, dear my Lady, surely they will be the sweetest unto
them that had the fewest delights here below."

[#] Psalm xvi. 10.

The answer came in another quotation from the same Book.  "’I am poor
and needy; the Lord is mine help.  My helper and my deliverer art Thou:
tarry not, O my God!’"[#]

[#] Psalm xi. 17.

                              *CHAPTER X.*

                      *AT THE PARCHMENT-MAKER’S.*

    "My life hath been a search for Thee,
      ’Mid thorns left red with Thy dear blood;
    In many a dark Gethsemane
      I seemed to stand where Thou hadst stood:
    And, scorned in this world’s judgment-place,
    At times, through tears, to catch Thy face."
        —ROBERT, EARL LYTTON.

The shadow was falling very low on the sun-dial in a small back yard
looking into the fields to the north of Chicken Lane, which crossed the
Fleet River, one end abutting upon Lither Lane (running northwards from
Holborn) and the other entering Smithfield at its north-western corner.
Over the sundial for a moment bent a youth of some twenty years or more,
clad in a buff jerkin and working apron.  His face was remarkable for
the extremely good-humoured expression of the lips, and for the perfect
frankness of the clear, honest eyes.  Having satisfied himself as to the
time of day, he re-entered the house by the back-door, which led him
into a low, narrow room, fitted with a long table and sundry benches.
Here half-a-dozen men and boys were at work, some engaged in preparing
skins for use by scraping off the hair, some arrived at the further
stages of straining or bleaching, some at the concluding point of
cutting the parallelograms of parchment, the manufacture of which was
manifestly their trade.

"Put up work, lads’" said the young man, as he came in, in a tone which
showed him, notwithstanding his youth, to be the master.  "The
’prentice-lads may be gone.  I have more ado yet with Dick and Robin."

He was obeyed with that alacrity which usually finds its way into the
cessation of work more readily than into its commencement, and one of
the men, with the three apprentices, shouldered their tools and
departed, exchanging "God be wi’ you!" with the rest.  When they were
gone, and the two men remaining had gathered their tools into baskets,
one of them said,—

"Monition to-night, Master?"

"Even so, Dick.  Come you both into the kitchen."

The two men nodded, and followed their master into a small but cheerful
kitchen, where a large fire blazed in the wide chimney.  In a wooden
chair in the chimney corner, propped up by cushions, sat a silver-haired
old woman, and a girl in the chimney corner at work, while an elder girl
and a middle-aged woman were arranging forms as though some gathering of
persons was expected.

"Time, Jack?" said the old woman.

"Aye so, Mother," returned he cheerily, setting to work with the forms.

He called her mother, for none other had he ever known: but the old
woman was really the grandmother of the young man and the girls.  The
middle-aged woman was their one servant.

"There!" said Jack at length, glancing over the forms when the
arrangement was finished.  "Me reckoneth those shall be so many as we
are like to have need."

"Who be a-coming, Jack?"

"No more than custom is, Mother—without Will Sterys bring yon friend of
his that he spake of t’other night.  Very like he may."

"Who shall he be?"

"I wot not, Mother: only Will said he was one safe to be trusted."

Before the words were well out of Jack’s lips, a low knock came on the
house-door—a peculiar knock; three little taps, a pause, two more.

"Here they come," said Jack, and darted to the door.

A somewhat motley assemblage dropped in by twos and threes.  Here came a
lame man on crutches; a blind man led by a girl; two wan, tired-looking
women; a very old man, bent nearly double; another woman; a young man in
his prime.  All, however, had as yet one peculiarity—they were dressed
in a style which indicated that many of the good things of this life had
not come in their way.  There was a pause while they spoke kind
greetings to the family and each other: and then, at another low knock,
Jack let in first one man, and a minute afterwards, two more.  All the
guests expected had evidently now arrived, for Jack bolted the door and
returned to the kitchen.

The man who came by himself, first of the concluding three, proved to be
a monk of the Order of St. Austin: a man of about thirty, spare and
active, with keen dark eyes which looked as if they saw every thing at
once.  Coming in with uplifted hand in the traditional attitude of
blessing, and "Christ’s peace be on all here!" he took his stand at a
small table, and unfastened from his girdle one of those leather books
bound with a projecting end and a knot, for the purpose of being carried
in that manner.  This he set down on the table, and waited a moment for
the other two to appear.

These last arrivals were both wrapped in cloaks, as though they were
anxious not to be recognised. The first, throwing his cloak off, showed
that he was dressed in livery, in a style peculiar to the latter half of
the Middle Ages.  He wore a tabard, or loose short coat, something like
a smock-frock in shape, but only reaching to the hips; with wide sleeves
which ended at the elbow.  The right half of this coat was blue; the
left half blue and red in stripes, with yellow fleurs-de-lis worked on
the blue stripes.  On his left arm, just below the shoulder, was
embroidered a silver cresset filled with red and yellow flames.  In days
when every servant bore his master’s badge, and every body knew whose
badge it was, no one could doubt for a moment whence this man came.  The
fiery cresset, borne aloft on the silvered pole, was the familiar badge
of the De Holands, Dukes of Exeter.

The second man laid his cloak aside more slowly. But when he did so, he
revealed a costume indicating a very high rung on the social ladder.
That gold chain and those slashed sleeves marked an esquire at the
lowest; the gilt spurs could be worn by none under a knight; and the
peculiar cut of the cloak revealed to the initiated that he who bore it
must be a peer of the realm.  It was no wonder if Jack and his
grandmother felt slightly nervous when they discovered that the friend
whom Master William Sterys—himself the grandest person they knew—had
asked leave to bring, was no other than his noble master, Henry Duke of
Exeter.

There was one person in the room, however, who was not in the least
affected by the discovery. This was the Austin Friar who was about to
conduct the little conventicle.  He felt, as one long after him
expressed it, that he had always one Hearer of such supreme distinction,
that the rank of all the remainder faded into nothingness.  Now he said
simply, before the others had time to recover themselves,—"Let us pray."

They knelt down on the brick floor—peer, and parchment-maker, and
poor—and the voice of the Austin Friar rose in prayer.

"Lord, Thou art made a refuge to us, from generation to generation!"

Oldest of all Psalms, that has been and will be the Psalm of the
wilderness Church for ever.  First sung in the desert, there is in it a
breathing of desert air, a perpetual reminiscence of those who had no
city to dwell in, but who sought one to come. These who prayed it that
night were all desert-dwellers: and no one of them felt the journey so
weary, or the wilderness air so keen, as that one handsomely robed
worshipper with the gold chain about his neck, whom one or two of the
poorer ones were almost unconsciously envying, and imagining that he had
never breathed the air, nor felt a second’s weariness from the journey.

    "His thoughts they scanned not: but I ween
    That could their import have been seen,
    The meanest groom in all the hall
    That e’er tied courser to a stall,
    Would scarce have wished to be their prey,
    For Lutterward and Fountenay."[#]

[#] Scott’s Marmion.

After the prayer came the monition.  There was no singing.  The voice of
the spiritual singer was silent during the corrupt ages of the Church.
Britons and Anglo-Saxons had sung hymns freely: but one after another
the voices were hushed, and no new ones rose.  Except in her authorised
services, and to words chosen by herself, the Church frowned upon sacred
music.  This was especially remarkable, in an age when the popular love
for secular music was at a height to which, in England at least, it has
never risen since.  It was reserved for Martin Luther to unlock the
sealed spring, and let the frozen waters dash downwards in a joyous
cataract.

The text was taken from the fifty-fifth Psalm,[#] "There is no mutation
to them, and they fear not God."  The preacher touched lightly, first,
on the changes and chances of this mortal life.  In the eyes of
inexperienced youth, change is a glad thing, for it is always expected
to be for the better, and it accords with that eager restlessness which
is the natural feeling of youthful minds.  But when middle age is
reached, and when men have known trouble, change ceases to be so
welcome.  It may be good still: we are not so ready to take it for
granted that it must be.  And when old age is come, or when men have
lived through much sorrow, we become afraid of all change, and averse to
it.  What we desire then is not change and variety; it is rest and
peace.

[#] Verse 19.

"Brethren," said the monk in that low, quiet voice of his, which yet was
so distinct that it penetrated every corner, "this is a world of change,
wherein we ourselves are the most changeable of all things.  There is
only one Man that changeth not, who is the same to-day, and yesterday,
and to all the ages.  There is only one Land where is no autumn.  Change
is not needed there, for all is perfect.  But here, no mutation
signifieth no betterment.  It is the nature of earthly things to become
worser: it is the nature of heavenly things to grow fairer, purer,
better.  And here, were there no worser changes in things around us,
there would be no better change in things within us.  Nay! but all we be
apt to think the very contrary.  Oh! saith one, if I had not lost mine
having—if I had not lost my children—if I were but better off, with no
fear of losing the same, then I would live to God.  Brethren, if ye
cannot live to God in the place where He has set you, ye will never do
the same in the place where you set yourselves.

"Think you, in spiritual things, no change is death.  Growth is life.
While a plant liveth, it must needs grow and bud and put forth leaves.
Let that cease, and what say you at once?  The plant is dead.

"Look, I pray you, what the prophet saith of Moab.  Quoth he, ’Moab hath
prospered from his youth up, and hath rested on the dregs of him: nor
hath he been poured from bowl to bowl, and hath not gone a-journeying:
wherefore his taste abideth in him, and his scent is not changed.’[#]
And what saith God unto His people that had gone far from Him—’Wherefore
should ye be stricken more?’[#]

[#] Jer. xlviii. 11, Vulgate.

[#] Isaiah i. 5.

"These late years, brethren, have been changeful ones.  Verily we have
been poured from bowl to bowl.  Are we the better for it?  How many of
us be resting on our dregs?  How many of us be choked up, and bringing
no fruit to perfection? Fruit, may-be: the plant is not dead; but poor,
little, stunted fruits, half blasted before they be grown.  Note, I pray
you, in that our Lord’s parable which methinks ye know, touching the
sower and his seed, He saith the fruit is choked, not only by
deceitfulness of riches, but by cares of this life as well.  Beware how
ye move God to shake you out of slumber!  Keep yourselves awake: so
shall He not need to wake you with sudden terror.  There is scarce a
fearfuller passage in all His Word than this: ’Because I desired to
cleanse thee, and thou art not cleansed from thy filthiness, therefore
cleansed shalt thou not be, until I have caused Mine indignation to rest
upon thee.’[#]

[#] Ezek. xxiv. 13.

"But ye whom the Lord hath poured from bowl to bowl, thank Him if the
dregs be left behind. This is His purpose, that ye should be partakers
of His holiness.  Grudge not if ye be poured, even with violence, so
long as thereby ye are purified. Look you, the dregs must be got rid of.
’Blessed are the clean in heart: for they shall see God.’[#]

[#] Matt v. 8

"But ere I go further, friends, I must cast up a fence, that ye stray
not on wrong paths.  Herein is the weakness of mortal man, and of the
tongues of men.  One emblem showeth but one side of the matter.  If we
would show all sides, we must have so many emblems as there be sides to
show.

"Our Lord saith, ’Be ye perfect.’[#]  Yet perfect we cannot be.  To the
very last day of life, the dregs will be left in the wine so long as it
abideth in earthly vessels.  There be three kinds of perfectness,
brethren: the perfectness of imputation, which is Christ’s work done for
us; this we have of Him.  ’Perfect in His comeliness, which He hath put
on us.’[#]  This we have now, on earth. But this is not wrought in us,
much less by us: it is wrought for us.  The second fashion of
perfectness is the perfectness of a sincere heart and a single eye.
This we must see to, each man for himself.  This it is to which our Lord
pointeth us when He saith, Be perfect.  This it is which is said of
David and other, that their hearts were perfect with the Lord.  But that
whereof I speak now is neither of these, but the third fashion of
perfectness; to wit, the perfectness of a soul hallowed unto God, and
set apart for Him.  This is not done for us, like the first manner; nor
by us, like the second manner; but in us, by the power of the Holy
Ghost.  This is the cleansing out of these dregs, which shall leave the
wine pure and meet for the King’s use.  And this, though it be begun the
very moment the heart turneth unto God, will never be ended till we
stand before Him in glory.

[#] Matt v. 48.

[#] Ezek. xvi. 14.

"Doth one of you say in his heart, How can I tell what be dregs?  Well,
oft-times we cannot. We be apt to mistake therein.  But He can. Pray Him
to purge you from your dregs, and then let Him take what He will.  Lord,
give to us what we need!  But look you, it must be what He seeth you to
need, not what ye see.

"Brethren, let us thank God that in His infinite perfectness He changeth
not.  Let us thank Him also that He is changing us, into the likeness of
that perfectness.  Let us thank Him that the day is at hand when we
shall need no further mutation, but shall be with Him, and shall be like
Him, for ever."

Then the Friar read from his leather book a portion of the Gospel of St.
John in Wycliffe’s version: offered another short prayer: blessed his
hearers, and departed with rapid steps, like a man who had much work to
do, and but little time to do it.

One by one, the little congregation took leave of host and hostess, and
passed out into the fresh night air.  But the Duke of Exeter sat on: and
William Sterys waited his Lord’s pleasure.  When all were gone, the
noble guest rose.

"May I pray you of your name, good master?" he said to Jack.

"Truly, my gracious Lord, it might be bettered. I am but a Goose, at
your Lordship’s bidding—John Goose, an’ it like you."

"I would fain wit, good Master Goose, if you do ever lodge any in your
house?  Is there a spare chamber that you were willing to let out to
any?"

John’s eyes went to his grandmother for a reply.

"Well-a-day!" murmured the old woman, apparently rather staggered by the
suddenness of the proposition, and requiring some time to consider it.
"I scarce can tell.  There is the chamber o’er here, that might be
cleared forth, and the gear set in the porch-chamber.  Yet mefeareth,
did we our best, it should scarce be meet for any servant of such as
your gracious Lordship."

"I ask it not for my servant; I want it for myself," said the Duke
quietly.

Poor Mrs. Goose looked dumb-foundered, as she felt.

"My gracious Lord, so poor a lodging as we could"—— began John Goose.

"Nay, Master Goose, but my need is to lie hid. I desire to be where men
shall not think lightly to look for me.  And I seek an house whereon
God’s peace cometh.  Moreover, I would gladly hear more of Father
Alcock’s monitions."

"My Lord," said the old woman with some dignity, "if that be what your
Lordship seeks, you shall find it here.  You be not the first peer of
England that hath lain hid in this house.  Sixty years gone, when he
that was sometime mine husband was a little lad, for divers weeks
concealed in this house was Sir John Oldcastle, sometime Lord Cobham,
that died for Christ’s sake and the Gospel’s.  If it content your
Lordship to be as well—nay, better lodged than he was, come."

"Abundantly, good Mother!" said the Duke. "And was that true man in the
chamber where ye would put me?"

"Nay, my Lord, he had worser lodging than you shall find.—Jack, light a
candle, and show his Lordship where my Lord Cobham lay."

John obeyed, and the Duke followed him, out of the kitchen and through
the workshop, into a large closet in the wall of the latter room.
Clearing away an armful of skins from the latter, John slipped back a
sliding panel, by some mechanism known to himself, and disclosed a
small, dark, dusty room, a little larger than the closet into which it
opened, and furnished only with a leaf-table and a stool.

"Here, as I have heard," said John, "his Lordship lay during the day:
and at night, when work was over, he came forth into the chamber which
your Lordship shall have, and there he commonly sat a-writing till late
into the night.  Once, when a party came that ’twas thought might know
the chamber, his Lordship donned an apron and a jerkin, and was set to
work in the shop.  ’Tis said," added John with a merry laugh, "he
spoiled a skin thereby: but my grandfather recked not, but would have it
set by as a precious thing, and ’twas so kept, some years."

"And did the men at work here never hear him?"

"Nay, I reckon they made too much noise themselves. Only one that was
next unto him when he was in the shop said after unto my grandsire that
he had taken a raw hand a-work, which should be some cost to train,"
said John, laughing.

"That can I conceive," replied the Duke, with a smile.  "Well, Master
Goose, so you and yours be willing, I will gladly engage this chamber.
For the hire, charge you what is meet."

The whole transaction was so unwonted that the Duke really did not know
what to offer.

"Oh, my gracious Lord, we shall find no bones in that matter," returned
John Goose, metaphorically. "I will leave that to Mother, seeing the
charge shall be hers and my sisters’.  Mefeareth, howbeit, that our rude
cookery shall little content your good Lordship."

"Bread and water would content me," answered the Duke, "so your cookery
is little like to fail."

There were at this time as many delicate gradations of rank in cooking
as in costume.  Peers were entitled to five dishes at a meal; gentlemen
to three, and meaner persons to two, exclusive of pottage.  The
distinctions of bread have been already mentioned.  The daily provision
made for the household of the Duke of Clarence is on record, and it
reads almost like the details of an army commissariat.  For a man who
was accustomed to a provision of two oxen, twelve sheep, twelve pigs,
and thirty-six barrels of fish—with a great many other things—as the
daily consumption of his household, to come down to the style of living
of a small tradesman, was a descent indeed.  Trade was then held in very
low estimation, even a first-class merchant being reckoned below a
gentleman’s servant.  The supply customary for such a house as that of
John Goose, was bread and dripping for breakfast, with ale to drink; one
dish of meat, with a vegetable and bread, for dinner; the same for
supper on grand occasions, perhaps with a pudding or pie in addition;
but in all ordinary cases, the supper was brown bread and buttermilk.
Only one thing, therefore, could more have astonished old Mrs. Goose
than the Duke’s expressed indifference on this point; and that would
have been to find that he was willing to sleep on a mattress.  Down beds
for the upper ten—mattresses for the common folks—was the arrangement in
the fifteenth century.  I said, only one thing; but there was indeed a
lower depth even than this, which to see would have reduced Mrs. Goose
to the furthest point of amazement.  Had the Duke—for any purpose short
of disguise—made his appearance with a long cloak, a buff jerkin, a
fustian doublet, and neither gloves nor rings, she would almost have
thought the world was coming to an end.

It was, therefore, as may be conjectured, with some trepidation, that
Mrs. Goose ventured to superintend her grand-daughters, Joan and Cicely,
in the preparation of the room destined for so superior an occupant.
The estimation in which a Brahmin of the highest caste is held by a
Pariah is alone to be compared with the feelings wherewith Mrs. Goose
regarded her lodger elect.  She was deeply concerned to remember that
the Duke would be accustomed to sleep on cambric sheets, and to eat from
gold plate, while she had nothing better to offer him than blankets in
the first place, and wooden trenchers in the second.  But she was far
from realising that, during many years now, the Duke had been accustomed
to sleep on whatever he could get to sleep on; and that a good meal
served on a wooden trencher was luxury to a man who had begged his bread
for months in exile.  The cloth of Rennes and the gold plate which were
the proper adjuncts of his rank had receded into the far distance,
behind the long years of want and pain which Providence had decreed for
him.

"Eh dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Goose, surveying her preparations when
complete, with her head on one side, as if that would assist her sight.
"Gramercy, but it shall be a come-down for the like of him!"

"’Tis the best we can do, Mother," said Cicely.  "And ’somewhat is
better than nought.’"

"Eh, good lack, but ’tis a small somewhat!" returned the old woman.
"Why, I trow he shall have washed him in silver basins set with turkey
stones,[#] and drank out of cups of gold all bordered with pearls."

[#] Turquoise.

"Mighty discomfortous, in good sooth!" said Cicely.  "I would liefer
have a good cow’s horn any day.  It should hold the drink every whit as
well, and be a deal smoother to take in your lips."

"And, dear heart! how shall we find to our hands aught fit for such an
one to drink?  Why, the meanest matter that hath passed his lips, I
warrant you, shall be Malmsey or claret wine at sixpence the gallon.[#]
And I doubt not he hath ate pike[#] and marmalade every day to his
dinner; aye, peacocks and rice, too."

[#] A high price at this time; threepence or fourpence a gallon was the
cost of ordinary wine.

[#] Pike was now the most costly fish in the market, being ten times the
value of cod and turbot. Marmalade was about two shillings or
half-a-crown the pound; peacocks, about three shillings each, were
reserved for the nobility; rice was very scarce and dear.

"Well, then," rejoined Cicely, "it shall be a change for him to come
down to cod and bacon. I dare reckon he never tasted them."

A few days later, Mrs. Goose made a deprecatory remark of the same kind
to the Duke himself.  It was met with a smile which was a blending of
sadness and amusement, and an assurance that for eighteen mouths of his
life he had never dined at all, and could therefore easily afford to put
up with inexpensive fare now.  Mrs. Goose was struck to silence—until
she reached the kitchen, when she made up for it in notes of
exclamation.

The life passed by the Duke in his retirement was very quiet.  He had
brought with him a collection of books which struck the unaccustomed
eyes of his hosts with the magnitude of a public library. But John, who
was used to make quiet observation of all that passed under his eyes,
noticed that one after another of these was gradually laid aside upon
the shelf and left unused, until the number was reduced to two, which
continued in daily employment.  He was curious to know what they were:
but as he could not read, it was of no use to open them.  At last, one
day when Father Alcock came, and the Duke was out, John brought the two
books to the Friar, and asked to be told what they were.

"The Confessions of St. Austin, my son," answered the monk, opening the
one that came first: "an holy volume, and good."

"And this, Father?" pursued John, offering the other.

"A better, my son, for it is the best of all—the true Word of God, that
liveth and abideth for ever. Here be the Psalms of David, and the New
Testament, bound in one, and in the Latin tongue."

John put the volumes back in his lodger’s room with a feeling of
satisfaction.  It gratified him also to see how regularly the Duke
attended the weekly "monition."  In all other respects, the lodger made
little impression on the household, and less on the world outside.  He
dressed as an ordinary gentleman: and as soon as he had ceased to be a
nine days’ wonder to the Joans and Megs of the neighbourhood, nobody
took further notice of him. John Goose found him a very silent man, who
dealt chiefly in matter-of-fact when he spoke at all, and sometimes
heaved sighs which went to his young host’s tender heart.  No one ever
came to see him but his servant Will Sterys: and he kept indoors until
the dusk had fallen.  And so the days went on.

                             *CHAPTER XI.*

                          *A LAST INTERVIEW.*

    "Now all these things are over,—yes, all thy pretty ways,
    Thy needlework, thy prattle, thy snatches of old lays:
    And none will grieve when I go forth, nor smile when I return,
    Nor watch beside the old man’s bed, nor weep upon his urn."
      —LORD MACAULAY.

The two youthful Annes of the royal House at this period, who were
nearly of an age, were very similar in character in all points but one.
Both the Princess of Wales and Lady Anne Grey were gentle, amiable,
refined, and gifted with deep affections: but the one was strong, and
the other weak.  For the strong nature was carved out a heavy cross.
For the weak one, there was a light structure appointed, which so
crushed down her feeble frame, that it was as oppressive to her as the
greater burden to her cousin.

The sorrows of the one were close to their ending, while those of the
other had little more than begun.  Treated at first with apparent
kindness and lenity—placed in the keeping of her uncle, and suffered to
visit her beloved mother-in-law,—the Princess of Wales maintained so
dauntless a front, and so unswerving a resolution, that Gloucester saw
plainly that to wait for any change in her would be to wait for ever.
No earthly consideration would ever make her willingly wed with him.
So, as she refused to change front, he changed his.  One dark evening in
the March of 1473;[#] the Princess was removed from her place of
detention by a band of armed men.  Whither she knew not, until she found
herself, to her amazement, in the lighted aisles of Westminster Abbey,
with robed priests awaiting her in the chancel, and the Duke of
Gloucester, in gorgeous array, standing before the altar.  Then the full
perception of the gulf of misery in which she was to be plunged rushed
upon Anne Neville.  She tried to fly, but the armed men held her down.
She poured out passionate protests—she refused to utter the words
prescribed by the service—she screamed in agony for the help that was
not to come. Every thing she did which a lonely, captive girl could do,
to show that this detested marriage was accompanied by no good-will and
no consent of hers.  But she might as well have cried to the stone
pillars, or have fled for refuge to the dead kings lying around her.
The priests went on with their ceremonies, the choir sang calmly, the
bridegroom performed his part of the service, the ring was forced on her
finger, and Richard Plantagenet and Anne Neville were pronounced man and
wife, in the name of that God who looked silently down upon the
iniquitous scene, and seemed as though He had forgotten the girl who
cried in vain even to Him for mercy.  With how much more truth may that
dying appeal which has echoed through a hundred years be made, not to
liberty, but to the God of all truth and righteousness,—"What crimes are
committed in Thy name!"  It may have been,—nay, if she were His, it must
have been,—that eleven years later, when Anne Neville’s spirit returned
to the God who gave it, she found that His mercy towards her was better
than the mercy she desired of Him, and that but for that painful and
weary beating of the gold, the vessel would have been unfit for its
place in the sanctuary above.

[#] The exact date cannot be ascertained, but circumstances point to
this period.

But meanwhile to Anne Grey the mercy came. The period of her married
life, to which she had looked forward with so much dread, proved the
least painful time of her life.  Not because Mr. Thomas Grey was any
better than she had expected to find him, but because, after the first
week, he relieved her of his company almost entirely.  Affection for her
he had none.  So long, therefore, as the duties prescribed by civility
and custom were properly performed, he had no scruple about leaving her
to herself—which was exactly what she most desired.

One troublesome item remained, for no separate residence had been
provided for the young pair, and Mr. Grey continued to occupy his old
apartments in the Palace of his royal stepfather.  This was the last
place where Lady Anne could have wished to be.  To her uncle she felt no
dislike, for he had always shown his best side to her, and her pure and
simple nature was incapable of entering into the darker features of his
character. Towards the Queen her feeling was a curious mixture of
affection and misgiving.  The soft caresses and tender words could not
be resented, nor even coldly received, yet they were unavoidably
provocative of an under-current of doubt as concerned their
whole-heartedness.

"The lady did protest too much."

With the children Lady Anne was at home, especially with that grave-eyed
boy in whom much of her own temperament was reproduced.

It had not been intended that the young pair should reside in the
Palace.  The King fully meant to provide them with a separate abode: but
one of his practical rules being never to do to-day that which could be
put off till to-morrow, the provision remained unmade, and day after day
followed its fellow to the silent chambers of the past.

The chief difficulty of Lady Anne’s married life concerned her father.
If it had been scarcely possible to receive him at Coldharbour, to do it
at Westminster was absolutely impossible.  But it might be comparatively
easy to meet elsewhere, could she ascertain where he might be met.  The
Duke had as much difficulty in communicating with her as she with him.
But

    "Under floods that are deepest
      Which Neptune obey,
    Over rocks that are steepest,
      Love will find out the way"—

and here also love found it out, though it was not until three months
had elapsed since the marriage, and their time for meeting was growing
very short. They met again only twice—once under the wing of the Lady
Douglas, the Duke’s half-sister; and once by appointment at a draper’s
shop in Lombard Street.  And each time the father saw with a pang that
the end drew nearer, and that the likelihood was that the next meeting
would be in the Garden of God.  He let her go very reluctantly the last
time.

"Somewhat tells me," he whispered to his sole friend and companion,
William Sterys, "that this shall be the last time."

"Dear my Lord," was the sympathising answer, "can you not look on to the
next time?"

The Duke understood him.  "_Domine, ne moreris!_" broke passionately
from his lips.

After that last parting the white rosebud withered quickly.  She passed
away when the summer began, fading with the May-flowers.  The last word
upon her lips was "Father!"  Was she thinking of the earthly or the
heavenly Father? Perhaps of both.  She was safe now in the keeping of
the Father of spirits: and the one earthly creature whom she loved would
join her before long.

The Duchess of Exeter showed little feeling on the death of her
daughter; scarcely more than Mr. Grey, who looked on an invalid wife as
a nuisance which he felt glad to have removed.  It had been
unfortunately necessary to marry her in order to obtain her vast
inheritance; and it was an additional grievance that she left no child
behind her to give him a continued lien upon the estates. However,
better luck next time.  He could now secure a lady with good health and
lively spirits, of a disposition akin to his own: and of course the
larger purse she had, the better.  He soon found her, in the person of
Cicely Bonvile, heiress to both parents, and a girl who suited his taste
infinitely better than the heiress of Exeter had ever done.  Decency was
respected by a proper mourning of twelve months: and in the July of the
following year, Mr. Grey repaired his loss to his entire satisfaction.

The mother was longer in repairing hers.  She had considered herself a
most ill-used woman, through the necessity for delaying her marriage
until after her daughter’s death.  There were two reasons for this.  The
Duchess knew that public opinion would cry shame upon her for marrying
while her own and only child was standing face to face with death: and
little as she cared for public opinion in general, in this instance she
could not afford to disregard it.  Her marriage with Mr. St. Leger—a
mere squire in her brother’s service—would at any time bring upon her as
much obloquy as she cared to brave: and it was not desirable to increase
it by choosing such a time.  Moreover, there remained a further and very
awkward consideration, that King Edward might be irremediably offended:
and while the adverse verdict of public opinion represented a mere loss
of character—an article not of very high value in the eyes of the
Duchess—the adverse verdict of her royal brother might represent a very
substantial loss of gold and silver, which was a far more serious
matter.  She had never dared to unfold her intentions to Edward; nor did
she mean to do so until she had secured her prize.  And as Mr. St.
Leger, in losing his master’s favour, would have lost even more than the
royal lady, he was quite as willing as herself to keep the project
secret. However unwillingly or impatiently, she was accordingly bound to
wait.

It seemed, therefore, as though no creature mourned for Anne Grey beyond
a few of her dependants.  The gulf had opened, and the fair, gentle,
loving girl had disappeared from sight: and then it had closed again,
and the world was dancing over it, and she was forgotten as though she
had not been.  Frideswide Marston was one of those few who wore mourning
for her in their hearts.  She had lived in her household only for three
months, but she had been her immediate and favourite attendant, and had
learned to love her.  Now that phase of life was over, and Frideswide
was preparing to return home.  There was a good deal of shopping to be
done first, for Frideswide meant to bring her trousseau from London; and
accompanied by one of Lady Anne’s ushers, she went to and fro to West
Chepe, where the mercers and haberdashers congregated; Guthrum’s Lane
(afterwards corrupted to Gutter Lane) where the goldsmiths dwelt;
Lombard Street, the habitat of drapers; St. Mary Axe, where the furriers
were found; and Cordwainer Street, where the shoemakers lived.  Of
course she visited Paternoster Row for a new rosary and copies of the
Psalter and Gospels in Latin; purchased a pair of pattens in Pattens
Lane; and, as the most acceptable present she could carry to her
stepmother, bought a sugar-loaf, weighing twenty pounds, price
twenty-six shillings and eightpence, from the druggist in Soper’s Lane.
A handsome piece of scarlet cloth—the most esteemed material for a
dress[#]—was also procured for Lady Margery, at a cost of eight
shillings the yard: and twelve yards—a very handsome quantity—of black
satin of Bruges, to make a gown for the Lady Idonia.  For her father she
provided a hat in the newest fashion, small, round, edged with fur, and
adorned with a single ostrich feather, small but full, which was
fastened by a jewelled button. Ladies never wore feathers in the
fifteenth century. The present for Agnes was a gold chain, which cost
two pounds; and—a far more precious article—a silver cramp-ring which
cost nothing.  But it had been solemnly consecrated, as was done every
year, by her on whom Frideswide looked as the rightful and only Queen of
England; and no one who wore it could possibly be troubled with cramp.
For a ring which owed its value to the touch of "Dame Bessy Grey,"
Frideswide would not have paid a halfpenny, nor would Agnes have deigned
to soil her fingers by wearing it.  What she should bring for Dorathie
was a matter of severe reflection to Frideswide.  She would have liked a
parrot: but parrots were not only rare and costly, but scarcely portable
articles.  A mirror would not find favour with the authorities, as
likely to foster vanity in the immature mind of youth.  Her final choice
was a silver girdle-clasp and a primer.  The latter was not a book from
which to learn reading, as we should suppose, but rather a collection of
elegant extracts, chiefly of a religious cast.  Primers varied in price
from about a shilling to fifteen shillings, according to size and
binding; and were put forth by authority, containing such things as were
considered proper for the people to know.

[#] Writing about this time, Lady Fasten assures her husband that she
would prefer his return home to a new gown, "yea, though it were of
scarlet."

Frideswide’s purchases were at last complete, and her bags packed.
Comparatively few boxes were used, when all luggage had to be carried on
the backs of mules or galloways.  She was to leave London on the first
of June, escorted as far as St. Albans by one of her late Lady’s ushers.
Here she was pretty sure to fall in with a train of pilgrims to Newark
or Whitby, or possibly with a convoy of merchants going to York.  On the
last evening, it occurred to her that she might as well take with her a
few ells of fringe to trim the dresses, as they would pack in no great
compass, and would doubtless be of better quality than such as could
easily be procured at Lovell Tower. Calling the usher to attend her, she
went out to the nearest mercer’s in West Chepe.  The fringe was soon
bought, and she was turning homewards, when her attention was roused by
a young man who kept walking close behind them.  Taking the bull by the
horns, Frideswide said at once,—

"Would you have speech of us, Master?"

"If your name be Marston, that would I," was the answer: "but pray you
go a little farther, for we shall come anon to a dark passage where
there is more conveniency for talk."

Guessing in an instant that the young man was entrusted with some
message for her ear only, Frideswide followed his directions, when he
said,—

"Mistress, there is one would speak with you ere you leave London—one
that you knew of old time."

"Man or woman?"

"Man."

"What manner of man?"  Frideswide was cautious.

"A cresset-bearer."

No further explanation was required.  The Duke of Exeter wished for an
interview.

"Go to: where shall it be?"

"At my house, an’ it like you."

"May it be done this even?  for I should set forth on my journey by
morning light."

"It can be done this minute, an’ you will come with me."

"Is it far?—and who be you?"

"I am a parchment-maker, of Smithfield, and a Goose by name and nature,"
said the young man with a smile.

"By name, may-be," replied Frideswide, with an answering smile:
"methinks scarce by nature, else had not your master and mine trusted
you with such an errand.  But have you no token for me?"

"Ay, one of gold forged in the King’s mint.—’_Alle thingis, and in alle
thingis, Crist_.’"

There could be no further question to a Lollard mind of the
trustworthiness of the Duke’s messenger.  Frideswide came out of the
dark passage, and dismissed her usher, giving him her parcels to take
back with him.

"This worthy master will see me home, and I have ado with him first,"
she said.  "Now, pray you, Master Goose, if your name be so, lead on."

Silently Frideswide followed her guide up to Aldersgate, through Little
Britain,—where of old time stood the town mansion of the Counts of
Bretagne, who through several centuries were Earls of Richmond—across
Smithfield, and paused before a small house at the north-west corner of
that open space.  Mr. Goose unlocked the door by a key from his pocket,
and led Frideswide up a very narrow staircase, into a small room fitted
as a sitting-room.  Leaving her there, he disappeared for a moment; and
the next minute, a stately step crossed the chamber, and the Duke stood
before her.

It was rather more than two years since they had met, but Frideswide was
unprepared to find him so sadly changed.  He looked rather as if twenty
years than two had passed over him.  Yet only in his forty-fourth year,
he had the appearance of broken-down, premature old age: and every tone
of his voice was like a moan of pain.

"Mistress Frideswide, I have heard, in this my retreat, that which hath
broken mine heart.  Tell me, is it true?"

Frideswide did not ask what he meant.  She knew that only too well.

"My Lord, it is true indeed.  Our sweet young Lady went her way to God,
on Sunday se’nnight in the even."

"On whose soul Jesu have mercy!" broke almost mechanically from the lips
of the desolate father.

"Amen!" responded Frideswide.

"Was he with her?" demanded the Duke almost fiercely.  He had neither
affection nor respect for "Tom Grey," as his Lancastrian instincts
contemptuously termed him.

"Master Grey?  No."

Frideswide did not tell the Duke, though she knew it, that the young
gentleman in question was playing bowls at Lambeth.

"My Lady her mother was, I count?"

Frideswide was thankful that she could truthfully say that the Duchess
had been in her daughter’s apartments on the night of her death.  She
had just looked in for ten minutes.  She would have been glad to say no
more: but the Duke’s queries were persistent.  He put one after another
till he knew all she could tell him: and then, folding his arms upon the
table, he laid his head upon them, and a low moan of bitter pain broke
from him.

For some minutes there was dead silence in the little chamber.  At
length the Duke spoke.

"If only a man might die when he would!  The sun is gone down, and there
be no stars for me."

"Nay, my gracious Lord, I cry you mercy!" said Frideswide gently.  "The
sun is but gone behind a cloud, for our Lord Jesu Christ is the sun of
His people.  It is the star which has set.  The sun is there as
aforetime."

"Then the cloud is sore thick, for I see no light."

"Not now, my Lord.  It will break forth again."

"Is that so sure?" said the Duke, mournfully. "Ah, you are young and
hopeful; to you the birds always chant ’To-morrow.’  But I—I am a man
old before his time, and hope is gone from me."

"Christ is not, my Lord."

"Mistress Frideswide," was the earnest answer, "wit you what it is to
stretch forth numb hands into the darkness, and not find them taken?—to
feel none other hands meeting yours?"

"So long as the numbness is but in mine hands, my Lord, I know not that
it signifieth much. They may be taken, yet be too numb to feel it.
Truly, I am but a poor maid and a young, and of little wit: some doctor
of the Church could aid your Lordship, but not I.  Yet if I might speak
one word, it should be,—dear my Lord, if our Lord have gripped hold of
your Lordship, will it matter whether your hands have hold of Him or no?
They be safe borne, methinks, whom Christ carrieth."

"Yet if one feel not the carrying—only a sense of falling down, down,
into a pit whereto is no bottom"——

"My gracious Lord, can that be if you have trusted our Lord to carry
you?  Shall your feeling be put in enmity to His word?  Have you come to
Him? for if so, you give Him the lie to say He hath cast you out."

The Duke rose.  "My maid," he said, "there be times when it looks to
mine eyes as though mine whole life had been but one mighty blunder, and
one great sin."

"Be it so, my Lord.  Is Christ strong enough to bear it?"

"Undoubtedly."

"Is He reluctant to bear it?"

"I dare not say so much."

"Then, my Lord, what wait you for?"

"I have no strength to give it to Him."

"Have you any need?  If a burden lay at my feet that I could not lift,
and my brother stood by, think you I should tarry to ask him to bear it
for me till I could lift it up and give it to him?  Is He that carried
our sins away upon His cross become so weak that He cannot bear our
sorrows now?  If He can hold heaven and earth, verily He can hold you
and me."

"Amen!" said the Duke softly.  "Mistress Frideswide, we may never set
eyes again each on other: and you and your sister have been true friends
to me.  Pray you, do me so much pleasure as to wear this gold chain for
my sake.  I would I had a better gift to mine hand, but a man that hath
spent half his life in exile, and hath his lands proscribed, is not he
that can make rich gifts."

"My Lord, a far smaller matter should be more than enough to pleasure
your handmaid.  I thank your good Lordship right heartily."

"And what shall I send unto Mistress Annis?" said the Duke thoughtfully,
as he turned over some dozen of jewels and trinkets, which were all now
left to him of his once splendid fortune.  "I would not by my good-will
she were had in oblivion, for she was very good unto me, more than once
or twice. What say you, Mistress Frideswide, should like her best of
these?"

Frideswide glanced rapidly over the articles indicated.

"I am somewhat afeared to pick and choose, under your Lordship’s
allowance: for that which may seem the least precious matter unto a
stranger, may be the dearest thing in all the treasure-house to him that
ought[#] it."

[#] Owned.

"Nay, go to," replied the Duke.  "There is nought dear to me now, save a
ring my Nan once gave me—and I put not that on my list of tokens."[#]

[#] Gifts.

Thus invited, Frideswide picked out a plain silver ring, set with the
badge of the fiery cresset in minute rubies.  "This, methinks, should
like her, if your Lordship set no store thereby."

"Certes, none at all: yet this is poor matter."

"It is enough, my gracious Lord, and I thank you right heartily for my
sister."

"Tell her, I pray you, Mistress Frideswide, that the last words we spake
each to other be the parting message of love[#] that I shall send
her,—and may God give me to find it true for myself, as I pray she may
for her."

[#] Then a word used generally in the sense of friendship or kindliness.

"What were they, an’ it like your Lordship?"

"They were the words I told Jack Goose to give you as token of his
trustworthiness, the which I thought should bring quickly one of our
doctrine. ’_Alle thingis, and in all thingis, Crist_.’"

"May you so find it, my gracious Lord!"

The Duke gave her his hand at parting—an unusual condescension from his
position to hers. Frideswide bent low, and kissed the hand of him whom
she was no longer to call master, and whose face she would never see any
more.

John Goose took her home with a lantern.  As they threaded their way
along St. Martin’s Lane, which led from Aldersgate to St. Paul’s
Churchyard, he said to her,—

"Pray you, my mistress, is aught heard at this time of any ado against
them of our doctrine?"

"In good sooth I trust not, Master Goose," was the reply.  "I have
nought heard of any such matter.  Eh, good lack! it should be hard for
some to be staunch, if so were!"

"I count it should be hard to them that had it to do for themselves,"
said John Goose.

"How mean you, my master?"

"Look you, I told you afore I was a Goose by name and nature," said the
youth with a merry laugh.  "So being, I know well I have no wits to cope
with my learned masters the doctors of the Church.  Herein I must needs
betake me wholly unto my Master.  He will give me the endurance, if He
send me the need to endure.  And that which cometh down from Heaven is
like to be better than aught a man hath of his own."

"Then look you for troubles, Master Goose?"

"I look for nought, Mistress.  My Master doth the work for me, and I
take mine ease.  So merry is Christ’s service."

"It should be little ease that you should take at the stake, methinks,"
said Frideswide with a shake of her head.  "Verily, methinks it were
past all endurance."

"For Him, or for me?" significantly asked John Goose.

"It were over hard for you," said Frideswide to the second question,
meeting the first with a deprecatory smile.

"Nay, my Mistress.  The enduring was with Him that bare the wrath of God
for me: surely not with me that do but bear a few earthly pains for Him.
At the least, if it should please Him to call me to that honour."

"Would you covet it, Master Goose?"

"Mistress, I am Christ’s servant.  Is it for the servant to admonish the
Master of the work whereunto He shall set him?"

"But the suffering should be your own!"

"Nay!  When I bid my journeyman get a-work, he doth it at my charges,
not his own."

"Yet you must needs feel it, Master Goose?"

They had reached the gate of Coldharbour.  John Goose swung the lantern
into his left hand, and unlatched the outer gate for Frideswide, calling
for the porter as he did so.

"Mistress, if our dear Lord list to have me to His presence without an
hair of mine head singed, think you He could compass it, or no?"

"Most certainly!"

"Farewell; and God be with you!"

And the smile with which he took leave of her, she remembered later.

Early the next morning, Frideswide left Coldharbour and London: and she
left them readily enough.  Her sojourn in the south had been productive
of any thing rather than pleasure.  Now she was journeying home to all
she loved; and of course hope told a flattering tale, and she expected
to live happily ever after her arrival at Lovell Tower. Her journey was
pleasant and prosperous: and she reached York on the evening of the
eighth of June, in company with a party of whom one portion were bound
for that city, and another for Beverley Minster.

As Frideswide entered the hotel at York, to her surprise she found an
old friend leaning against the sidepost of the door.

"Why, Mistress Marston, is it you?" said he, starting up.

"Why, Master Strangeways! whence came you?"

"Truly, at the heels of my good Lady, that is but now out of Beverley
Sanctuary, and goeth northward under convoy of Sir James Tyrell."

"Whither?"

"That shall we see when we be there," returned Mr. Strangeways,
jovially, as though such a journey were the pleasantest amusement in the
world.

"Is it of the King’s Grace’s pleasure?"

"Who is the King’s Grace?" returned Mr. Strangeways, putting his hands
in his pockets, with as little concern about possible spies or enemies
as though he had lived in the nineteenth century.

"’When we be at Rome, we do as Rome doth,’" quoted Frideswide, with a
smile.  Not only had her ears become accustomed to the term as applied
to Edward, but, like many Lancastrians, she considered that the regal
right had now become vested in the House of York.  Mr. Philip
Strangeways, on the contrary, held politics of so very red a dye that
the young Earl of Richmond was his King.  "You know, Master Philip,"
concluded she.

"I know more than I profit by, mayhap. Howbeit, your question tarrieth
his answer.  Nay, ’tis not Merry Ned this time.  ’Tis Crookback Dickon.
His soul is not as straight as his body. Now I marvel," said Mr.
Strangeways, reflectively, "if that companion reckoneth he is going to
Heaven.  I’ll lay you a broad shilling he so doth."

"What did he, my Master?"

"Kicked my Lady up into Yorkshire, when she fled to that her
dearworthy[#] son, and begged him of his protection.  And ne’er a
plack[#] in her pocket withal.  I do pray the blessed saints to give him
his deserts, and I rather count they will."

[#] Beloved.

[#] Coin.

"Dear heart! but sure he would not thus evil entreat his own
mother-in-law?"

This innocent query seemed to cause Mr. Philip Strangeways
inextinguishable amusement.

"Be men so fond of their mothers-in-law?" said he.  "He is, take my word
for it: for both he and his brother have set down the foot that never a
penny shall my old Lady finger that their fingers can keep from her.
She hath scarce more gowns than backs, nor more hoods than heads; and as
to her botews,[#] I took them myself to the cobbler this morrow to be
patched.  Be thankful, Mistress Marston, that you have lighted on your
feet like a cat, and are well out of an ill service."

[#] Boots.

"Eh, dear heart! but my poor Lady—I am sorry for her!"

"So am I," said Philip, suddenly dropping his mask of light nonchalance,
and becoming another man.  "So am I, Mistress Marston: and trust me, I
am worser than sorry for the Lady Anne, that is wed against her will and
allowing to the man she hated most.  Eh, well!  God be lauded in all His
works!"

And Philip turned into the inn, without vouchsafing any explanation of
the manner in which he meant his words to be taken.

His news was only too true.  The poor Countess of Warwick, the richest
heiress in England, had been stripped of every penny of her vast
inheritance by the rapacious greed of her own sons-in-law. Their cruel
and wicked deed was formally sanctioned by Act of Parliament about a
year later—May 9th, 1474—by which statute it was decreed that George
Duke of Clarence and Isabel his wife, and Richard Duke of Gloucester and
Anne his wife, were to have and hold all possessions of the said
Countess "as if she were naturally dede, and the said Countess is to be
barrable, barred, and excluded as well of all jointours, dower, actions,
executions, right, title, and interesse, of, in, and for all honours,
lordships, castles, manors, etc., as were at any time the said Earl’s
her husband:" and "the said dukes and their said wives may make
partition of all the premisses."[#]  More sweeping language could
scarcely be.  No notice was taken of poor Lady Warwick’s piteous
allegation of "noon offence by her doon," nor of her fervent assurance
that she had "duly kept her fidelity and ligeance, and obeyed the King’s
commandments."  Naboth’s title to his vineyard, even though Divine, was
accounted of small matter, so long as King Ahab wanted it for a garden
of herbs.

[#] Patent Roll, 14 Edw. IV.

How Lady Warwick lived through the next twelve years is not recorded.
We only know that she had nothing to live on.  Perhaps, like Warwick’s
sister, his widow kept herself alive by means of her needle, deeming
herself happy when she could buy a few yards of serge for a new dress,
while her daughters were decked with pearls and diamonds, and trailed
velvet and ermine trains over palace floors.  One of the daughters at
least was not to blame.  The Duchess Anne of Gloucester was as helpless
in her palace as her destitute mother in her northern refuge.
Gloucester kept her in watch and ward as closely as if she had been his
prisoner, which in fact she was: for the first three years of her hated
marriage were spent in perpetual efforts to escape its cruel toils.  The
Act of Parliament just quoted contains the significant entry that if a
divorce shall take place between Gloucester and Anne, he shall
nevertheless continue to enjoy her property as if she were still his
wife, so long as he "doo his effectuell diligence and continuell deuoir
by all conuenient and laufull meanes to be lawfully maried to the said
Anne."  No words could have shown more plainly that the caged bird was
constantly working at the fastenings of the cage, and that the jailer
was afraid lest it should compass its end some time.

Less than this can be said for Isabel of Clarence. She was in no
durance, and her influence over her husband was great.  She was, in
fact, the only person who was permanently able to do any thing with
Clarence.  It is difficult to believe that if she had chosen to exert
herself, some small pension at least—which would have made all the
difference between comfort and care—should not have been conferred on
her lonely and destitute mother. But she did it not.  Are we justified
in assuming that it was by more than fortuitous coincidence or the
action of sanitary laws, that her days were not long in the land?

"God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also
reap."

                             *CHAPTER XII.*

                         *IDONIA UNDERSTANDS.*

    "But hush!  What is the utmost that I would?
    To give my life to God is all I could:
    And this may be the way He wills to take—
    This daily death may be for God’s own sake;
    He gave, and took.  So let my soul be still."
      —ISABELLA FYVIE MAYO.

At Lovell Tower, things were going as merry as marriage-bells could make
them. About six weeks after her return home, Frideswide Marston became
the wife of John Combe.  They were to live, for the present, with Lord
Marnell, until it should be seen what would happen further.  There was a
pretty little estate in Devonshire, named Combe Abbas, which belonged of
right to Queen Marguerite’s henchman: but of course, so long as King
Edward lived, no deprived Lancastrian could expect to recover his lands.
What might happen in the next reign, when men’s minds might be supposed
to have cooled down, and the throne to be assured to the House of York,
was another matter.

Frideswide had delivered the Duke’s message and token to her sister.
They were so quietly received by Agnes, almost in silence, that
Frideswide was afraid that she felt disappointed at receiving so small a
gift.

"Thou seest, dear heart," said she, apologetically, "there is so little
left to his Lordship that methought it were ill done to choose any
choice thing: and moreover I counted thou shouldst better love a matter
whereon was his badge than something greater that had it not.  That
speaketh for himself, from whom he came."

"Thou hast done well, and I thank thee," was the reply, as Agnes lifted
her eyes for a moment.

Could Frideswide have read the eyes, her impression would have been
different.  The language of her sister’s inmost heart was—"Do you
understand me no better than that?"  From that day, the silver ring with
its ruby sparks was always to be seen on Agnes Marston’s hand.

The year 1473 was drawing to a close, when Walter Marston came home from
London.  His life had been an eventful one.  From the household of Queen
Marguerite he had passed to that of the Duke of Burgundy, shortly before
his sister’s arrival in France.  Thence, returning to King Henry, he had
fought at Barnet and Tewkesbury, had remained long a prisoner, had
received pardon, and was now a knight in the household of the Earl of
Oxford.  Often very near Frideswide, he had never actually met her.  Now
he came home on a month’s leave, and as it was six years since any of
his relatives had seen him, the occasion was a festive one indeed.

"But how big thou art!—and what a beard hast thou!" exclaimed Dorathie.

"I am not by the half as much bigger as thou," laughed Walter.  "Why, I
left thee a little chick all over down, and here thou art a proper young
damsel."

"And what news abroad, Wat?" said his father.

"No great matter, my Lord, to my knowledge. ’Tis said the Venetians have
won the Isle of Cyprus, that lieth off the coast of the Holy Land: and
likewise that, I know not well how, they of Genoa have lost a certain
land[#] that lieth beyond the Grand Turk.  Here at home, the King goeth
to build a new chapel to his Castle of Windsor.  You shall have heard, I
reckon, of the young Lady of Clarence[#] that was born some weeks gone?
I mind not aught else of any moment, without you would hear of a poor
Lollard of late brent upon Tower Hill."

[#] The Crimea.

[#] Margaret Countess of Salisbury.

"The Lord may reckon that of more moment than all the rest, Wat," said
the Lady Idonia, gravely.

"Truly so, Madam."

"Was he of any note, lad?"

"In no wise, my Lord: a parchment-maker, as I heard, that dwelt without
the City."

"Of what name?" asked Frideswide, quickly.

"Why, ’twas a queer name," said her brother. "One John Goose, they told
me.  A young man, I heard—scarce elder than I."

"Aye me!  Had he it to do for himself?" murmured Frideswide in an
unsteady voice.

"What sayest, sweeting?"

"Prithee, Wat, tell me all thou wist of the inwards[#] thereof."

[#] Details.

"Well, that is not much.  He was delivered afore dinner to Master
Sheriff, to put in execution the same afternoon; who had him home to his
house, and gave him great exhortation that he should reny[#] his false
errors, quoth he: but—as I heard from one that was by—all that Goose
would say was to desire that he might have meat, for he was sore
hungered.  Then Master Sheriff commanded him meat, whereof he ate as
though he had ailed nothing: and quo’ he, ’I eat now a good and
competent dinner, for I shall pass a little sharp shower ere I go to
supper.’  Then, when he had dined, he required to be shortly led to
execution; and so, as I heard it, merrily and with good cheer took his
death."

[#] Recant.

"Then his Lord gave him the endurance,—laud be to His name!" said
Frideswide.  "I knew him, Walter, though I talked with him but once.  He
did at that time lodge my gracious Lord of Exeter, and his house was
that whereat I last spake with my Lord."

"Thou hast well said, good sister: for thou shalt speak with my Lord of
Exeter no more."

"Walter!—Woe is me! is my Lord dead?"

It was from Frideswide the cry came.  There was no sound from Agnes.
Only the Lady Idonia, who happened to be looking at her, saw her
needlework stand suddenly still.

"’Tis a few weeks gone, Frid," said Walter, kindly.  "Dear heart, I am
sorry if I started thee. I thought he had been little more than a name
to either of you."

"How died he, and where?  Do tell me all."

"Nay, good sister, for how he died must we remit to God.  But for where,
it was in the waves of the sea—the British Channel, betwixt Calais and
Dover.  His body was washed up on the sands of Dover, and was there
found by the fishers, a dead corpse, stripped of all."

"But was he drowned, Wat?  My poor master!"

"The Lord wot, dear heart.  The matter had the look of a shipwreck, but
no boat was found. If he so were wrecked, or fell from the cliff of
misadventure, or—well, whatso it were—who shall tell thee?  The sea hath
given up her dead, but blabbeth none of their secrets."

This is all that was ever known of the death of Henry Duke of Exeter.
The days of his mourning were ended: but how they closed—whether by
accident, or shipwreck, or by the worse violence which Walter would not
suggest openly—only his God and Father knows.

A few tears stole from Frideswide’s eyes.  She had felt for her noble
master very deep compassion.

"On whose soul God have mercy!" she said with an accent of tender
regret.  "He hath his little Nan at the last.—Annis! art thou not sorry
at all?"

The last words were spoken rather reproachfully.

"I am sorry," said Agnes.  But she said it in tones that sounded even
and hard: and leaving her work on the settle where she had been sitting,
she rose and quitted the room.

"Well!" said Frideswide, looking after her. "Verily, I am astonied.  I
had thought Annis should be well-nigh as sorry as I for our poor
master."

"Folks can be sorry, Frideswide, though they say it not," quietly
answered the Lady Idonia.

But in her heart she was saying,—"O blind eyes, that can see no further
than that!  Agnes is an hundred times more sorry than Frideswide—so
sorry that she can speak of it to none but God."

In the early winter of this year, the baby Prince of Wales, just three
years old, was placed under the care of governors spiritual and
temporal.  His uncle Lord Rivers was the latter, and the Bishop of
Rochester the former.  King Edward’s language, in the decrees which
record these appointments, is worth quoting, not only as a specimen of
the English of his day, but on account of its inherent singularity.  The
one entry commences thus:—

"How be it euery child in his yong age ought to be brought vp in vertue
and cunnyng,[#] to then-tent that he might delite therin and contynue in
the same, and soo consequently deserue the merites of euerlasting
blisse, and in this world to be therfore the more eureux[#] and
fortunat, yit nathelesse such persoones as god hath called to the
pre-eminent astate of princes, and to succede thair progenitours in
thestate of Regalte ought more singulerly and more diligently to be
enfourmed and instructed in cunnyng and vertu," etc.

[#] Knowledge.

[#] Heureux=happy.

The second decree asserts that—

"We, considering the great bounte of our lord god, whom it hath pleased
to send unto us our first begoten son, hole[#] and furnysshed in nature,
to succeed us in our Realmes of England and France, and lordship of
Ireland, for the which we thank most humbly his infynyte magnificens,
purpose by his grace so to purvey for his precieux sonde[#] and yefte[#]
and our most desired tresour our seid first begoten son, that he shall
be so virtuously, cunningly, and knyghtly brought up, for to serue
Almighty God cristenly and deuoutly, as accordeth to his dute, and to
leue and precede in the world honourably, after his estate and
dignite."[#]

[#] Whole.

[#] The lost noun of the verb to send.

[#] Gift.

[#] Patent Roll. 13 Edw. IV.

The child thus belauded with a flourish of court trumpets was of utterly
different character to both parents.  He had neither his father’s
ease-loving selfishness, nor his mother’s sly cajolery.  The shadow of
the sanctuary wherein his eyes first saw the light seemed to lie upon
his soul for ever. Grave and shrewd far beyond his years, yet at the
same time of child-like transparency, his character was one that might
have become a rare blessing to England.  He lived in the constant, calm
expectation of early death.  When his little brother, who was "joyous
and witty, nimble, and ever ready for dances and games"—true son of
Edward IV.—besought the elder to learn to dance, the young Prince’s
grave reply was, "It would be better for us to learn to die."  It seems
as though in him, perhaps alone of all his family, there was some good
thing found towards the Lord God of Israel.  "His soul pleased the Lord:
therefore He hasted to take him away from among the wicked."

The King was still supremely blind concerning the matrimonial intentions
of his sister of Exeter, and continued to lavish favours on St. Leger.
He and the Queen were at this time interested in the approaching second
marriage of Thomas Grey, with Cicely Bonvile, which took place
immediately on the expiration of the year of mourning for his dead wife.
In the same month, on a summer evening, and in the private chapel at
Coldharbour, with only two or three witnesses, the Princess Anne,
Duchess of Exeter, bestowed her hand upon Mr. St. Leger, and—the deed
irrevocably done—sent information of it to her royal brother.  It was
characteristically received.  Edward did not see the slightest occasion
to put himself out.  Anne could do as she liked, he said, as he lounged
on his sofa.  She liked to please herself, and so did he.  After all,
Sellenger was not a bad fellow, nor an ill-looking one.  "What ho! Bid
the minstrels strike up there!"  And settling himself comfortably among
his cushions, His Majesty prepared to listen to the music.

But there was one person at Coldharbour who received the information
very differently.

The news that her suitor was married to her mistress came upon Jane
Grisacres like a thunderbolt. Her love had been so blind that the bare
possibility of such a thing had never occurred to her for an instant.
She heard the terrible tidings suddenly, with nothing to soften the
blow: and with a sharp cry of astounded anguish, she fell into Marion
Rothwell’s arms in a dead swoon.  The Duchess, who was herself present,
merely glanced at the white face, and in a tone which was calmly
contemptuous, commanded that somebody should carry yon poor dolt to her
bed.  Tamzine, silent for once, came forward and helped Marion to lift
the dead weight of poor Jane, and to bear her away from the sight of the
mistress to whom her stricken face was a reproach. But the reproach was
felt by the Duchess only as she might have regarded a dead fly in her
pot of scented ointment.  Pick out the intrusive nuisance, throw it
away, and then all would be well again. What did a smothered fly, or a
broken heart, signify to the royal bride who had obtained her own
wishes?

Not long after that event, Master Rotherham, who had been the
fellow-traveller of Agnes on her journey home, paid a visit at Lovell
Tower, and at his own request was closeted with Lord Marnell for some
time.  For so much time, indeed, that Lady Margery became rather
impatient, and expressed it as she sat and span.

"Dear heart! what would yonder man with my Lord?  I had so much to ask
him!  I want to know when he will have the calf killed, and how much
lime we shall take in for the meadow.  Will he ne’er have done?  What
can the companion be after, trow?"

"Thou alway wert a bat, Madge," said her mother, calmly.  "He is after
Annis."

"Eh, good lack!" returned the daughter.  "I marvel where he dwelleth,
and if it be far away."

"Shall my Lord covenant with him, I marvel?" said Frideswide, looking up
from her embroidery-frame.

Agnes was not in the room.

"Not ere he ask our counsel, methinks," replied Lady Idonia.  "At the
least I hope not."

"I will read him a lecture an’ he do!" said Lady Margery, laughing.

"Hush!" was her mother’s quick check.  "Hold your peace afore the maid."

For Agnes was just entering, and she came and sat down to her sewing.
Another half-hour passed almost in silence.  At its close, Lord Marnell
came to the door and called out John Combe, who was seated with a book
in the recess of the window. With a few low-toned words he sent him off
somewhere, and came forward into the hall himself.

"Well, my Lady," said he, rubbing his hands with the air of a man very
well satisfied with his morning’s work, "and what think you is Master
Rotherham come about?"

"You were best tell us, my Lord," answered his wife, prudently declining
to commit herself.

"Of a truth I am well pleased," returned he. "I have heard much good of
the young gentleman: and he hath a fair estate, and spendeth well-nigh
two hundred pound by the year; and true to the Red is he, and a good
fellow belike, as I do believe. He would make his wife jointure of sixty
pound by the year, and an house—not so ill, eh?"

"Has he a wife?" demanded Lady Margery rather slily.

"Nay, for that he came hither," said her husband, laughing complacently.

"Dear heart, but Doll is o’er young to be wed yet—think you not so, my
Lord?" responded she, with an affectation of innocent simplicity.

"Doll!" cried Lord Marnell.  "Gramercy, what would the woman be at?
Doll! she is but a babe in the cradle.  ’Tis Annis he would have—where
be thine eyes, Madge?"

Lady Margery’s laugh revealed her joke.

"Oh! good heart, thou wert but a-mocking, I see.—Well, my maid, how
likest the matter?"  And he turned to Agnes.

He expected to see a blush, a smile, and to hear a few faltered words of
satisfaction with his arrangement.  But no one of them answered him.
Instead of these, what he did hear was perhaps the last speech he ever
expected from the lips of Agnes Marston.

"Good my Lord, I thank you for your care. But if it may stand with your
pleasure, pray you, give me leave to be a nun."

"A what!" came in accents of astonished dismay from her father, and the
expression of satisfaction died out of his face in an instant.

"Annis!" exclaimed her stepmother.

"Gramercy!" said Frideswide.

Lady Idonia said nothing.  She sat and watched the quiet, pale face,
with its set lips, and the far-away look in the eyes which were gazing
from the window.

"If you please, my Lord," repeated Agnes calmly.  "That is my desire."

"And what in all this world hath moved thee to desire the same?"

"I have so done of some time," was the reply, in the same quiet tone.

"Lack-a-day, maid!  How long time?"

A faint flush rose to the white brow, and dying away, left it whiter
than ever.  But she was spared an answer.

"Give the maid her way, Jack," said a voice hitherto silent.  "She hath
well spoken."

"Truly, fair Mother, but I thought it ill spoken," said Lord Marnell, in
a puzzled tone, turning to face the Lady Idonia.  "I never looked to see
one of my little maids in cloister—not by my good-will."

"Then thou hadst best bring thy good-will thereto, Jack.—Frideswide and
Annis, give us leave, dear hearts."

The young ladies retired obediently.  No sooner had the door closed on
them than Lady Margery said, with a mixture of perplexity and
eagerness,—

"Pray you, sweet Madam, give us to wit your meaning.  It seems me you
see further into this matter than either my Lord or I."

"’Tis little enough I see," added her husband. "Verily, I counted it
rare good fortune for the lass.  Here is a good man, that loveth her,
and offers her jointure of sixty pound by the year—"

"For thee, Madge," resumed her mother calmly, "thou always wert a bat,
as I have aforetime told thee.  As to Jack here, men be rarely aught
else where women be concerned.  Let the maid be, dear hearts.  I tell
you, she has well said."

"But what doth it all mean?" asked Lord Marnell, impatiently.

"I go not about to tell Annis’ secrets—more in especial when she hath
not confided them to me," replied the Lady Idonia drily.  "Only this I
say to you both—withered hearts make the best nuns, and the worst wives.
God, not you, hath made a nun of Annis.  Let her obey His voice."

"Dear heart, I would ne’er think to hinder it!" returned her father, in
a voice of much regret. "But what means your Ladyship?  How gat she her
heart withered, poor wretch?"

"The babe that shall cry for the moon is commonly disappointed, Jack.  I
do but tell thee, Agnes Marston will never wed with any—and it were to
his hurt an’ she so did.  Aye, and to her own belike.  Enough said."

Nor was another word on that subject to be extracted from the Dowager.
But Master Rotherham received a kindly dismissal, and it was generally
understood from that hour that Agnes was to be a nun.  Should this
strike the reader as a strange thing, it must be remembered that the
Lollard views on the subject of monasticism were scarcely at all in
advance of the Roman, and that the time had not come when any woman who
did not wish to be a wife could be otherwise than a nun.  There did
exist the rare phenomenon of an old bachelor; but an old maid, out of
the cloister, was unknown before the Reformation.

The same evening, when she came up to her chamber, which Agnes shared
with her, Lady Idonia sat down by the window, and remained there for a
time, looking out upon the summer night.  Agnes, who usually helped her
to undress, was bidden to "hie her abed, and tarry not."  She obeyed;
but the old lady sat still, long after Agnes was asleep, or at any rate
seemed to be so. Each of the two was under the impression that she knew
the other’s train of thought, and had kept her own a profound secret.
In truth, the thoughts of Agnes were much better understood by the
Dowager than the reverse.  Quarter after quarter of an hour dripped
heavily from the water-clock in the corner, yet the Lady Idonia sat
still in the carved oaken chair.  And,

    "Her great heart through all the faultful past
    Went sorrowing."

At last she turned her head towards the sleeper. Agnes lay with her
cheek pillowed on one hand, and from that hand, close by the cheek, the
ruby cresset of the Duke’s ring sparkled in the lamp-light.

"Poor child!" said the heart of the Lady Idonia, though her lips were
silent.  "I can guess what that ruby cresset is to thee.  To him, of
course, it was nothing, beyond a kindly wish to give pleasure to an
inferior who had shown a kindly feeling towards him.  But out of thy
life all possibility of wedlock died upon Dover sands, fifteen months
ago.  Not that _that_ was ever possible—poor child!  Didst thou fancy,
babe, that thou wert about to touch the stars?  God grant, for thy sake,
that it was not so!"

It was not so.  Never, for one moment, had Agnes Marston dreamed of that
impossible thing. Her love had never calculated on a return.  It had
only grown out of the necessity of love to give itself; and her heart
had passed out of her keeping before she had known that it was gone.

Idonia was right, also, in guessing that the Duke had never entertained
the faintest suspicion of the deep wealth of self-sacrificing love
hidden under that quiet manner and silent face.  His one venture in the
matrimonial lottery had been so utter a blank that the very idea of
trying another had never occurred to him, and, had it been suggested,
would probably have been dismissed with a shudder.

"And so—" the thoughts of the watcher went on—"’so He leadeth them unto
the haven of their desire.’  _So_!  Ah, how many devious, winding paths
there are, which lead up to the door of life!  One He leads through
pain, another through sorrow: one by loneliness and absence of human
love, another by the happiness of a satisfied heart, a third through the
shards of broken idols.  Not often the second of those three: much
oftener the first or the last.  But through all the paths He brings us
to the one Gate—through all the wilderness journeying, to the one City.
He who has paid for us the price of His own life cannot afford to lose
us.  And then, ’when we have forded the Jordan, with the ark of the Lord
borne before us, we eat of the fruit of the Land of Canaan that year.’"

Far back into the past years ran the "inner eye,"—back to a stately
woman in robes of white, with long black hair flowing behind her.  The
years seemed obliterated, and Idonia Marnell stood in a turret-chamber
of the Palace of Holyrood, with the mournful music of Marjory Douglas’
voice sounding in her ears.

"It cannot be much longer for me now," she said to herself in
conclusion.  "She has been comforted these thirty years; and I am nigh
fourscore.  But for thee, poor little Agnes!—the wilderness may be long
yet: and unless I mistake, for thee also it will be ’the wilderness all
the way.’  So the ark of the Lord go before thee, it is well. He will
lead thee no whither but into the Holy Land."

                            *CHAPTER XIII.*

                     *THE LAST OF THE SILVER RING.*

    "Past the pearl-gates, through the golden—
      When we meet His face who died,
    Each want full filled, new and olden,
      We, too, shall be satisfied."

King Edward quitted England on the twentieth of June, 1475, for a
personal interview with the King of France.  At this interview an
agreement was entered into between the monarchs for the ransom of the
royal widow who for four years had been pining out her life in English
prisons.  What moved that inscrutable mortal, King Louis, to lay down
twenty thousand crowns in hard cash for the ransom of Marguerite, is one
of those puzzles in psychology which must ever remain perplexities.  It
is true that her father, King René, was pressing him hard—as hard as it
lay in his dreamy artist nature: and it is also true that Louis was
urged—or at any rate professed to be so—by considerations of the
outraged dignity of his own family, to which Marguerite belonged,
through her continued imprisonment—a statement which might be true—and
by feelings of compassion for a helpless woman—an assertion which hardly
can be so.  One of the last men to be moved by sentiments of pity,
particularly towards a woman, was surely Louis XI.

King Edward was more consistent with himself. He took care to have the
money in his pocket before he permitted Marguerite to escape his
fingers.  And, with that intense smallness of soul which—with the
exception of King John—was most remarkable in him of all the Plantagenet
monarchs, he refused, in his diplomatic negotiations, to bestow upon
Marguerite the regal title.  Judging from his diction, he was puzzled
what to call her. He hit at last upon her title as a Neapolitan
Princess, less than which it might seem impossible to give her.  On the
thirteenth of November, 1475, Thomas Thwaytes, knight, received the
royal command to deliver "the most serene Lady Margaret, daughter of the
illustrious Prince King René," to Sir Thomas Montgomery; and the latter
was ordered to convey the said lady to "the most serene Prince, Louis of
France, our dearest cousin."  The ingenious way in which King Louis is
very civilly described, without admitting his title to the crown of
France, is worth notice.  But when the actual delivery came, it was
found that a lower indignity yet was possible for poor Marguerite. She
was required to sign a formal renunciation of all rights and privileges
in England which her marriage-settlements had secured to her.  In this
document no title whatever was given to her.  She was not even
recognised as a foreign Princess. The opening words described her as
"Margaret, sometime in England married."  The words would have truly
described every cottager’s wife in the kingdom who bore the name of
Margaret—then one of the commonest names in England.  But when the
insulting document was laid down before the Queen, she calmly took up
the pen and signed it.  What did titles signify to her now?  There was
no husband, there was no son, whose rights could be invaded, and whose
feelings could be outraged, by any renunciation of name or dignity on
her part.  She felt with Valentina of Orleans—"Rien ne m’ est plus: plus
ne m’ est rien!"  So she quietly signed her regal "Marguerite,"[#] and
by her own act laid down that queenly title which had been so heavy and
blood-stained a burden.

[#] In signing English documents, the Queen spelt her name "Margarete."

Queen Marguerite survived this action six years, which she spent, so
long as her father lived, with him at the Castle of Reculée, near
Angers, and afterwards at Château Dampierre, near Saumur. Her last years
were burdened with the horrible disease of leprosy,[#] supposed to have
been caused by intense grief.  It was on the twenty-fifth of August,
1482, at Château Dampierre, that she laid down the weary weight of life,
and as we would fain believe and surely may be allowed to hope, went to
keep eternal holiday.

[#] What was meant by leprosy in the Middle Ages is an unsettled
question.  It was evidently a cutaneous disease of some kind, but is
generally supposed not to have been identical with the oriental leprosy
of which we read in Scripture.

Perhaps, for her, there was no other way into the Garden of God than
through that great and howling wilderness.  If it were so, how glad a
sight must the lights of home have been to that storm-wearied voyager!

This interview between the two Kings had a further pecuniary result—the
payment during some time of an annual sum of £11,000 by France to
England—a sum which the King of France was careful to term a pension,
and which the King of England took equal care to call a tribute.  Edward
also made a further effort to obtain the young Earl of Richmond, who was
the fly in his ointment: but that wary youth, learning the fact, took
instant sanctuary, and the effort was in vain.

The winter of 1475-6 opened with rejoicings for the birth of the
Princess Anne—perhaps the best of the daughters of Edward IV.  She
certainly possessed two qualities enjoyed by few of the others—lowliness
and modesty.  The rejoicings were increased a week after New Year’s Day,
when a second royal Anne was born—the only child of the Duchess of
Exeter and Sir Thomas St. Leger. She lived to become the stock of the
Dukes of Rutland: and she transmitted to them, not only the property of
her mother, but also lands on which she had no equitable claim—those of
the hapless Duke of Exeter.  Had there been any right feeling in the
heart of his wretched widow, she would have bequeathed those estates to
the last of the Holands of Exeter, his sister Anne, Lady Douglas, and
they would have descended to her posterity, the Nevilles of Raby.  She
did it not: and she had little time to do it.  The baby daughter had
scarcely more than entered this troublesome world, ere the soul was
required of the Princess Anne of Exeter.  She died on the twelfth or
fourteenth of January, 1476.  For her an awful account waited at the
judgment bar.

In the last month of that year, Isabel Duchess of Clarence was summoned
before the same Divine tribunal.  Her death was a signal misfortune to
her husband.  Her influence had not been altogether for good, by any
means, yet such good as had been in it was sorely missed.  Clarence had
loved her, and it is doubtful if he ever loved any other creature.
After her death he became reckless even beyond his former unscrupulous
condition. Gloucester kept his sinister eyes upon him, ready to take
advantage of the first political slip which he might make.  It came two
years after Isabel’s death.  Clarence, who had previously quarrelled
with his brother Edward, was present at a trial of some old women on the
charge of witchcraft, and took the liberty of remonstrating with the
judges on too much haste in condemning the prisoners, as it seemed to
him, without sufficient evidence. Gloucester took advantage of this
circumstance. He adroitly represented to the King that Clarence had
interfered with the course of justice, thus taking upon himself a
prerogative of the Crown: that there was strong reason to think that he
contemplated a journey to Burgundy, with the view of assisting the Duke,
then in hostility to King Edward: that he had many times tried to
supplant his brother.  The intensely superstitious Edward was reminded
of an old prediction that "G. shall reign after E.,"—and did not George
begin with the fated letter?  So did Gloucester, but of course my Lord
Duke omitted that suggestion. He succeeded in frightening Edward into a
panic.  Clarence was arrested, placed before the Council, and condemned
unheard.  He was sentenced to be hanged: but at the intercession of the
Duchess Cicely, mother alike of the King and of the criminal, the
sentence was commuted to imprisonment in the Tower.  Ten days later, in
his dungeon, Clarence was found dead, his head hanging over an open butt
of his favourite liquor, malvoisie.  Hence arose the popular tradition
that he had been allowed to choose the manner of his death, and that he
had elected to be drowned in a butt of malmsey.  In all probability the
open butt had been placed in his cell by order of the brother who so
well knew Clarence’s weakness, and hoped by this means to get rid of him
without any legal responsibility as to his end.  So perished the false
and faithless Clarence,—destroyed, like many another, on a mere
technical pretext, when on other counts he had previously merited
execution a hundred times over.

The years went on, and after a very short illness, Edward IV. passed to
his own account.  After him came the deluge.  Events succeeded one
another with startling rapidity.  Only for two months was that grave and
gentle boy styled King Edward V.  Then came the sudden _coup d’ etat_,
prepared for during many years, by which Gloucester seized the crown,
and shut up the boy-King in prison.  The Queen and Princesses once more
fled to sanctuary; the old friends and adherents of Edward, some of whom
had sold their very souls for the White Rose, were sacrificed on the
most trifling pretexts: and among them, the best of them all, the
upright and honourable Rivers.  The boy-King and his brother were put
quietly out of the way.  The new King made a progress throughout the
country, from Windsor to York, joined by the Queen at Warwick.  One of
those strange gleams of tenderness which now and then flit across the
conduct of Richard III., as though for an instant he paused to listen to
the whispers of his better angel, induced him to spare Anne Neville a
royal progress which would have led her through Tewkesbury.  At the
close of the year King Richard was at Westminster, firmly seated on his
blood-stained throne.  He might well think, like the Spanish Regent,
that he had not a single enemy: for he had shot them all.  But he forgot
one, yet left on earth: and he forgot one Other, who remaineth for ever
in Heaven.

And then his Nemesis began to come upon him. His one cherished child
died "an unhappy death" at Middleham Castle.  His wife, once if
selfishly, yet so passionately loved, faded away and died by inches,
surviving her boy just twelve months.  The terrors of God overwhelmed
him.  He was tormented by perpetual apprehensions of conspiracy, and
distracted by nightly visions of horror.  And then Richmond landed at
Milford Haven, and the climax came.  With that personal courage which
was the best item of his bad character, Richard rushed into the field of
Bosworth, "and, foremost fighting, fell."

So ended the male line of the White Rose.  The Red was uppermost at
last.  The struggle, with all its untold agony, which had lasted through
thirty years, was over at length, and for ever.

Some tardy justice was done now.  To the poor old Countess of Warwick,
starving in the north, her lands were given back, the iniquitous decree
which had deprived her of them being stigmatised, as it deserved, as
"against all reason, conscience, and course of nature, and contrary to
the law of God and man."  But not only the pomps and vanities of this
wicked world, but also all covetous desires of the same, had long ago
faded from that lonely and weary heart.  All whom she had loved were in
the grave, and her heirs were grandchildren whom she had never known,
whose father had been her worst enemy, and who were abundantly provided
for without a rood of any land of hers.  Just a few pounds while she
lived, just a shelter to cover her hoary head, was all that Anne
Beauchamp craved for the little rest of life.  She resigned all her
property the same year to the Crown, receiving in exchange the manor of
Sutton, in Warwickshire. It was probably there that she died, full of
years and sorrows, in or shortly before 1493.

To "Dame Bessy Grey" the Nemesis came too. It is customary to bestow
great pity on the widow of Edward IV.; and it is true that few women
have known more crushing sorrow than she.  But I think it is too
commonly forgotten how much she had deserved it.  She was a most
designing woman—the truth was not in her: and she was pitiless to the
sorrows of others.  In her last years she retired to Bermondsey
Convent—of her own motion; not, as has been represented, through
coercion from her son-in-law—and there she died, on the 7th or 8th of
June, 1493.

Except in the form of witnessing sorrows borne by his friends, no
Nemesis ever came to Thomas Grey, now[#] Marquis of Dorset.  That form
is, to some natures, one of the very bitterest which pain can take: to
others it is absolutely painless. Judging from what is known of his
character, it may be surmised that the misfortunes of his friends would
be a sorrow borne very philosophically by him. Two years’ exile, during
the short reign of King Richard, was the worst he had to bear for
himself—that is, in this life.

[#] Created Apr. 18th, 1475.  He is said to have been previously made
Earl of Huntingdon, Aug. 4, 1471—the second title of the Duke of Exeter:
but I never found one instance when he was so termed on the Rolls.

Notwithstanding his disappointment concerning Agnes, Master Rotherham
kept up his acquaintance with Lovell Tower.  He was present when she
took the veil at Godstow, in the summer of 1476; and that she was not
the only attraction he found in the family was proved by the continuance
of his visits.  About three years after her profession, Master Rotherham
came to the conclusion, which he communicated to Lord Marnell, that his
grief for the loss of Agnes would be considerably alleviated if he might
have her sister Dorathie.  Lord Marnell hesitated: for Dorathie’s social
position, as heiress presumptive to her mother’s barony, was very
different from that of Agnes.  But he consulted the elder ladies, and
found Lady Margery of opinion that a good, sensible man without title or
large property would be a much better husband for Dorathie than a bad or
foolish man who brought her a coronet and a county.

"Say you not so, Madam?" she concluded, turning to her mother.

The Lady Idonia’s reply was to call Dorathie to her.  She took her
grand-daughter’s face in both hands, and looked tenderly at the rosy
cheeks and the pretty blue eyes, which were those neither of father nor
mother, but which reminded Idonia Marnell, how often no one knew, of
other blue eyes which were dust now in the Abbey of St. Albans.

"Aye, Madge.  It will do," was the short but distinct decision of the
old lady.

So Dorathie Marston became Dorathie Rotherham, and instead of departing
to some strange place with her husband, he came to live with her.

The years went on, until the autumn leaves of 1537 were carpeting the
green sward, and the wind was blowing keenly through the glades of
Woodstock, and waving the willows that congregate round the Abbey of
Godstow.  The period was one which we look back upon as lively and
tumultuous: yet to the few aged men and women who could look back
further yet, to the terrible days of the Roses, it seemed very quiet.
Matters had changed greatly since that time.  The little printing-press
set up by William Caxton the mercer in the Westminster Cloisters, had
spread its wide wings over all the land: and the monk who, in his
isolated courage, had posted his theses on the door of the church at
Wittemburg, had spread his skirts over all the world.  Men talked busily
now on subjects which they had hardly thought about, fifty years before.
Men, aye, and women too, dared to think for themselves.  And one of the
earliest results of these phenomena was the conclusion that the
so-called religious houses had generally ceased to be houses of
religion, and that the sooner they were done away with the better.

The state of many of these religious houses was of a kind that simply
cannot be described.  In them Satan and his angels reigned supreme.  But
there were a few—alas! they were very few—where the vows were really
kept, where learning still had scope, and charity still held sway.  And
of female communities, the best of all these was the Abbey of Godstow.

The smaller houses, of the value of three hundred marks and under, were
first suppressed.  The larger, of which Godstow was one, followed later.
Undoubtedly the motives for this proceeding were not pure and unmixed.
Every person who joined in it was not actuated by exclusive regard for
morality, nor was everybody quite innocent of some respect for those
confiscated lands—not to speak of silver vases, gemmed reliquaries, and
gold pieces—which, in the general up-breaking, might fall in his
direction.  Perhaps, when we have satisfied ourselves that our own
motives are on all occasions absolutely unadulterated, we shall be in a
more advantageous position to cast stones at the Reformers.

The suppression of the Abbey of Godstow was close at hand, and the nuns
had made arrangements for the lives they meant to lead in future. Such
of them as had relatives living commonly returned to them.  A few of the
elder ones, who had none, took refuge in the one or two convents of
their Order which were, reasonably and charitably, allowed to remain
until the death of the last surviving member.  Those who married were
very few, and were decidedly independent of public opinion.

On a small, but comfortable, pallet-bed in the infirmary of the Abbey
lay one nun who needed to make no such provision for future life.  She
had received her invitation to the King’s Palace, and she lay waiting
for His messengers to bring His chariot for her.  She had other
invitations too: loving entreaties from the distant wolds of Yorkshire,
where Dorathie Rotherham, Baroness Marnell of Lymington, herself an old
woman of eighty years, was longing to cheer the last days of her aged
and only sister; and scarcely less urgent pressure from far Devonshire,
where the Lady Combe, of Combe Abbas, was affectionately desirous to
minister to her husband’s saintly and venerable aunt.  But none of all
these moved Mother Agnes, as she lay in the pallet-bed, waiting for the
King’s messengers.  Life’s fitful fever was over, and the eventide had
come.  For her there was a longer journey, to a better home.

Outside the infirmary two nuns, an old woman and a middle-aged one, were
discussing some point which evidently disturbed their serenity.

"Well, it must be, I count," said the younger, who was the Abbess
herself.  "I am sore afeared it shall be diseaseful to Mother Agnes.
Good lack, can they not do the King’s gracious pleasure without poking
into every corner, and counting the threads in every spider’s web!
Howbeit—Well! go, Sister Katherine, and say that my Lords the King’s
Commissioners can ascend now.  But I would have thee say to the chief of
them, whoso it be, that in the infirmary is a very aged and holy sister
that is nigh to death, and that I pray them of their grace to tread in
that chamber as quiet as may be."

Sister Katherine departed on her errand, and the Abbess went forward
into the sick chamber.  A few minutes later her messenger rejoined her.

"My Lords Commissioners speak very fair," said she.  "I told the eldest
gentleman as you bade me, holy Mother: and he promiseth that only the
three chiefest of them shall come into this chamber, and that they shall
tread and speak so quiet as may be."

"’Tis the best we may look for," responded the Abbess: "but I would it
were well over."

In about half an hour the footsteps were heard approaching.  They roused
the dying nun, who had been in a dozing condition for some time.

"What is it, holy Mother?" she said nervously.

"Dear heart, ’tis but those weary companions, the King’s Highness’ noble
Commissioners, that must needs see with their own evil eyes how many
candlesticks and phials of physic be of the mantel-shelf," said the
Abbess rather irritably.  "They know their own business, trow: but
verily I would have thought, after reckoning every aglet[#] in the
treasury, and every stick of firewood in the yard, they might have left
us poor nuns be to drink our senna in peace.  Dear heart, what work is
here to drive out an handful of old women into this wicked world!  Well,
well! we shall soon have done therewith, most of us."

[#] The little silver ring which surrounds lace-holes in boots, stays,
&c.

She ceased her diatribe, for my Lords Commissioners were entering, and
standing up, gave them her blessing—with how much sincerity she was not
careful to state.  The three gentlemen bowed low to the mitred Abbess,
and seemed half alarmed at their own temerity.

"Methinks we need not tarry hither," said the chief Commissioner.
"May-be, holy Sister"—addressing Sister Katherine—"it should stand with
your conveniency, under leave of my Lady Abbess, to take note of such
furnishings as be in this chamber, and we will accept the same.—Lead
forth, my Lord of Dorset."

Before this could be done, the further progress of the Commissioners was
intercepted by a weak voice from the pallet bed.

"My Lord of Dorset!" said Mother Agnes faintly.

The youngest of the party, a fair-haired, good-looking young man of
about five-and-twenty, paused and turned to her, as if the name belonged
to him.

"Pray you, of your grace, come one moment hither," she said, speaking
with some difficulty.

The young Marquis came forward at once, and knelt by the bed of the
dying nun, who looked earnestly for some seconds into his face.

"What kin are you," she asked, "to sometime Queen Elizabeth, whose son
was Lord of Dorset?"

"That son was my father’s father," answered the young man.

"So long ago!" said the dying woman. "Young Lord, ’tis but like
yesterday that your father’s father was a young man like you.  ’Past, as
a watch in the night!’"

Her eyes ran feebly over the handsome features, the clear grey eyes, the
nervous twitching of the brow, the good-natured fulness of the lower
lip, the weak, vacillating indecision of the retreating chin.  In those
few seconds, she seemed to read his character.

"The good Lord’s grace be with thee!" said the faint voice at last.  "Be
thou strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might!"

Did Henry Grey think of those words, twenty years later, when after a
life spent in bondage through fear of death, God gave him grace to break
through the trammels of Satan, and to stand bravely out upon Tower Hill
to die for Him?

The Commissioners were gone, to the relief of the Abbess, who muttered
something as the door closed after them, which was not the same form of
words as the benediction with which she had greeted them.  The next
moment she bent down to listen to the weak tones of Mother Agnes.

"Holy Mother, may I crave a boon of you?"

"Surely, good my sister," said the testy yet kind-hearted Abbess.

"Mother, among the gear that came hither with me, must be in the
treasury "—

Agnes paused for breath.

"Well, good sister?"

"A silver ring, set with little rubies in form of a cresset."

"Aye.  What so?"

"Good Mother, of your grace, give me leave to bear that ring upon my
finger until I go hence."

The Abbess was sorely exercised by this request. It must imply either
strong vanity in the dying nun, or else a most undue attachment to
earthly things.  Nay, probably, it meant what was still worse—an
attachment to earthly persons: a most improper thing in a professed nun!
The Abbess hesitated, but the woman’s heart in her prevailed, as she
looked into the wistful, dying eyes.

"My sister, shall I do well if I say aye?  Thou wist no holy nun must
have affinity with the world.  Who gave thee the ring?"

"One that hath been dust these sixty years."

"Well, well! be it so.  I trust thee, Sister Agnes.  Only remember, thy
thoughts should be above, not below."

"Below is the dust only," said Agnes.  "What I loved is above."

The old nun who kept the keys of the treasury found the silver ring, and
brought it to the Abbess. A faint smile greeted the remembered token as
it was slipped on the thin hand.

"Remove it not, I pray," she said, "until I am not here to care for it.
And now suffer me to keep silence, for I would commune with God."

The hand that bore the ring was laid upon her breast, with the other
hand crossed over it.  Two hours passed, and she never stirred.

"She must lack food now," whispered the Abbess to Sister Katherine.

Sister Katherine shook her more experienced head.

"She will eat no more, save of the angels’ manna."

That night, Sister Margaret unlocked the treasury, and restored the ruby
ring to its place.  Agnes Marston cared for it no more.

                         *HISTORICAL APPENDIX.*

             I. THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER, AND ITS CONNECTION
                        WITH THE HOUSE OF TUDOR.

Catherine, sixth and youngest daughter of Charles VI. King of France,
and Isabeau of Bavaria, was born at the Hôtel, de St. Pol, Paris, Oct.
27th, 1401; and died at Bermondsey Abbey, London, Jan. 3rd, 1437.  She
was buried in Westminster Abbey, after many years of neglect, during
which her corpse, dried to the appearance of a mummy, had been made a
show to strangers.  Surnamed The Fair. One historian tells us that she
was a most devout woman, perpetually at prayer: but the excessively
wayward, impulsive, selfish character of all her actions during her
queenly life points to the conclusion that this refers exclusively to
her later days: as otherwise we should be impelled to the unwelcome but
unavoidable surmise that her prayers were allowed to have very little
effect upon her conduct. She married—

(1) King Henry V. of England, eldest son of Henry IV. and Mary Bohun:
born at Monmouth, Aug. 9th, 1387: married at Troyes Cathedral, June 3rd,
1420: died at Vincennes, of fever, Aug. 31st, 1432: buried in
Westminster Abbey.

(2) Owain, surnamed Twdwr (often contemporaneously spelt Tydier), son of
Meredith ap Twdwr and Margaret, daughter of David Vychan: born at
Snowdon, date unknown: wardrobe-keeper to Queen Catherine, whom he
married in 1428: beheaded, after the battle of Mortimer’s Cross, at
Hereford, Feb. 2nd, 1461: buried in Grey Friars’ Church, Hereford.

ISSUE OF CATHERINE OF FRANCE.  (A) By Henry V.:—

1. HENRY VI., surnamed _The Holy_, born at Windsor (in direct
contravention of his father’s orders) Dec. 6th, 1421: deposed Mar. 4th,
1461; restored, Oct., 1470; again deposed, Apr. 11th, 1471; died in the
Tower, London, May 21 [? 27th—see text], 1471: buried first at Chertsey
Abbey, afterwards in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.

Though to some extent weak in intellect, and subject, like his maternal
grandfather, to occasional attacks of mental aberration, Henry was, on
the testimony even of his enemies, one of the best men that ever lived.
His strongest asseveration was "Forsooth," at a time when it was
customary for men, and even women, to use profane language in the freest
manner.  He was "wholly given to prayer, Scriptures, and alms-deeds."  A
Bishop who was his confessor for ten years, bore witness that he had
during that time, "never confessed a mortal sin."  In person, Henry was
not handsome, having the large, strongly-marked features of his Valois
ancestors: but his hands and feet were extraordinarily small; so much so
that a pair of his boots (still preserved) can only be worn by a woman
of slender proportions.  His hair and eyes were dark brown.  He married—

MARGUERITE, second daughter of René of Anjou, King of Naples, and
Isabelle of Lorraine: born at Pont à Mousson, Mar. 23rd, 1429, and
baptized in Toul Cathedral: married by proxy, in St. Martin’s Church,
Tours, Apr. 10th [?], and in person at Titchfield Abbey, Hants, Apr.
22nd, 1445: died at Château Dampierre, near Saumur, in Normandy, Aug.
25th, 1482: buried in Angers Cathedral.  The hope expressed in the text
as to the Christian character of Marguerite is not a mere baseless
imagination. There is evidence showing that in her later years at least,
she possessed and was familiar with a French Bible: and in those days
persons did not, as a rule, read the Scriptures in their own language as
a mere matter of form or custom.

                          (B) By Owain Twdwr:—

2. Tacina (this singular name is authenticated by occurring on the
Patent Roll, 32 B. VI.) born 1429-30, married Reginald, 7th Lord Grey de
Wilton, and left issue.

3. Edmund, born at Hadham, 1431; created Earl of Richmond, Mar. 6th,
1453; died Nov. 1-3, 1456; buried, first at Caermarthen, afterwards at
St. David’s.  Married—

Margaret, only child and heiress of John Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, and
Margaret Baroness Beauchamp of Bletshoe: born at Bletshoe, Apr. 1443:
married, 1455: [remarried (2) Henry Stafford, Earl of Wiltshire, and (3)
Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby]: died at Westminster, July 5th, 1509 [the
date usually given is June 29th; but her Inquisition gives July 5]:
buried in Westminster Abbey.  Generally known as Margaret Countess of
Richmond.  She is the "Lady Margaret," whose name has been given to
professorships, lectures, streets, &c.

4. JASPAR, born at Hatfield, about 1432: created Earl of Pembroke, Nov.
23rd, 1452, and Duke of Bedford Oct. 28th, 1485: died Dec. 21st, 1495:
bur. at Keynsham.  According to some writers, his illegitimate daughter
Helen married William Gardiner, squire and citizen of London, and was
mother of Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester.  He married (but left
no legitimate issue),

Katherine, daughter of Richard Earl Rivers and Jaquette de St. Pol, and
sister of Queen Elizabeth Widville: married at Court, in or before
1490-1.

5. Owain, born at Westminster, about 1434; monk in Westminster Abbey.

6. Katherine, or Margaret, born and died 1436.

                          ISSUE OF HENRY VI.:—

EDWARD, born at Westminster, Oct. 13th, 1453; created Prince of Wales,
Mar. 15th, 1454; murdered after battle of Tewkesbury, on the field, May
4th, 1471: buried in Tewkesbury Abbey.  Married—

ANNE, second and youngest daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury
(and by courtesy of Warwick) and Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick:
born at Warwick Castle, 1454: married at Amboise, July or August, 1470:
[re-married to King Richard III.]: died of consumption, at Westminster
Palace, Mar. 16th, 1485: buried in Westminster Abbey.  Some writers have
endeavoured to show that the ceremony at Amboise was only a betrothal,
and that the actual marriage never took place.  The best authors,
however, are of the contrary opinion: and the strongest evidence is
afforded by the language of Warwick’s own henchman, John Rous, who
distinctly terms the Prince "_primus maritus prenobilissimæ Dominæ
Annæ_."

                   ISSUE OF EDMUND EARL OF RICHMOND:—

King HENRY VII., surnamed _Le Doyen des Rois_: born at Pembroke Castle,
July 26th, 1456: died of gout, at Richmond, Apr. 22nd, 1509; buried at
Westminster.  An interesting portrait of Henry VII. is drawn for us by
Humphrey Brereton, who on arriving at

    "Beggrames Abbey in Little Britain,
      Whereas the English Prince did lie,"

was obliged to inquire of the porter how he was to recognise the Earl of
Richmond, to whom he brought letters and money from the Princess
Elizabeth.

    "He weareth a gown of velvet black,
      And it is cutted above the knee,
    With a long visage and pale and black—
      Thereby know that Prince may ye:
    A wart he hath (the porter said),
      A little alsoe above the chinn,
    His face is white, his wart is redd,
      No more than the head of a small pinn."

King Henry VII. married—

Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV. [See next section.]

                          II.  HOUSE OF YORK.

RICHARD Duke of York, only son of Richard of Conisborough, Earl of
Cambridge, and Anne Mortimer: born Sept. 21st, 1410 (Inquisition) 1412
(Patent Roll): created Duke of York 1425: killed, battle of Wakefield,
Dec. 30th, 1460: buried first at Pomfret, and afterwards at Fotheringay.
The only known portrait of this Prince is in the "Neville window" of
Penrith Church: it exhibits him as fair-complexioned and rather
good-looking, wearing a moustache and a small pointed beard.  He
married—

CICELY, fourth daughter of Ralph Neville, first Earl of Westmoreland,
and his second wife Joan Beaufort: surnamed _Proud Cis_, and _The Rose
of Raby_: born probably at Raby, date unknown, about 1418: married about
1437: died at Berkhamsted Castle, May 31st, 1495: buried at Fotheringay.
In the coffin of the Duchess, tied round her neck with a silver ribbon,
was found "a pardon from Rome, which, penned in a very fine Roman hand,
was as fair and fresh to be read as if it had been written but
yesterday."  Cicely’s portrait will be found with that of her husband in
the church at Penrith: she also is fair and handsome, her face
suggesting more embonpoint than his, and the expression not quite free
from that haughtiness which might be expected from her character.

                             THEIR ISSUE:—

1. Henry, born about 1438, godson of Henry VI.; died young.

2. ANNE, born about 1439: married, (1) probably in childhood, Henry de
Holand, Duke of Exeter, from whom she was divorced at her own suit, Nov.
12th, 1472: (2) after the death of her elder daughter, and while he was
still a squire (Inquisition), namely, after Feb. 3rd, 1474 (Patent
Roll), Thomas St. Leger, afterwards (before Nov. 28th, 1475) knighted,
and made Master of the Hounds (Patent Roll; Harl. MS. 433): died at
birth of younger daughter, Jan. 12th, or 14th, 1476 (Inquisition):
buried in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, with second husband, who
survived her for at least five years.  Portrait, in Sandford’s
Genealogical History of Kings of England, is not suggestive of beauty.

3. EDWARD IV., surnamed _The Rose of Rouen_: born at Rouen, Apr. 29th,
1441; died at Westminster Palace, Apr. 9th, 1483; buried St. George’s
Chapel, Windsor.  News of his death was received at York on the 7th,
from which it has been inferred that the date given by all writers, the
ninth, is a mistake; but the report might be premature.  He married—

ELIZABETH, eldest daughter of Richard Widville, Earl Rivers, and
Jaquette de St. Pol: born at Grafton Regis, probably about 1438:
[married (1) about 1452, John Grey, 2nd Lord Grey of Groby]: married (2)
at Grafton Regis, May 1st, 1464; died at Bermondsey Abbey, June 7th,
1492; buried in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, on Whit Sunday.

4. Edmund, Earl of Rutland, born at Rouen, May 17th, 1443; murdered by
Lord Clifford, after battle of Wakefield, Dec. 31st, 1460; buried first
at Pomfret, afterwards Fotheringay.

5. William, died young.

6. John, died young.

7. Humphrey, died young.

8. Elizabeth, married, in or before 1463, John de La Pole, Duke of
Suffolk: died 1503.

9. GEORGE, born at Dublin, probably 1450; created Duke of Clarence,
1461, Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, Mar. 25th, 1473: died in the Tower
of London, Feb. 18th, 1478: buried in Tewkesbury Abbey.  Married—

ISABEL, elder daughter of Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury and (by
courtesy) of Warwick, and Anne Beauchamp, Countess of Warwick: born at
Warwick Castle, Sept. 5th, 1451; married in Lady Church, Calais, July
11th, 1469: died at Warwick Castle, Dec. 16th, or 22nd, 1476; buried in
Tewkesbury Abbey.

10. Thomas, born 1451; died young.

11. RICHARD III., born at Fotheringay, Oct. 2nd, 1452, and as is said,
with hair and teeth fully grown: surnamed _Crookback_: created Duke of
Gloucester, 1461: killed on Bosworth Field, Aug. 22nd, 1485; buried at
Leicester.  He had dark auburn hair, and dark blue eyes. Married—

ANNE, widow of Edward Prince of Wales [see last section]: married (by
force, against her own consent) in Westminster Abbey, after Feb. 17th,
1472 (Paston Letters) and before May 9th, 1474. (Patent Roll.) Miss
Strickland’s suggested date, Mar. 30th, 1473, is probably about the true
one.  Portrait in Rous Roll; another engraved in Strickland’s _Lives of
the Queens_.

12. Margaret, born 1453; married, at Damme, in Flanders, July 3rd, 1468,
Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy: died at Malines, Nov. 28th, 1503:
buried at Malines.  Portrait engraved in Paston Letters.

13. Ursula, died young.

              ISSUE OF EDWARD IV. AND ELIZABETH WIDVILLE:—

1. Elizabeth, born at Westminster, Feb. 11th, 1466: married to King
Henry VII., Jan. 18th, 1486: died in the Tower, Feb. 11th, 1503: buried
at Westminster.  Portrait engraved in Strickland’s _Queens_.

2. Mary, born at Windsor, Aug. 14th, 1466; affianced, 1481, to Frederic
I., King of Denmark; died unmarried, at Greenwich, May 23rd, 1483:
buried at Windsor.  Her coffin was opened in 1817, when her corpse was
found in perfect preservation; the hair of "exquisite pale gold," the
eyes "a beautiful blue, unclosed and bright."

3. Cicely, born 1469: affianced, Dec. 26th, 1474, to James IV. King of
Scotland (broken off): married (1) at Court, before Dec. 1487, John
Viscount Welles; (2) without royal licence, between Feb. 1503 and Jan.
1504, Thomas Kyme: died at Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight, Aug. 24th, 1507:
buried at Quarr.

4. EDWARD V., born in the Sanctuary, Westminster, Nov. 4th, 1470:
baptized in Westminster Abbey; created Prince of Wales, July 1st, 1471;
knighted Apr. 18th, 1475: murdered in Tower of London, after July 6th
[exact day much disputed], 1483.  Supposed to have been buried in Tower,
and afterwards removed to Westminster Abbey.

5. Margaret, born Apr. 10th, and died Dec. 11th, 1472: buried in
Westminster Abbey.

6. Richard, born at Shrewsbury, May 28th, 1474, and created Duke of
York, same day: knighted Apr. 18th, 1475: Earl of Nottingham, Earl
Marshal, Jan. 12th, 1477; Duke of Norfolk, Feb. 6th, 1477: died and
buried with eldest brother.  (There seems to be very little doubt that
this is the truth, and that Perkin Warbeck was an impostor.  It is,
however, not improbable that he was an illegitimate son of Edward IV.)
Richard Duke of York married—

Anne, only child and heir of John Mowbray, fifth and (of his family)
last Duke of Norfolk, and Elizabeth Talbot: born Dec. 10th, 1472,
probably at Framlingham: married in St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster,
Jan. 15th, 1477: died young, before her husband: buried at Westminster.

7. Anne, born at Westminster, Nov. 2nd, 1475: married Feb. 4th, 1495,
Thomas Howard, second Duke of Norfolk: died between Nov. 22nd, 1510, and
Feb. 1512: buried at Framlingham.

8. George, Duke of Bedford: born at Windsor, probably in 1477: died
young, before 1482: buried at Windsor.

9. Katherine, born at Eltham, about Aug. or Sept., 1479: married at
Court, before Oct. 1495, William Courtenay, Earl of Devon: vowed
widowhood, July 13th, 1511: died at Tiverton, Nov. 15th, 1527; buried at
Tiverton.

10. Bridget, born at Eltham, Nov. 10th, 1480: nun at Dartford, 1486-92:
died at Dartford, 1517: buried at Dartford.

(_By Elizabeth Lucy_, Edward IV. had two children—

1. Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, born at Lille, 1462 and died in
the Tower, Mar. 3rd, 1542, leaving female issue: 2. Elizabeth, married
to Thomas Lumley, son of George, second Lord Lumley, whom he
predeceased; left issue.)

                   ISSUE OF GEORGE DUKE OF CLARENCE:—

1. Child, born at sea, off Calais, Apr. 1470: died at birth; buried at
Calais.

2. Margaret, born at Farley Castle, Aug. 14th, 1473: married at Court,
before 1494, Sir Richard Pole: created Countess of Salisbury (or rather
formally recognised as such by inheritance) Oct. 14th, 1513: beheaded on
Tower Hill, May 27th, 1541: buried in the Tower. Left issue.

3. Edward, Earl of Warwick: born at Warwick Castle, Feb. 21st, 1475:
beheaded on Tower Hill, Nov. 28th, 1499: buried at Bisham.

4. Richard, born at Tewkesbury Abbey, Oct. 6th, 1476: died at Warwick
Castle, Jan. 1st, 1477: buried at Warwick.

                    ISSUE OF RICHARD III. AND ANNE:—

Edward, born at Middleham Castle, 1476 (Rous Roll): created Earl of
Salisbury 1477; Prince of Wales, Aug. 24th, 1483: knighted Sept. 8th,
1483: died at Middleham, "an unhappy death," Mar. 31st, 1484: buried at
Middleham.

                       III.  DE HOLAND OF EXETER.

John de Holand, second son (but eventual heir) of John, first Duke of
Exeter, and Elizabeth of Lancaster (sister of Henry IV.): born Mar.
29th, 1396 (Inquisition): created Duke of Exeter, in consequence of his