Earl Hubert's Daughter

Preface

The thirteenth century was one of rapid and terrible incidents, tumultuous politics, and in religious matters of low and degrading superstition. Transubstantiation had just been formally adopted as a dogma of the Church, accompanied as it always is by sacramental confession, and quickly followed by the elevation of the host and the invention of the pix. Various Orders of monks were flocking into England. The Pope was doing his best, aided by the Roman cleigy, and to their shame be it said, by some of the English, to fix his iron yoke on the neck of the Church of England. The doctrine of human merit was at its highest pitch ; the doctrine of justification by faith was absolutely unknown.

!v Preface.

Amid this thick darkness, a very small number of true-hearted, Heaven-taught men bore aloft the torch of truth — that is, of so much truth as they knew. One of such men as these I have sketched

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in Father Bruno. And if, possibly, the portrait is slightly over-charged for the date, — if he be represented as a shade more enlightened than at that time he could well be — I trust that the anachronism will be pardoned for the sake of those eternal verities which would otherwise have been left wanting.

There is one fact in ecclesiastical history which should never be forgotten, and this is, that in all ages, within the visible corporate body which men call the Church, God has had a Church of His own, true, living, and faithful. He has ever reserved to Himself that typical seven thousand in Israel, of whom all the knees have not bowed unto Baal, and every mouth hath not kissed him.

Such men as these have been termed " Protestants before the Reformation." The only reason why they were not Protestants, was because there was as yet no Protestantism. The heavenly call to "come out of her " had not yet been heard These men were to

Pre/cue. v be found in all stations and callings; on the throne •as in Alfred the Great, St. Louis, and Henry VI. ; in the hierarchy — as in Anselm, Bradwardine, and Grosteste ; in the cloister — as in Bernard de Morlaix ; but perhaps most frequently in that rank and file of whom the world never hears, and of some of whom, however low their place in it, the world is not worthy.

These men often made terrible blunders — as St Louis did when he persecuted the Jews, under the delusion that he was thus doing honour to the Lord whom they had rejected: and Bernard de Morlaix, when he led a crusade against the Albigenses, of whom he had heard only slanderous reports. Do we make no blunders, that we should be in haste to judge them ? How much more has been given to us than to them ! How much more, then, will be required ?

Contents

CHAP.

FAGB

I. FATHER AND MOTHER

Chapter I. Father And Mother

•* He -was a tnie man, this — "who lived for England, And he knew how to die. **

•* Sweet ? There are many sweet things. Clovet^s sweet. And so is liquorice, though 'tis hard to chew ; And sweetbriar — till it scratches."

OOK, Margaret ! Thine aunt, Dame Marjory, is come to spend thy birthday with thee."

"And see my new bower?* O Aunt Marjoiy, I am so glad ! "

The new bower was a very pretty room— for the thirteenth century — but its girl-owner was the prettiest thing in it Her age was thirteen that

^ Boudoir.

day, but she was so tall that she might easily have been supposed two or three years older. She had a very fair complexion, violet-blue eyes, and hair exactly the colour of a cedar pencil. If physiognomy may be trusted, the face indicated a loving and amiable disposition.

The two ladies who had just entered from the ante-room — ^the mother and aunt of Margaretwere both tall, finely-developed women, with shining fair hair. They spoke French, evidently as the mother-tongue: but in 1234 that was the custom of all English nobles. These ladies had been

brought up in England from early maidenhood, but they were Scottish Princesses — the eldest and youngest daughters of King William the Lion, by his Norman Queen, Ermengarde de Beaumont Both sisters were very handsome, but the younger bore the palm of beauty in the artist's sense, though she was not endowed with the singular charm of manner which characterised her sister. Chroniclers tell us that the younger Princess, Marjory, was a woman of marvellous beauty. Yet something more attractive than mere beauty must have distinguished the Princess Mai^aret, for two men of the most opposite dispositions to have borne her image on their hearts till death, and for her husband — a man capable of abject superstition, and with his hot-headed youth far behind him — to have braved all the thunders of Rome, rather than put her away.

These royal sisters had a singular history. Their father, King William, had put them for education into the hands of King John of England and his Queen, Isabelle of Angoul6me, when they were little more than infants; in other words, he had committed his tender doves to the charge of almost the worst man and woman whom he could have selected. There were just two vices of which His English Majesty was not guilty, and those were cowardice and hypocrisy. He was a plain, unvarnished villain, and he never hesitated for a moment

to let people see it. Queen Isabelle had been termed "the Helen of the Middle Ages," alike from her great beauty, and from the fact that her husband abducted her when betrothed elsewhere. She can hardly be blamed for this, since she was a mere child at the time : but as she grew up, she developed a character quite worthy of the scoundrel to whom she was linked. To personal profligacy she added sordid avarice, and a positive incapacity for telling the truth. To these delightful persons the poor little Scottish maidens, Margaret and Isabel, were consigned. At what age

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Marjory joined them in England is doubtful: but it does not appear that she wis ever, as they were, an official ward of the Crown.

The exact terms on which these royal children were sent into England were for many years the subject of sharp contention between their brother Alexander and King Henry III. The memorandum drawn up between the Kings William and John, does not appear to be extant: but that by which, in 1220, they were afresh consigned to the care of Henry IIL, is still in existence, Alexander strenuously maintained that John had undertaken to marry the sisters to his own two sons. The agreement with Henry III. simply provides that "We will also marry ^ Margaret and Isabel, sisters of the said Alexander, King of Scotland, during the space of one full year from the feast of St Denis,* 1220, as shall be to our honour: and if we do not marry them within that period, we will return them to the said Alexander, King of Scotland, safe and free, in his own terri-

^ This meant at the time, " cauie to be married." > Oct. 8.

tories, within two years from the time specified." ^

This article of the convention was honestly carried out according to the later memorandum, so far as concerned Margaret, who was married to Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent, at York, on the twenty-fifth of June, 1221. Isabel, however, was not married (to Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk) until May, 1225.^ Still, after the latter date, the convention having been carried out, it might have been supposed that the Kings would have given over quarrelling about it. The Princesses were honourably married m England, which was all that Henry III. at least had undertaken to do.

But neither party was satisfied. Alexander never ceased to reproach Henry for not having himself married Margaret, and united Isabel to his brother. Henry, while he testily maintained to Alexander that he had done all he promised, and no further claim could be established against him, yet, as history shows, never to the last hour pardoned

1 Patent RoU, 4 H. III. ; dated York, June 15 [1220],

^ " In the octave of holy Trinity " [May 25 — June \\ at Alnwick.

■Roberts* Extracts from Fines Rolls, 1225.

Hubert de Burgh for his marriage with the Scottish Princess, and most bitterly reproached him for depriving him of her whom he had intended to make his Queen.

The truth seems to be that Henry HI., who at the time of Margaret's marriage was only a lad of thirteen years, had cherished for her a fervent boyish passion, and that she was the only woman whom he ever really loved. Hubert, at that time Regent, probably never imagined any thing of the kind : while to Margaret, a stately maiden of some twenty years, if not more, the

sentimental courtship of a schoolboy of thirteen would probably be a source of amusement rather than sympathy. But at every turn in his after life, Henry showed that he had never forgiven this slight put on his affections. It is true that his affection was of a somewhat odd type, presenting no obstacle to his aspersing the character of his lady-love, when he found it convenient to point a moral by so doing. But of all men who ever lived, surely one of the most consistently inconsistent was Henry HI. In most instances he was "constant to one thing — his inconstancy." Like his father, he possessed two virtues : but they were not the same. Henry was not a lover of cruelty for its own sake — which John was : and he was not personally a libertine. Of his father's virtues, bravery and honesty, there was not a trace in him. He covered his sins with an embroidered cloak of exquisite piety. The bad qualities of both parents were inherited by him. To his mother's covetous acquisitiveness and ingrained falsehood, he joined his father's unscrupulous exactions and wild extravagance*

I have said that Henry was not a lover of cruelty

in itself: but he could be fearfully and recklessly cruel when he had a point to gain, as we shall see too well before the story is ended. It may be true that John murdered his nephew Arthur with his own hands; but it was reserved for Henry, out of the public sight and away from his own eyes, to perpetrate a more cruel murder upon Arthur's hapless sister, "the Pearl of Bretagne," by one of the slowest and most dreadful deaths possible to humanity, and without any offence on her part beyond her very existence. Stow tells us that poor Alianora was slowly starved to death ; and that she died by royal order the Issue Roll gives evidence, since one hundred pounds were delivered to John

Fitz Geoffrey as his fee for the execution of Alianora the King's kinswoman.*

It is not easy to say whether John or Henry would have made the more clever vivisector. But assuredly, while John would have kept his laboratory door open, and have sneered at anaesthetics, Henry would have softly administered curare,* and afterwards made a charming speech on the platform concerning the sacrifices of their own feelings, which physiologists are sorrowfully compelled to make for the benefit of humanity and the exigencies of

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science.

Thirteen i/^ears after the marriage of Margaret of Scotland, fthen he was a young man of six-andtwenty, Henry III, made a second attempt to win a Scottish queen. The fair Princess Marjory had now joined her sisters in England ; and in point of age she was more suitable than Margaret, The English nobles, however, were very indignant that their King should think of espousing a younger sister of the wife of so mere an upstart as Hubert de

^ This terrible fact has been strangely ignored by many modem historians. — Rot. Exity Michs., 25-6 H. III.

* A drug which deadens the sensibilities — of the vivisector — by rendering the victim incapable of sound or motion, but not afiectii^ the nerves of sensat»or in the least.

Burgh. They grumbled bitterly, and the Count of Bretagne, brother-in-law of the murdered Arthur and the disinherited Alianora, took upon himself to dissuade the King from his purpose.

This Count of Bretagne is known as Pierre

Mauclerc, or Bad-Clerk: not a flattering epithet, but

historians assure us that Pierre only too thoroughly

deserved the adjective, whatever his writing may

have done. He had, four years before, refused his

own daughter to King Henry, preferring to marry

her to a son of the King of France, The Count had undertaken no difficult task, for an easier could not

be than to persuade or dissuade Henry HI. in respect of any mortal thing. He passed his life in acting on the advice in turn of every person who had last spoken to him. So he gave up Marjory of Scotland. Three years more had elapsed since that time, during which Marjory, very sore at her rejection, had withdrawn to the Court of King Alexander her brother. In the spring of 1234 she returned to her eldest sister, who generally resided either in her husband's Town-house at Whitehall, — it was probably near Scotland Yard — or at the Castle of Bury Saint Edmund's. She was just then at the latter. Earl Hubert himself was but rarely at home in either

B lo Earl Huberfs Daughter, place, being constantly occupied elsewhere by official duties, and not unfrequently, through some adverse turn of King Henry's capricious favour, detained somewhere in prison.

"And how long hast thou nestled in this sweet new bower, my bird ?" said Marjory caressingly to her niece,

"To-day, Aunt Marjory ! It is a birthday present from my Lord and father. Is it not pretty } Only look at the walls, and the windows, and my beautiful velvet settle. Now, did you ever see any thing so charming ? "

Marjory glanced at her sister, and they exchanged smiles.

"Well, I cannot quite say No to that question, Magot.* But lead me round this wonderful chamber, and show me all its beauties."

The wonderful chamber in question was not very spacious, being about sixteen feet in length by twelve in width. It had a wide fireplace at one end

there was no fire, for the spring was just passing into summer — and two arched windows on one of its longer sides. The fireplace was filled with a

^ This was in 1234, when our story begins, the English diminutive of Margaret, and was doubtless derived from the French Margot grotto-like erection of fir-cones, moss, and rosemary : the windows, as Margaret triumphantly pointed out, were of that rare and precious material, glass. Three doors led into other rooms. One, opposite the fireplace, gave access to a small private oratory ; two others, opposite the windows, communicated respectively with the wardrobe and the ante-chamben These four rooms together, with the narrow spiral staircase which led to them, occupied the whole floor of one of the square towers of the Castle. The walls of the bower were painted green, relieved by golden stars ; and on every wall-space between the doors and windows was a painted " history " namely, a medallion of some BibHcal, historical, or legendary subject. The subjects in this room had evidently been chosen with reference to the tastes of a girl. They were, — the Virgin and Child ; the legend of Saint Margaret ; the Wheel of Fortune ; Saint Agnes, with her lamb; a fountain with doves perched upon the edge; and Saint Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar. The window-shutters were of fir-wood, bound with iron. Meagre indeed we should think the furniture, but it was sumptuous for the date. A tent-bed, hung with green curtains, stood between the two doors. A green velvet settle stretched across the window side of the room. By the fireplace was a leaf-table ; round the walls were wooden brackets, with iron sockets for the reception

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of torches ; and at the foot of the bed, which stood with its side to the wall, was a fine chest of carved ebony. There were only three pieces of movable furniture, two footstools, and a curule chair, also of ebony, with a green velvet cushion. As nobody could sit in the last who had not had a king and queen for his or her parents, it may be supposed that more than one was not likely to be often wanted.

The Countess of Kent, as the elder sister, took the curule chair, while her sister Marjory, when the inspection was finished, sat down on the velvet settle. Margaret drew a footstool to her aunt's side, and took up her position there, resting her head caressingly on Marjory's knee.

"Three whole years, Aunt Marjory, that you not been near us ! What could make you stay have

What could make you stay away

so long >. "

" There were reasons, Magot."

The two Princesses exchanged smiles again, but

there was some amusement in that of the Countess,

while the expression of her sister was rather sad.

Margaret looked from one to the other, as if she would have liked to understand what they

meant

" Don't trouble that little head," said her mother, with a laugh, '^Thy time will come soon enough. Thou art too short to be told state secrets."

"I shall be as tall as you some day, Lady," responded Margaret archly.

"And then," said Marjory, stroking the girl's hair, •thou wilt wish thyself back again, little Magot."

" Nay ! — under your good leave, fair Aunt, never !"

"Ah, we know better, don't we, Madge.?" asked the Countess, laughing. " Well, I will leave you two maidens together. There is the month's wash to be seen to, and if I am not there, that Alditha is as likely to put the linen in the chests without a sprig of rosemary, as she is to look in the mirror

every time she passes it We shall meet at supper. Adieu I "

And the Countess departed, on housekeeping thoughts intent For a few minutes the two girls

■for the aunt was only about twelve years the senior — sat silent, Margaret having drawn her aunt's hand down and rested her cheek upon it They were very fond of one another : and being so near

in age^ they had been brought up so much like sisters, that except in one or two items they treated each other as such, and did not assume the respective authority and reverence usual between such relations at that time. Beyond the employment of the deferential you by Margaret, and the familiar thou by Marjory, they chatted to each other as any other girls might have done. But just then, for a itv4 minutes, neither spoke.

"Well, Magot!" said Marjory, breaking the silence at last, "have we nought to say to each other? Thou art forgetting, I think, that I want a full account of all thes^ three years since I came to see

thee before. They have not been empty of events, I know,"

Margaret's answer was a groan,

"Empty!" she said. "Fair Aunt, I would they had been, rather than full of such events as they were. Father Nicholas saith that the old Romans

or Greeks, I don't know which— used to say the

man was happy who had no history. I am sure we should have been happier, lately, if we had not had any."

"'Don't know which!' What a heedless Magot ! "

"Why, fair Aunt, surely you don't expect people to recollect lessons. Did you ever remember yours ? "

Marjory laughed, "Sufficiently so, I hope, to know the difference between Greeks and Romans. But, however, — for the last three years. Tell me all about them."

"Am I to begin with the Flood, like a professional chronicler?"

"Well, no. I think the Conquest would be soon enough."

"Delicious Aunt Marjory I How many weary centuries you excuse me ! "

" Haw many, Magot ? "

"Oh, please don't! How can I possibly tell? If you really want to know, I will send for Father Nicholas."

Marjory laughed, and kissed the lively face turned up to her.

" Idle Magot ! Well, go on."i

" I don't think I am idle, fair Aunt. But I do detest learning dates. — Well, now, — ^was it in April you left us? I know it was very soon after my Lady of Cornwall was married, but I do not remember exactly what month."

" It was in May," said Marjory, shortly.

"May, was it? Oh, I know! It was the eve of Saint Helen's Day. Well, things went on right enough, till my Lord of Canterbury took it into his

head that my Lord and father had no business to detain Tunbridge Castle, — it all began with that. It was about July, I think."

" I thought Tunbridge Castle belonged to my Lord of Gloucester. What had either to do

with it ? "

"O Aunt Marjory! Have you forgotten that my young Lord of Gloucester is in ward to my Lord and father ? The Lord King gave him first to my Lord the Bishop of Winchester, when his father died; and then, about a year after, he took him away from the Bishop, and gave him to my fair father. Don't you remember him ? — such a pretty boy ! I think you knew all about it at the time,"

"Very likely I did, Magot. One forgets things, sometimes."

And Margaret, looking up into the fair face, saw, and did not understand, the hidden pain behind the smile.

"So my Lord of Canterbury complained of my fair father to the Lord King. (I wonder he could not attend to his own business.) But the Lord King said that as my Lord of Gloucester held in chief of the Crown, all vacant trusts were his, to give as it pleased him. And then — Aunt Marjory, do you like priests?"

" Magot, what a question ! "

« But do you ? "

"All priests are not alike, my dear child. They are like other people — some good, and some bad,"

" But surely all priests ought to be good."

"Art thou always what thou oughtest to be, Magot ? "

Margaret's answer was a sudden spring from the stool and a fervent hug of Marjory.

"Aunt Marjory," she said, when she had sat down again, "I just hate that Bishop of Winchester." 1

" Shocking, Magot ! "

" Oh yes, of course it is extremely wicked. But I do."

"I wish he were here, to set thee a penance for such a naughty speech. However, go on with thy story.*'

"Well, what do you think, fair Aunt, that my

* Peter de Rievaulx, always one of the two chief enemies of Margaret's father.

Lord's Grace of Canterbury^ did? He actually excommunicated all intruders on the lands of his

jurisdiction, and all who should hold communication with them, the King only excepted; and away he went to Rome, to lay the matter before the holy Father. Of course he would tell his tale from his own point of view."

" The Archbishop went to Rome ! ''

"Indeed he did, Aunt Marjory. My fair father was very indignant. ' That the head of the English Church could not stand by himself, but must seek the approbation of a foreign Bishop ! ' That was

what he said, and I think my fair mother agreed with him,"

Perhaps in this nineteenth century we scarcely realise the gallant fight made by the Church of England to retain her independence of Rome. It did not begin at the Reformation, as people are apt to suppose. It was as old as the Church herself, and she was as old as the Apostles. Some of her clergy were perpetually trying to force and to rivet the chains of Rome upon her : but the body of the laity, who are really the Church,* resisted this at-

* Richard Grant, consecrated in 1229.

^ Any reader who is iticlioed to doubt this is requested to consult tempt almost to the death. There was a perpetual struggle, greater or smaller according to circumstances, between the King of England and the Papacy, Pope after Pope endeavoured to fill English sees and benefices with Italian priests: King after King braved his wrath by refusing to confirm his appointments. Apostle, they were ready to allow the Pope to be : sovereign or legislator, never. Doctrine they would accept at his hands; but he should not rule over their secular or ecclesiastical liberties. The quarrel between Henry II. and Becket was entirely on this point. No wonder that Rome canonised the man who thus exalted her. The Kings who stood out most firmly for the liberties of England were Henry II., John, Edward I. and II., and Richard 1 1. This partly explains the reason why history (of which monks were mainly the authors) has so little good to say of any of them, Edward I. only excepted. It is not easy to say why the exception was made, unless it were because he was too firmly rooted in popular admiration, and perhaps a little too munificent to

Acts XV. 4, 22. It is nnquestjonably the teaching of the New Testa* ment. The clergy form part of tbc Church merely as individual Christians.

the monastic Orders, for much evil to be discreetly said of him. Cceur -de - Lion was a Gallio who cared for none of those things: Henry III, played into the hands of the Pope to-day, and of the Anglican Church to-morrow. Edward III. held the balance as nearly even as possible. The struggle revived faintly during the reign of Henry VI., but the Wars of the Roses turned men's minds to home affairs, and Henry VII. was the obedient servant of His Holiness. So the battle went on, till it culminated in the Reformation. Those who have

never entered into this question, and who assume that all Englishmen were " Papists" until 1530, have no idea how gallantly the Church fought for her independent life, and how often she flung from off her the iron grasp of the oppressor. It was not probable that a Princess whose fathers had followed the rule of Columba, and lay buried in Protestant lona, should have any Roman tendencies on this question. Marjory was as warm as any one could have wished her.

"Well, then," Margaret went on, "that horrid Bishop of Winchester "■

'* Oh, fie ! " said her aunt.

* — ~- Came back to England in August, Aunt

Marjory, it is no use, — he is horrid, and I hate him! He hates my fair father. Do you expect me to love him ? "

" Well done, Magot ! " said another voice. " When I want a lawyer to plead my cause, I will send for thee. — Christ save you, fair Sister ! I heard you were here, with this piece of enthusiasm*

Both the girls rose to greet the Earl, Margaret courtesying low as beseemed a daughter.

It was very evident that, so far as outside appearance went, Margaret was " only the child of hef mother.'' Earl Hubert was scarcely so tall as his wife, and he had a bronzed, swarthy complexion, with dark hair. Though short, he was strongly-built and well-proportioned. His eyes were dark, small, but quick and exceedingly bright He had, when needful, a ready, eloquent tongue and a very pleasant smile. Yet eloquent as undoubtedly he could be, he was not usually a man of many words ; and capable as he was of very deep and lasting affection, he was not demonstrative.

The soft, caressing manners of the Princess Margaret were not in her husband's line at all. He was given to calling a spade a spade whenever he had occasion to mentfon the article ; and if she preferred to allude to it as " an agricultural implement for the trituration of the soil," he was disposed to laugh good-humouredly at the epithet, though he dearly

loved the silver voice which used it.

A thoroughly representative man of his time was

Hubert de Burgh, Earl of Kent; and he was one of those persons who leave a deep mark upon their age. He was a purely self-made man. He had no pedigree : indeed, we do not know with absolute certainty who was his father, though modern genealogists have amused themselves by making a pedigree for him, to which there is no real evidence that he had the least claim. Yet of his wives — for he was four times married — the first was an heiress, the second a baron's widow, the third a countess in her own right and a divorced queen, and the last a princess. His public life had begun by his conducting a negotiation to the satisfaction of Coeur-de-Lion, in the first year of his reign, 1189, when in all probability Hubert was little over twenty years of age. From that moment he rose rapidly. Merely to enumerate all the titles he bore would almost take a page. He was by turns a very rich man and a very poor one, according as his royal and capricious master made or revoked his grants.

The religious character of Hubert is not a matter of speculation, but of certainty. It was — ^what his contemporaries considered elevated piety — a most singular mixture of the barest and basest superstition with some very strong plain common sense. The superstition was of the style set forth in the famous Spanish drama entitled " The Devotion of the Cross "