So also in his account of Lincoln Fair, and of the rising of Fitzarnulph and the citizens of London, he still keeps close to the old chronicle of Wendover; especially is he in his element on Lincoln Fair day, and able to give full rein to his patriotic fire, the essential point of which, in his case, as in that of the chronicler, was loyalty to the king. But Edgar adds to Roger’s account when he introduces us to Nichola de Camville, whose story is given by Walter of Coventry.
Finally, when the temporary peace was established, Edgar concludes his tale in the conventional way, dear to novel readers in every age, with the rescue of the heroine by the hero, and the “living happy ever after.”
Hannay says of Edgar’s style: “It is not a showy style; but it is singularly clear, masculine, and free from every trace of literary impurity or fashionable affectation.” It is certain that he was at his best when describing boyish adventures or historic events. Beatrix de Moreville’s only essential place in the story is as an object of admiration for Oliver Icingla, thereby causing the former friends, Oliver and Fitzarnulph, to become romance-rivals as well as political opponents. It is not, in truth, of such as Beatrix de Moreville that the great heroines are made. With Wolf, the son of Styr, the author is, on the contrary, much more at home; and he makes us at last as interested as he was himself in the boy who was the loyal servant of his master.
Edgar, with his strong conservative instinct and his feeling for the old chroniclers, had much to aid him in his special service of making history into pure story. If he had gone on to write the major work he had planned on the subject of this last story of his, he might have left a more solid fame behind him. His story will help, as it is, to send other students and writers to review the turbulent reign of that John whom he over-estimated.
April 1908.
The following are the published works of John George Edgar: —
Biography for Boys, 1853; The Boyhood of Great Men, 1853; History for Boys, 1855; Boy Princes, 1857; The Heroes of England, 1858; The Wars of the Roses, 1859; The Crusades and the Crusaders, 1860; Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1861; Sea Kings and Naval Heroes, 1861; Memorable Events of Modern History, 1862; Danes, Saxons, and Normans, 1863; Cressy and Poictiers (in Beeton’s Boys’ Own Magazine, 1863), 1865; Historical Anecdotes of Animals, 1865; Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 1866.
CHAPTER I
A SQUIRE AND A CITIZEN
IT was the eve of Christmas in the year 1214, when John was King of England; and, albeit England was on the verge of a sanguinary civil war, which was to shake the kingdom to its centre, and cause infinite suffering to families and individuals, London – then a little city, containing some forty thousand inhabitants, and surrounded by an old Roman wall, said to have been built by the Emperor Constantine – wore quite a holiday aspect, when, as the shades of evening were closing over the banks of the Thames, a stripling of eighteen, or thereabouts, walked up one of the long, narrow streets – some of which, indeed, were so narrow that the inmates, when they ascended to the house-tops, could converse and even shake hands with their opposite neighbours – and knocked loudly at the gate of a high house. It had the appearance of being the abode either of some great noble in attendance on the court, or one of those mediæval merchants who called themselves “barons,” and boasted of such wealth as few of the feudal nobles could call their own. In fact, it was the residence of the Fitzarnulphs, the proudest, richest, and most influential of the citizens of London.
The stripling was of gallant bearing and fair to look upon. He was tall, though not so tall as to be in any way remarkable; and his person, well proportioned and compactly formed, indicated much strength, and promised much endurance. His countenance, which was set off with a profusion of fair hair and a growing moustache, was frank and open – so frank and open, indeed, that it seemed as if you might have read in his clear blue eye every working of the mind; and he had neither the aquiline features nor air of authority which distinguished the Norman warriors, young and old. His dress, however, was similar to that which a Norman squire – a De Vesci or a De Roos – would have worn; and he had the air, the manner, and the style of one who had been early apprenticed to arms, and trained in feudal castles to perform the feats of chivalry on which the age set so high a value. Nor was it clear that he had not been engaged in other than the mimic warfare of the tiltyard. More than one scar – none of them, fortunately, such as to mar his beauty – told of fields on which warriors had fought desperately for victory and for life.
Admitted after some delay into the courtyard, and, after passing through it, into the interior of the high house at the gate of which he had knocked, the squire was ceremoniously conducted through what might be called the great hall of the mansion, and received in a small comfortably matted and heated chamber by a person somewhat his senior, who wore the gabardine of a citizen, and on his dark countenance a look of abstraction and gloom, which contrasted remarkably with the lightness and gaiety of his visitor. Wholly unaffected by this difference, however, the squire held out his hand, grasped that of the young Londoner, and said in a voice, not musical indeed, but joyous and hearty —
“Constantine Fitzarnulph, I greet thee in the name of God and of good St. Edward.”
“Oliver Icingla!” exclaimed the citizen, taken by surprise. “Do I, in truth, see you, and in the body? Ere this I deemed you were food for worms.”
“By the Holy Cross, Constantine,” replied the squire, “you do see me in the body. I have, it is true, passed through many adventures and perils, seeing I am but a youth; but as for being food for worms, I have as yet no ambition to serve that purpose, being, as is well known to you, the last of my line, and in no haste, credit me, to sing ‘Nunc Dimittis’ till I have done something to employ the tongues of minstrels.”
“Of what adventures and perils speak you?” asked the citizen somewhat jealously; for he himself had passed through neither, save in his visions by day and his dreams by night.
“I would fain not appear vainglorious,” answered the squire, smiling, “and, therefore, I care not to recount my own exploits. But you know that, when I was withdrawn from your companionship, and from the lessons in grammar and letters, to which, be it confessed, I never took very kindly, I entered the castle of my mother’s remote kinsman, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, and there, not without profit, served my apprenticeship to chivalry. But no sooner did I attain the rank of squire than I began to sigh for real war, and such fields of fight as, for years, I had been dreaming of. And it chanced that about that time Don Diego Perez, a knight from Spain, reached the castle of Salisbury with tidings that Alphonso of Castille was hard pressed by the Moors, and like to lose his kingdom if not aided by the warriors of Christendom. On hearing Don Diego’s report I and others in my Lord of Salisbury’s household, with the noble earl’s sanction, accompanied the knight to Castille; and I fought at Muradel on that day when the Christian chivalry swept the Moorish host before them as the wind does leaves at Yule.”
“In good faith?”
“In good faith, Constantine,” continued the squire. “But it speedily appeared that we had done our work too well, and routed the Moors so thoroughly that there was no likelihood of reaping more honour or more profit under King Alphonso’s banners; and I was even thinking of going to the Holy Land to fight for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, when news reached the court of Castille that King John had allied himself with the Emperor of Germany and the Count of Flanders to oppose the King of France, and that my Lord of Salisbury was leading an English force to join them; and I and others resolved thereupon to hasten where blows were like to be going; and we made our way, through countless perils, to the great earl’s side on the very day when the two armies – one headed by the Emperor Otho, the other by King Philip – drew up in battle array between Lille and Tournay.”
“By St. Thomas!” exclaimed the citizen with a sneer, “you soon learned to your cost that you had better have gone elsewhere.”
“Nay, nay,” replied the squire sharply – for the sneer of the citizen had not been unobserved – “it is the fortune of warriors to know defeat as well as victory, and we did all that brave men could do on that August day – now four