Figures:
The circumstances attending the coronation of Henry III. (Figs. 814, 815) in his boyhood, might have taught him in his mature years a very different mode of rule from that he adopted, and which led to events almost without parallel for importance in our history: the establishment of something like an equal system of justice, and the rise of the Commons of England, are but two of the great events of the period of which we are now about to treat; both, strange but cheering to say, brought about by the endeavours of Henry III. and his ministers to govern unjustly and arbitrarily, but both, alas! purchased at the sacrifice of much of the best and purest blood of the nation, in all ranks of society. When John died, his son Henry was but in his tenth year. And what a state of confusion surrounded the helpless boy—Louis the French Dauphin in the land with an army of French troops, and supported by the chief English barons, who had invited him over as their last refuge against John’s tyranny. But a great and good man was then living—Pembroke, soon afterwards declared the Protector; who, collecting together at Gloucester the different branches of the royal family, as well as a host of the principal men of both political parties, suddenly appeared among them, and placing the young Henry, with all due honour and ceremony, before the assembled prelates and nobles, said “Albeit the father of this prince, whom here you see before you, for his evil demeanours hath worthily undergone our persecution, yet this young child, as he is in years tender, so is he pure and innocent from those of his father’s doings,” and so called upon them to appoint him their king and governor, and drive the French from the land. The assembly received the speech with cordial greeting, and the coronation ceremony was immediately hurried on. The crown had been lost in the Wash, so a plain circlet of gold was used. Pembroke was appointed the royal guardian, and the governor of the kingdom. That appointment saved Henry his throne, and the people of England their nationality. Pembroke, who fully appreciated the motives of the disappointed barons, caused the Magna Charta to be revised and confirmed, with the view of satisfying them, and his character testified to all men that the act was done in geod faith. The result was soon perceptible in the breaking up of the moral strength of the dangerous and unnatural confederacy. Then came the battle, or “Fair,” of Lincoln, in 1217, in which the French and English allies were completely overthrown; and when Pembroke, hurrying from the ancient city with its bloody streets the same evening to Stow, was able to assure the trembling boy-king for the first time that he was really lord of England. Pembroke dealt firmly but generously with the allies, and before long Louis had returned to La belle France, and the barons of England were once more united in support of their own monarch. Englishmen could again look on one another without rage or humiliation, again feel what the poet has so nobly expressed:
This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror,
But when it first did help to wound itself.
Now these her princes are come home again,
Come the three corners of the world in arms
And we shall shock them: Nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do rest but true.
Shakespeare, King John, Act 5, Scene 7; the idea is that as long as England is not divided, it cannot be conquored.
Here was matter for reflection for the longest life; a storehouse of facts from whence King Henry might have drawn without difficulty the practical philosophy of restraining his many expensive, and despotic, and nationally degrading inclinations. Unfortunately, he, like so many of his royal brethren, had learnt nothing by misfortune. That his father failed and suffered in his contest with the people, seemed only a reason why the son should risk similar results. The period of Henry’s marriage with Eleanor, daughter of the Count of Provence, seems to mark with tolerable accuracy the period of the commencement of the struggle between him and his subjects. His minister, the Poictevin bishop, Des Roches, had given him a double course of practical instruction as to how he should rule, although the people and the barors so little appreciated their share in the example, that they compelled Henry, in 1234, to dismiss him, with a whole host of his countrymen, not only from power, but from the island. Henry comforted himself on his marriage by taking Gascons and Provençals into his favour, since they would not let him have Poictevins; and upon them he lavished all possible wealth and honours. The barons remonstrated, and the king, wanting money, promised to behave better. When he next asked for funds, he was told of broken promises, and an oath was exacted. That broken too, the barons became more and more annoying and disrespectful; charged Henry with extravagance, and at last said in the most unmistakable English, they would trust him no longer, and therefore, if he wanted them to give him money, he must allow them to add to the gift a few public officers of their choice, such as the chief Justiciary, Chancellor, and so on. The king thought he would much rather stretch his prerogative a little over those especially subject to it, in matters of fine, benevolence, and purveyance; rob the Jews; and beg from everybody else; and admirably he did all these things. Even this hardly sufficed, so in 1248 he again met his barons in parliament, to see what they would do for him, but soon left them in disgust; they would provide nothing but lectures upon his past conduct, and advice as to his future; except, indeed, on their own conditions. Some new manœuvres were then tried, which really do great honour to Henry’s ingenuity, whatever they may prove as to his baseness and capidity. The Holy Land had long been a fruitful theme, so a new expedition was talked of, and money obtained from the pious. Then the king began to “invite himself sometimes to this man, and sometimes to that, but nowhere contenting himself with his diet and hospitage, unless both he, his queen, and son Edward, yea, and chief favourites in court, were presented with great and costfy‘ gifts, which they took not as of courtesy, but as of due.” (Speed.) Of course under such circumstances Henry could retrench his own househeld, which he did with a free hand. There was no harm, too, in selling the crown plate and jewels, when fresh ones were so attainable. “But who will buy them?” said he to his advisers. “The citizens of London,” was the matter-of-course reply. Indeed, appears to have thought the king to himself, I must look after these wealthy Londoners; and he did so in good earnest. Among his other freaks, he established a new fair at Westminster, to last for fifteen days, during the whole of which time he shut up all the citizens’ shops; we need not add that he made a very profitable fair of it for himself. That there were men in England who neither could nor would endure such government was to be expected; but one’s admiration is especially warmed to find there were English women who could tell the king plain truthsin plain words. The young widowed Countess of Arundel having failed to obtain what she alleged to be hers in equity, thus addressed him before his court: “O, my lord king, why do you turn away from justice? We cannot now obtain that which is right in your court. You are placed as a mean between God and us, but you neither govern us nor yourself, neither dread you to vex the church diversely, as is not only felt in present, but hath been heretofore. Moreover, you doubt not manifoldly to afflict the nobles of the kingdom.” Henry listened with a scornful and angry look, and then cried out in a loud voice, “O, my lady countess, what? have the lords of England, because you have tongue at will, made a charter, and hired you to be their orator and advocate?” But the lady had as much wit and presence of mind as courage, and answered, “Not so, my lord; for they have made to me no charter. But that charter which your father made, and yourself confirmed, swearing to keep the same inviolably and constantly, and often extorting money upon the promise that the liberties therein contained should be faithfully observed, you have not kept, but, without regard to conscicnce or honour, broken. Therefore are you found to be a manifest violator of your faith and oath. For where are the liberties of England, so often fairly engrossed in writing? so often granted? so often bought? I, therefore, though a woman, and all the natural loyal people of the land, appeal against vou to the tribunal of the fearful judge,” &c. The king was over:awed, but of course remained unchanged; and the lady, as Matthew Paris tells us, lost her charges, hopes, and travail. When women thus speak, men must begin to act. A confederacy was soon formed, and the barons “determined to come strong to Oxford at Saint Barnabas day.” According to their agreement they appeared in an imposing body before the king, “exquisitely armed, and appointed, that so the king and his aliens should be enforced, if they would not willingly assent.” Of course their demand was the old demand—the Charter; but there was a new and very important addendum, that the country should be ruled, according to its provisions, by twenty-four men, to be then and there chosen by the assembly. There was no help for it. William de Valence, indeed, blustered and refused to give up any castle which had been given to him, when he was quietly told the barons would certainly have either his castle or his head. The Poictevins then present, seeing things look so serious, made no more scruple about what they should do, but decamped as fast as they could from Oxford, nor rested till the Channel was between them and the Britons. The leader of the confederated barons was the king’s brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, a Frenchman by the father’s side, but in every other respect one of the truest of Englishmen. Before events had shown Henry the lofty and commanding spirit that his oppressions had raised, he had a kind of prescience of the fact, which is somewhat remarkable. Being one day, in the month of June, in his barge on the Thames, there came on so heavy a storm of rain, thunder, and lightning, that Henry impatiently caused himself to be set down at the nearest mansion, which happened to be Durham House, where the Earl of Leicester then was. De Montfort came forth to meet him, and seeing the king’s alarm, observed, “Sir, why are you afraid? the tempest is now past.” Henry, looking at the speaker with a troubled and lowering aspect, replied, “I fear thunder and lightning above measure; but, by the head of God, I do more fear thee than all the thunder and lightning of the world.” The quiet dignity of the earl’s reply was admirable:—“My liege, it is injurious and incredible that you should stand in fear of me, who have always been loyal both to you and your realm, whereas you ought to fear your enemies, such as destroy the realm and abuse you with bad counsels.”
The war, towards which all things had been long tending, at last broke out. In 1264 there met at Lewes two great armies, the one headed by the king, and his son Prince Edward, who had till recently supported the barons, the other by De Montfort, whose soldiers were directed to wear white crosses on their breasts and backs, to show they fought for justice. The result was a complete triumph for the popular party; the king was taken prisoner in the battle, and the prince yielded himself also to captivity the day after, as a hostage of peace. De Montfort’s power was now supreme over England, and though there appears not the smallest proof that he ill-used it, some among his brother nobles grew jealous, especially the Earl of Gloucester. By his contrivance Prince Edward escaped; whose address and energy speedily raised once more a powerful royalist army. Seldom has a general been placed in a more difficult position. His own father was in De. Montfort’s hands—the feeling of the more enlightened of the people, those resident in the chief towns, were in favour of the “traitors” (a designation easily applied when no other as serviceable can be)—above all, the bravest of England’s chivalry were the men who had to be overthrown. Through all Edward’s subsequent career, so brilliant in a military sense, there is no event that does more credit to his skill than the strategy by which he succeeded in placing himself between two bodies of the enemy, preventing them from joining each other, or simultaneously attacking him; and then confronting the chief adversary thus shorn of a considerable portion of his strength. There appeared, it seems,
In that black night before this sad and dismal day
Two apparitious strange, as dread heaven would bewray
The horrors to ensne: Oh most amazing sight!
Two armies in the air discerned were to fight,
Which came so near to earth, that in the morn they found
The prints of horses’ feet remaining on the ground;
Which came but as a show, the time to entertain
Till the angry armies joined to act the bloody scene.
Such, according to the Warwickshire poet Drayton, and the old chroniclers, were the dire portents by which the great battle of Evesham was preceded. The scene of this sanguinary encounter has been thus described in “William Shakspere: a Biography,” from personal observation:—
“About two miles and a half from Evesham is an elevated point
near the village of Twyford, where the Alcester Road is crossed by
another track. The Avon is not more than a mile distant on either
hand, for, flowing from Offenhain to Evesham (Fig. 819), a distance
of about three miles, it encircles that town, returning in nearly a
parallel direction, about the same distance, to Charlbury. The
great road, therefore, passing Alcester to Evesham, continues, after
it passes Twyford, through a narrow tongue of land bounded by
the Avon, having considerable variety of elevation. Immediately
below Twyford is a hollow now called Battlewell, crossing which
the road ascends to the elevated platform of Greenhill.” It has
been remarked by a careful observer that the Battlewell could not
have been in the scene of action, though so near it. It is now a
mere puddle at the bottom of an orchard. The declivity there was
on the right wing of Prince Edward’s army, and the troops may
have used the well for filling their canteens previous to the action,
but no part of the fight could have actually oceurred on that spot,
unless we suppose that Edward’s van and centre had both given way,
and they had fallen back on their reserve. But we have nothing to
bear this out. Edward, early in the day on the 4th of August,
1265, appeared on the heights above Evesham; and it seems most
probable that he was never driven from that vantage-ground so far
as the hollow of Battlewell. And now, having seen the place of
this great strife of armies, we will glance at these armies themselves
Figures:
The devotion of the leaders of the popular party to the cause they had espoused, and to each other, now received a noble and touching proof. “While escape was still possible, a generous rivalry led each leader to persuade others to adopt that mode of safety which he rejected for himself. Hugh le Despenser and Ralph Basset, when urged to fly, refused to survive De Montfort, and the great leader himself, when his son Henry affectionately offered to bear the brunt of the battle alone, while his father should preserve his life by flight, steadily answered, “Far from me be the thought of such a course, my dear son! I have grown old in war, and my life hastens to an end; the noble parentage of my blood has been always notoriously eminent in this one point, never to fly or wish to fly from battle. Nay, my son, do you rather retire from the fearful contest, lest you perish in the flower of your youth; you are now about to succeed (so may God grant) to me, and our illustrious race, in the glories of war.’ ” (‘The Barons’ War,’ by W. H. Blaauw, Esq., M.A., 1844.)
The danger attending the junction of such powerful personages, the grief and disappointment at the evident discomfiture of his son —fifteen of whose standards were presently raised in exulting mockery in front of the Royalist forces on the Evesham heights, and apprehension for that son’s fate, must have altogether sorely tried the earl, who had the further bitterness of reflecting that Gloucester and his powerful father had been with him at the head of the barons, and had deserted him merely out of jealousy of his superior popularity. His greatest friend and counsellor was now armed to crush him. TUnder all these painful feelings, and seeing not only on the heights before him, but also on either side and in his rear, the heads of columns gradually blocking up every road, he exclaimed at once in despair and admiration, “They have learned from me the art of war.” And then, instantly comprehending all that must follow, he is said to have exclaimed, according to one writer, “God have our souls all, our days are all done;” and according to another writer, “Our souls God have, for our bodies be theirs.” But, as we have seen, had retreat been allowed him, he was not the man to avail himself of it. Having marshalled his men in the best manner, he spent a short time in prayer, and took the sacrament, as was his wont, before going into battle. Having failed in an attempt to force the road to Kenilworth, he marched out of Evesham at noon to meet the prince on the summit of the hill, having in the midst of his troops the old King Henry, his prisoner, encased in armour which concealed his features, and mounted on a war-horse. As the battle grew more and more desperate, the earl made his last stand in a solid circle on the summit of the hill, and several times repulsed the charges of his foes, whose numbers, as compared with his own, were overwhelming. Gradually the royalists closed around him, attacking at all points. There was but little room, so the slaughter was confined to a small space, and it is fearful to picture to one’s self the slow but sure progress of the work of death during that long summer afternoon and evening. Every man, valiant as a lion, resolved neither to give nor take quarter. In one of the charges the imbecile Henry was dismounted and in danger of being slain; but he cried out “Hold your hand! I am Harry of Winchester,” which reaching the ears of the prince, he fought his way to his rescue, and succeeded in carrying him out of the mêlée. At length the barons’ forces, wearied by the nature of the ground, which compelled them to be the assailants, and worn out by the determined resistance of the royalists, wavered in their attacks. At the going down of the sun, which they were never more to see setting in that western sky, Leicester himself, with his son Henry, and a handful of friends and retainers, were struggling on foot against a host of foes, who were animated by the exhilarating consciousness that the victory was theirs. And now the scene began to close; the earl’s horse was killed under him, but De Montfort rose unlrurt from the fall, and fought bravely on foot. Hope, however, there was none. It is said, that feeling for the brave youth who fought by his side, his son Henry, and for the few bravest and best of his friends that were left of all his followers, he stooped his great heart to ask the royalists if they gave quarter. “We have no quarter for traitors,” was the merciless answer, on which the doomed veteran again exclaimed, “God have mercy upon our souls, our bodies must perish!” and rushed amid his foes with resolute despair. But Mr. Blaauw describes him as answering to those who summoned him to surrender, “Never will I sur- render to dogs and perjurers, but to God alone.” At last he saw his gallant son Henry fall, his noble adherents were then cut to pieces, and, finally, the veteran chief himself dropped, his sword still in his hand. The prophecy was verified which had been uttered twelve years before by the dying lips of the far-seeing Bishop of Lincoln, Robert Grosteste, whose views of the national abuses were as strong as De Montfort’s, and who was one of the most popular reforming spirits of that age, though at his death matters were not so desperate as they grew afterwards. “Oh, my dear son!” cried the venerable old man, laying his hands on the head of De Montfort’s son Henry, “you and your father will die on one day, and by the same kind of death, but in the cause of truth and justice.” This contemporaneous testimony to the worth of the cause which De Montfort upheld to the last gasp is worth something, for all writers concur in praising Grosteste’s clear and vigorous discernment and high rectitude. He was the last man to apply the words truth and justice to treasonable or selfish cabals.
The remnant of the defeated army was pursued to Offenham, a miie and a half from Evesham, where the slaughter was very great, the bridge having been, probably, cut away by the Prince’s troops to prevent their retreat. The reservoir now called Battlewell is supposed to have been so choked with dead bodies, as to bave remained long useless to the neighbouring peasantry, but this seems questionable. The bloody contest lasted from two in the afternoon till nine at night. No prisoners were taken; of one hundred and eighty barons and knights of De Montfort’s party, there was not one knowingly left alive; although some ten or twelve of the knights, who were afterwards found to breathe when the dead were examined, were permitted to live if they could. A more savage, inhuman carnage never disgraced England; or one that inflicted more widely diffused and permanent sentiments of distress and horror. These sentiments have found undying record in a ballad written at the time in the Anglo-Norman French, which has been thus translated by Mr. George Ellis:—
In song my grief shall find relief;
Sad is my verse and rude;
I sing in tears our gentle peers
Who fell for England’s good.
Our peace they sought, for us they fought,
For us they dared to die;
Aud where they sleep, a mangled heap,
Their wounds for vengeance cry.
On Evesham’s plain is Montfort slain,
Well skill’d he was to guide;
Where streams his gore shall all deplore:
Fair England’s flower and pride.
Ere Tuesday’s sun its course had run
Our noblest chiefs had bled:
While rush’d to fight each gallant knight,
Their dastard vassals fled;
Still undismay’d, with trenchant blade
They hew’d their desperate way:
Not strength or skill to Edward’s will,
But numbers give the day.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
Yet by the blow that laid thee low,
Brave earl, one palm is given;
Not less at thine than Becket’s shrine
Shall rise our vows to Heaven!
Our chureh and laws, your common cause:
’Twas his the church to save;
Our rights restored, thou, generous lord,
Shalt triumph in thy grave.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
Despenser true, the good Sir Hugh,
Our justice and our friend,
Borne down with wrong, amidst the throng
Has met his wretched end.
Sir Henry’s fate need I relate,
Or Leicester’s gallant son,
Or many a score of barons more,
By Gloucester’s hate undone?
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
Each righteous lord, who brav’d the sword,
And for our safety died,
With conscience pure shall aye endure
The martyr’d saint beside.
That martyr’d saint was never faint
To ease the poor man’s care;
With gracious will he shall fulfil
Our just and earnest prayer.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
On Montfort’s breast a haircloth vest!
His pious soul proclaim’d;
With ruffian hand the ruthless band
That sacred emblem stain’d:
And to assuage their impious rage,
His lifeless corse defaced,
Whose powerful arm long saved from harm
The realm his virtues graced.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
Now all draw near, companions dear,
To Jesus let us pray
That Montfort’s heir his grace may share,
And learn to Heaven the way.
No priest I name; none, none I blame,
Nor aught of ill surmise:
Yet for the love of Christ above
I pray, be churchmen wise.
On Evesham’’s plain, &c.
No good, I ween, of late is seen
By earl or baron done;
Nor knight or squire to fame aspire,
Or dare disgrace to shun.
Faith, truth, are fled, and in their stead
Do vice and meanness rule;
E’en on the throne may soon be shown
A flatterer or a fool.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
Brave martyr’d chief! no more our grief
For thee or thine shall flow;
Among the blest in Heaven ye rest
From all your toils below.
But for the few, the gallant crew,
Who here in bonds remain,*
Christ condescend their woes to end,
And break the tyrant’s chain.
On Evesham’s plain, &c.
* The few knights above mentioned who were found still alive among the bodies of the slain.
Figures:
It was a striking evidence of the indestructibility of the principles for which De Montfort had fought and perished, that even in the hour of full success the king did not dare to revoke the Great Charter; and when he and a parliament held at Winchester passed severe sentences against the family and adherents of De Montfort, he provoked a new resistance, which occupied Prince Edward two years to put down. Kenilworth Castle especially (Figs. 818,822,823) resisted all efforts of the besiegers; and at last it became necessary to offer reasonable terms. The “Dictum de Kenilworth” was consequently enacted, and gradually all parties submitted. And thus ended the last armed struggle in England for Magna Charta; which, extraordinary as it may seem, became now for the first time an instrument of the highest practical value; in other words, the people, while appearing to lose everything by the overthrow of Evesham, in reality gained all they had so long struggled for; and their benefactor was the very man who had been their ruthless scourge, King (before Prince) Edward. Henry died on the 15th of November, 1272, and was buried in the beautiful Abbey of Westminster, a portion of which he had recently erected, and as Edward was then in the Holy Land, the Earl of Gloucester and other barons present put their bare hands upon the corpse, and swore fealty to the absent prince. In 1274 Edward returned to England and was crowned. (Figs. 821, 828.) And now, recalling for a moment the recollection of the power of the insurgents even after the battle of Evesham, and the comparatively favourable terms they were able to obtain, we shall understand the impelling motives to that course of legislation and government which Edward thought proper to pursue. We shall see that he had taken home to himself the lesson that had been thrown away upon his father; and was inclined to hazard no more experiments in favour of bad government. The corrupt administration of justice had been perhaps of all others the evil the people most suffered from under the Norman dynasty, and had most desired to get rid of by the Charter. IHere is one evidence that their object was at last achieved:—In 1290 Edward caused some of the chief officers of justice te be dismissed from their offices, and fined, after a complete and disgraceful exposure in parliament: the chief justice himself, Sir Thomas Weyland, was among them. All the other officers who were innocent or less guilty were at the same time compelled to swear that from thenceforth they would take no pension, fee, or gift of any man, except only a breakfast or the like present. This was indeed fulfilling Magna Charta. It was this for which in a great measure the Barons had appeared in irresistible combination at Runnymede, had conquered at Lewes, had been slaughtered at Evesham. The old trick of state policy, but which unfortunately is, in a practical sense, as new and common as ever, was once more successfully practised,—if reformation could no longer be delayed, the reformers might be, and were, got rid of: and thus did the government satisfy its pride—it no longer at least appeared to be coerced—whilst it could at the same time claim with some show of propriety the people’s gratitude for the good it vouchsafed to them.
Edward proceeded with the good work he began; though not always without a little gentle pressure being exercised upon him. Thus in 1298, finding dissatisfaction growing, and that among the dissatisfied were such men as Humphry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, and Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk and Marshal of England, he, among other concessions, again agreed to confirm the Great Charter, and the Charter of Forests, and also that there should be no subsidy nor taxation levied upon the people without the consent of the prelates, peers, and people. And how were the people, it may be asked, to give their consent? The answer to that question involves the most important event that ever occurred in English history,—the rise of the system of borough representation, for which there is every reason to suppose we are indebted to the great man whom most historians have noticed but to misunderstand and calumniate, Simon de Montfort. It was between the two battles of Lewes and Evesham that that nobleman, in calling a parliament, issued the earliest known writs requiring each sheriff of a county to return, together with two knights of the shire, two citizens for each city, and two burgesses for each borough within its limits. In this matter too, what does King Edward, in his 23rd year, but permanently confirm his antagonist’s far-seeing and comprehensive act, so that when he consented that no taxation should be levied without the consent of the people, he used no specious words, there were the people sitting in parliament to- give or refuse funds. As an evidence of the gigantic character of this innovation, we may notice the number of members respectively sent to the House during Edward’s reign—seventy-six shire representatives, and two hundred and forty-six city and town representatives. Two other illustrations of Edward’s conduct as a legislator in carrying out the principles for the maintenance of which he had slaughtered the advocates (we ought not ever to forget that), will not be out of place. In 1305 he sent out an extraordinary commissicn all over the country to inquire concerning malefactors, of whatever rank, and to administer severe punishments on the spot. There was no longer any trifling with corruption: the king was terribly in earnest.
If to all that we have said we now add Sir Matthew Hale’s remark by way of summing up, we shall at once do justice to Edward and to those who impelled him into the career, which, when in, he so nobly pursued. Sir Matthew says that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom, than in all the next four centuries. Let us pass to another, less important, but even more interesting, phase of Edward’s life—let us look at him in his domestic relations. It is recorded of him that when he received (in Calabria) intelligence of his father’s death, and at a period not long after the loss of an infant son, he was so moved that some surprise was expressed that he should grieve more for the loss of his old father than for his own offspring. “The loss of my child,” observed Edward, “is a loss which I may hope to repair; but the death of a father is a loss irreparable.” The sentiment was at once touching and beautiful, and reveals the same spirit that afterwards bequeathed so sweet a recollection to the world in his conduct as a husband.
If it be true, as one of our poets remarks, that (we quote from memory)
“It is the heart which glorifies this life,”Figures:
then was there a glory shining about that of the king of Castile’s daughter, Edward’s wife Eleanor (Fig. 824), who with lips, as an old writer quaintly observes, “anointed with the virtue of lovely affection,” drew the poison from the wound which her husband had received at Acre, in Palestine, from Azazim, a Saracen, of the murderous sect of Assassini: hence our word “assassin.” Eleanor gained an immortal memory by this extraordinary example of conjugal affection; but that she did it not for fame, but love, is touchingly «evident in the feelings of grief, admiration, and gratitude with which Edward cherished her memory after her death in 1291. She was married to him at Bures in Spain, crowned with him the day of his coronation, lived his wife “in lovely participation of all his troubles and long voyages” thirty-six years, and died either at Grantham, or at Hardeby, near Grantham in Lincolnshire, as Edward was on his way to Scotland, when he first began to insinuate himself into the aflairs of that kingdom. But Edward’s passion for ruling and oppressing the Scots succumbed now to a holier feeling. His journey was stopped, he gave all his thoughts to his faithful and devoted partner’s remains, which were embalmed, and the internal parts laid in Lincoln Cathedral, the body itself being conveyed to Westminster. A long and melancholy journey the mourning king made with it to the chapel of King Edward the Confessor; and the nation, to whom Eleanor had been a “loving mother,” sincerely sympathized in his grief.
Figures:
The mournful procession rested in its progress at Lincoln, Stamford, Dunstable, St. Albans, and Charing, then a village, and some other places, about fifteen in all, at every one of which, when the beloved and noble-hearted woman had passed from mortal view, Edward, to perpetuate the memory of her virtues and his love, erected a beautiful Gothic building in the form denominated a cross. (A view of the Charing Cross is given in Fig. 826.) Of all these, three only now remain; namely, at Geddington, Northampton, and Waltham—of which the last and most beautiful would probably by this time have been also lost, but for the good taste and liberality of the neighbouring gentry and others, who caused it to be restored. Its graceful form and elegant style may be best understood from the engraving (Fig. 825). No one can look upon it without lamenting the loss of so many of its fellows, not only for their beauty, but for the sake of the events they so beautifully record. If, however, pinnacles and battlements and fret-work fail, there is no danger that the heroic self-sacrifice, the holy love and sorrow, which these crosses commemorate, will ever be forgotten. Would we could linger upon such recollections of the great Edward! for when we leave them, it is to look upon the darker side of the monarch’s character, as shown in his Welsh and Scottish wars.
Edward had not so completely established his military fame in the Crusades as to be content to settle down to peace. It was not enough that in Palestine and Italy and France he had lifted the national honour of England—as honour was then understood—from the depths to which it had sunk under his father’s rule; it was not enough that all the talk among the delighted people was of Edward and his adventures;—he had a great scheme at heart, in comparison with which all he had yet done were trifles. He saw that before England could mount very high in the scale of nations, the whole of the island of Britain must be essentially one undivided power, instead of three. Leaving foreign conquest, therefore, to his successors, he fixed his powerful will on the accomplishment of this unity. The princes of Wales and Scotland were bound by some indefinable species of feudal vassalage to the English crown, and this he took for the foundation of his advances. A world of misery ensued to the brave people fighting for their independence; we cannot have too much sympathy for them;—nor, on the other hand, too high an appreciation of the essential idea which lay beneath all Edward’s barbarities, if we consider the value of that unity now, when England, Scotland, and Wales are so happily and indissolubly bound together by the only fitting ties, common sympathies and common interests.
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