Part 14
He did therewith, if chroniclers are to be credited, more than we might reasonably expect from Lord John Russell, were that statesman to be in command of a Channel squadron. Having swept the sea, he rather prematurely, if dates are to be respected, nearly annihilated Mohammedanism--and he was as invincible and victorious against every kind of Pagan. It was in the East that he overthrew in single combat, the giants Colbron and his brother Mongadora. He was resting after this contest, and leaning like the well-breathed Hotspur, upon his sword, at the entrance to his tent, when the Turkish governor Esdalante, approaching him, politely begged that he might take his head, as he had promised the same to an Osmanlee lady, who was in a condition of health which might be imperilled by refusal. Master Guy as politely bade him take it if he could, and therewith, they went at it “like French falconers,” and Guy took off the head of his opponent instead of losing his own. This little matter being settled, Guy challenged the infidel Soldan himself, putting Christianity against Islamism, on the issue, and thus professing to decide questions of faith as Galerius did when he left Olympus and Calvary to depend upon a vote of the Roman senate. Master Guy, being thrice armed by the justness of his quarrel, subdued the infidel Soldan, but the latter, to show, as we are told, his insuperable hatred for Christianity, took handfuls of his own blood, and cast it in the face of his conqueror--and no doubt here, the victor had in his mind the true story of Julian insulting “the Galilæan.” We thus see how history is made to contribute to legend.
And now the appetite of the errant lover grew by what it fed upon. He mixed himself up in every quarrel, and could not see a lion and a dragon quietly settling their disputes in a wood, by dint of claws, without striking in for the lion, slaying his foe, and receiving with complacency the acknowledgments of the nobler beast.
He achieved something more useful when he met Lord Terry in a wood, looking for his wife who had been carried off by a score of ravishers. While the noble lord sat down on a mossy bank, like a gentleman in a melodrama, Guy rescued his wife in his presence, and slew all the ravishers, “in funeral order,” the youngest first. He subsequently stood godfather to his friend Terry’s child, and as I am fond of historical parallels, I may notice that Sir Walter Scott performed the same office for a Terry, who if he was not a lord, often represented them, to say nothing of monarchs and other characters.
Master Guy’s return to England was a little retarded by another characteristic adventure. As he was passing through Louvain, he found Duke Otto besieging his father in his own castle--“governor” of the castle and the Duke. Now nothing shocked Master Guy so much as filial ingratitude, and despite all that Otto could urge about niggardly allowance, losses at play, debts of honor, and the parsimony of the “governor,” our champion made common cause with the “indignant parent,” and not only mortally wounded Otto, but, before the latter died, Guy brought him to a “sense of his situation,” and Otto died in a happy frame of mind, leaving all his debts to his father. The legacy was by way of a “souvenir,” and certainly the governor never forgot it. As for Guy, he killed the famous boar of Louvain, before he departed for England, and as he drew his sword from the animal’s flank, he remarked, there lies a greater boar, and not a less beast than Otto himself. However, he took the head and hams with him, for Phillis was fond of both; and as she was wont to say, if there was anything that could seduce her, it was brawn!
When Master Guy stepped ashore at Harwich, where that amphibious town now lies soaking, deputations from all quarters were awaiting him, to ask his succor against some terrible dragon in the north that was laying waste all the land, and laying hold of all the waists which the men there wished to enclose. King Athelstan was then at York hoping to terrify the indomitable beast by power of an army, which in combat with the noxious creature made as long a tail, in retreat, as the dragon itself.
Now whatever this nuisance was which so terribly plagued the good folks in the North, whether a dragon with a tongue thirty feet long, or anything else equally hard to imagine, it is matter of fact that our Master Guy assuredly got the better of it. On his return he met an ovation in York; Athelstan entertained him at a banquet, covered him with honor, endowed him with a good round sum, and _thus_ all the newborn male children in the county became Guys. At least two thirds of them received the popular name, and for many centuries it remained in favor, until disgrace was brought upon it by the York proctor’s son, whose effigy still glides through our streets on each recurring 5th of November.
I will not pause on this matter. I will only add that the Earl of Warwick, finding Guy a man whom the King delighted to honor, accepted him for a son-in-law; and then, ever wise, and civil, and proper, he discreetly died. The King made Guy Earl of Warwick, in his place, and our hero being now a married man, he of course ceased to be _Master_ Guy.
And here I might end my legend, but that it has a moral in it Guy did a foolish but a common thing, he launched out into extravagant expenses, and, suddenly, he found himself sick, sad, and insolvent. Whether, therewith, his wife was soured, creditors troublesome, and bailiffs presuming, it is hard to say. One thing, however, is certain, that to save himself from all three, Earl Guy did what nobles often do now, in the same predicament, “went abroad.” Guy, however, travelled in primitive style. He went on foot, and made his inn o’nights in church-yards, where he colloquized with the skulls after the fashion of Hamlet with the skull of “poor Yorick.” He had given out that he was going to Jerusalem, but hearing that the Danes were besieging Athelstan at Winchester, he went thither, and, in modest disguise, routed them with his own unaided hand. Among his opponents, he met with the giant Colbron whom he had previously slain in Orient lands, and the two fought their battles o’er again, and with such exactly similar results as to remind one of the peculiar philosophy of Mr. Boatswain Cheeks.
This appearance of Colbron in two places is a fine illustration of the “myth,” and I mention it expressly for the benefit of the next edition of the Right Reverend Doctor Whateley’s “Historical Fallacies.” But to resume.
Guy, imparting a confidential statement of his identity and intentions to the King, left him, to take up his abode in a cave, in a cliff, near his residence; and at the gates of his own castle he received, in the guise of a mendicant, alms of money and bread, from the hands of his wife. I strongly suspect that the foundation of this section of our legend rests upon the probable fact that Phillis was of that quality which is said to belong to gray mares; and that she led Guy a life which made him a miserable Guy indeed; and that the poor henpecked man took to bad company abroad, and met with small allowance of everything but reproach at home And _so_ he “died.”
A dramatic author of Charles I.’s reign, has, however, resuscitated him in “A Tragical History of Guy, Earl of Warwick,” enacted several times in presence of that monarch, and professedly written by a certain “B. J.,” whom I do not at all suspect of being Ben Jonson. The low comedy portion of this tragic drama is of the filthiest sort, dealing in phrases and figures which I can hardly conceive would now be tolerated in the lowest den of St. Giles’s, certainly not out of it. If Charles heard this given more than once, as the titlepage intimates, “more shame for him.” If his Queen was present, she haply may not have understood the _verba ad summam caveam spectantia_, and if a daughter could have been at the royal entertainment, why then the very idea revolts one, and pity is almost lost in indignation. That the author himself thought well of the piece, which he printed in 1661, is proved by the defiant epigraph which says:--
“Carpere vel noli nostra vel ede tua.”
I must not devote much space to a retrospective review of this piece, particularly as the action begins after Guy has ceased to be “Master,” and when, on his announcement of going to Jerusalem (perhaps to the Jews to do a little business in bills), Phillis makes some matronly remarks in a prospective sense, and a liberty of illustration which would horrify a monthly nurse.
However, Guy goes forth and meets with a giant so huge, that his squire Sparrow says it required four-and-twenty men to throw mustard in his mouth when he dined. From such giants, Heaven protects the errant Guy, and with a troop of fairies, wafts him to Jerusalem. Here he finds Shamurath of Babylon assaulting the city, but Guy heaps miracle on miracle of valor, and produces such astounding results that Shamurath, who is a spectator of the deeds and the doer; inquires, with a suspicion of Connaught in the accent of the inquiry, “What divil or man is this?”
The infidel is more astonished than ever when Guy, after defeating him, takes him into controversy, and laying hold of him as Dr. Gumming does of Romanism, so buffets his belief that, the soldier, fairly out of breath and argument, gives in, and declares himself a Christian, on conviction.
During one-and-twenty years, Guy has a restless life through the five acts of this edifying tragedy, and when he is seen again in England, overcoming the Danes, he intimates to Athelstan that he has six years more to pass in disguise, ere a vow, of which we have before heard nothing, will be fulfilled. Athelstan receives all that is said, in confidence; and promises affably, “upon my word,” not to betray the secret. Guy is glad to hear that Phillis is “pretty well;” and then he takes up his residence as I have before told, according to the legend. He and an Angel occasionally have a little abstruse disquisition; but the most telling scene is doubtless where the bread is distributed to the beggars, by Phillis. Guy is here disguised as a palmer, and Phillis inquires if he knew the great Earl, to which Guy answers, with a wink of the eye, that he and the Earl had often drank at the same crystal spring. But Phillis is too dull, or too melancholy to trace her way through so sorry a joke.
And now, just as the hour of completion of the vowed time of his disguise, Guy takes to dying, and in that state he is found by Rainhorn, the son who knows him not. He sends a token by the young fellow to Phillis, who begins to suspect that the palmer who used to be so particular in asking for “brown bread” at her gate, must be the “Master Guy” of the days of sunny youth, short kirtles, and long love-making. Mother and son haste to the spot, but the vital spark has fled. Phillis exclaims, with much composed thought, not unnatural in a woman whose husband has been seven-and-twenty years away from home, and whose memory is good: “If it be he, he has a mould-wart underneath his ear” to which the son as composedly remarks, “View him, good mother, satisfy your mind.” Thereupon the proper identification of the “party” is established; and the widow is preparing to administer, without will annexed, when Rainhorn bids her banish sorrow, as the King is coming. The son evidently thinks the honor of a living king should drown sorrow for a deceased parent; just as a Roman family that can boast of a Pope in it, does not put on mourning even when that Pope dies; the _having had him_, being considered a joy that no grief should diminish.
Athelstan is evidently a King of Cockayne, for he affably expresses surprise at the old traveller’s death, seeing, says his Majesty, that “I had appointed _for_ to meet Sir Guy” to which the son, who has now succeeded to the estate, replies, in the spirit of an heir who has been waiting long for an inheritance:--“that the death has happened, and can not now be helped.”
But the most remarkable matter in this tragedy is that uttered by Time, who plays prologue, epilogue, and interlude between the acts. Whatever Charles may have thought of the piece, he was doubtless well-pleased with Time, who addresses the audience in verse, giving a political turn to the lesson on the stage. I dare say the following lines were loudly applauded, if not by the king, by the gallants, courtiers, and cavaliers generally:--
“In Holy Land abroad Guy’s spirits roam, And not in deans and chapters’ lands at home. His sacred fury menaceth that nation, Which held Judea under sequestration. _He_ doth not strike at surplices and tippets, To bring an olio in of sects and sippets; But deals his warlike and death-doing blows Against his Saviour’s and his sov’reign’s foes.”
How the Royalist throats must have roared applause, and warrantably too, at these genial lines; and how must the churchmen in the pit have stamped with delight when Time subsequently assured them that Guy took all his Babylonian prisoners to Jerusalem, and had them probably christened by episcopally-ordained ministers! If the house did not ring with the cheers of the Church-and-King audience there, why they were unworthy of the instruction filtered through legend and tragedy.
Such is the story of “Master Guy;” a story whose incidents have doubtless meaning in them, but which were never turned to more practical purpose than when they were employed to support a tottering altar and a fallen throne. Reader, let us drink to the immortal memory of MASTER GUY; and having seen what sort of man he was whom the king delighted to honor, let us see what honors were instituted by kings for other deserving men.
GARTERIANA.
“Honor! Your own worth before Hath been sufficient preparation.”--_The Maid’s Revenge._
A brief sketch of the history of the foundation of the Order of the Garter will be found in another page. Confining myself here to anecdotical detail, I will commence by observing, that in former times, no Knight could be absent from two consecutive feasts of the order, without being fined in a jewel, which he was to offer at St. George’s altar. The fine was to be doubled every year, until he had made atonement. Further, every knight was bound to wear the Garter in public, wherever he might be, on pain of a mulct of half a mark. Equally obligatory was it on the knight, in whatever part of the world he was residing, or however he was engaged, to wear the sanguine mantle of the order from the eve of St. George till vesper-time on the morrow of the festival. Some of the chevaliers who were in distant lands must have caused as much surprise by their costume, as a Blue-coat boy does, wandering in his strangely-colored garb, in the streets of Paris. I need not allude to the absurd consequence which would attend the enforcing of this arrangement in our own days. Hunting is generally over before the eve of St. George’s day, and therefore a robed Knight of the Garter could never be seen taking a double fence, ditch and rail, at the tail of the “Melton Mowbray.” But even the sight of half a dozen of them riding down Parliament street at the period in question, would hardly be a stranger spectacle. A slight money offering of a penny exempted any rather loose-principled knight from attending divine service at St. George’s Chapel when he was in or near Windsor. When a knight died, all his surviving comrades were put to the expense of causing a certain number of masses to be said for his soul. The sovereign-lord of the order had one thousand masses chanted in furtherance of his rescue from purgatory. There was a graduated scale through the various ranks till the knight-bachelor was come to. For him, only one hundred masses were put up. This proves either that the knight’s soul was not so difficult of deliverance from what Prince Gorschakoff would call the “feu d’enfer,” or that the King’s was so heavily pressed to the lowest depths of purgatory by its crimes, that it required a decupled effort before it could be rescued.
“Companionship,” it may be observed, profited a knight in some degree if, being knave as well as knight, he fell under the usual sentence of being “drawn, hanged, and beheaded.” In such case, a Knight of the Garter only suffered decapitation, as Sir Simon Burley in 1388. The amount of favor shown to the offending knight did not admit of his being conscious of much gratitude to him at whose hands it was received. It may be mentioned, that it did not always follow that a nobleman elected to be knight willingly accepted the proffered Garter. The first who refused it, after due election, in 1424, was the Duke of Burgundy. He declined it with as much scorn as Uhland did the star of merit offered to the poet by the present King of Bavaria.
In treating of stage knights, I shall be found to have placed at their head Sir John Falstaff. The original of that character according to some namely, Sir John Fastolf, claims some notice here, as a Knight of the Garter who was no more the coward which he was said to be, than Falstaff is the bloated buffoon which some commentators take him for. Sir John Fastolf was elected Knight of the Garter in 1426. Monstrelet says he was removed from the order for running away, without striking a blow, at the battle of Patay. Shakespeare’s popular Sir John has nothing in common with this other Sir John, but we have Falstolf himself in Henry VI. act iv. sc. 1, with Talbot, alluding to his vow, that
“When I did meet thee next, To tear the Garter from thy craven’s leg, The which I have done, because unworthily Thou wast installed in that high degree.”
This sort of suspension or personal deprivation was never allowed by the rules of the order, which enjoined the forms for degrading a knight who was proved to have acted cowardly. The battle of Patay was fought in 1429; and as there is abundant testimony of Sir John having been in possession of the Garter and all its honors long after that period; and, further, that his tomb in Pulham Mary, Norfolk, represented him in gilt armor, with his crest and two escutcheons, with the cross of St. George within the order, we may fairly conclude that if the charge was ever made, of which there is no trace, it assuredly never was proven.
If there were some individuals who refused to accept the honor at all, there were others who were afraid to do so without curious inquiry. Thus, in the reign of Henry VI. we hear of the embassador from Frederick III. Emperor of Germany (one Sir Hertook von Clux), stating that his master wishes to know “what it would stand him in, if he were to be admitted into the honorable order!” Cautious Austria!
There are examples both of courtesy and sarcasm among the Knights of the Garter. I may cite, for instance, the case of the Duke of York, in the reign of Henry VI. A. D. 1453. The King was too ill to preside at the Chapter; the Duke of Buckingham was his representative; and the Duke of York, so little scrupulous in most matters, excused himself from attending on this occasion, because, as he said, “the sovereign having for some time been angry with him, he durst not attend, lest he should incur his further displeasure, and thereby aggravate the illness under which the King was suffering.” When the same Duke came into power, he gave the Garter to the most useful men of the York party, beheading a few Lancastrian knights in order to make way for them. At the Chapter held for the purpose of electing the York aspirants, honest John de Foix, Earl of Kendal, declined to vote at all. He alleged that he was unable to discern whether the candidates were “without reproach” or not, and he left the decision to clearsighted people. The Earl was a Lancastrian, and he thus evaded the disagreeable act of voting for personal and political enemies.
But whatever the intensity of dislike one knight may have had against another, there were occasions on which they went, hand in hand, during the celebration of mass, to kiss that esteemable relic, the heart of St. George. This relic had been brought to England by the Emperor Sigismund. Anstis remarks, after alluding to the obstinacy of those who will not believe all that St. Ambrose says touching the facts of St. George, his slaying of the dragon, and his rescue of a royal virgin, that “whosoever is so refractory as obstinately to condemn every part of this story, is not to be bore with.” He then adds: “this true martyr and excellent and valued soldier of Christ, after many unspeakable torments inflicted on him by an impious tyrant, when he had bent his head, and was just ready to give up the ghost, earnestly entreated Almighty God, that whoever, in remembrance of him, and his name, should devoutly ask anything, might be heard, a voice instantly came from Heaven, signifying that that was granted which he had requested.... While living, by prayer he obtained that whoever should fly to him for his intercession, should not pray nor cry out in vain. He ordered the trunk of his body, which had origin from among infidels, to be sent to them, that they whom he had not been able to serve, when living, might receive benefit from him, when dead; that those infidels who by any misfortune had lost their senses, by coming to him or his chapel, might be restored to soundness of mind and judgment. His head and other members were to be carried, some one way and some another. But his heart, the emblem of lively love, was bequeathed wholly to Christians, for whom he had the most fervent affection. Not to all them in general, though Christians, but to Englishmen alone; and not to every part of England, but only to his own Windsor, which on this account must have been more pleasing to the sovereigns and all other the knights of this most illustrious order. Thus his heart, together with a large portion of his skull, is there kept with due honor and veneration. Sigismund, Emperor of Alemain, always august, being chosen in this honorable order, presented this heart to the invincible Henry V., who gave orders to have it preserved in that convenient place, where he had already instituted for himself solemn exequies for ever, that the regard he had for all others might be past dispute.” This is very far, indeed, from being logical, but the fact remains that during the reign of Henry VI., the heart seems to have been regarded with more than usual reverence by the knights of the two factions which were rending England. Each hoped to win St. George for a confederate.
The chapters were not invariably held at Windsor, nor in such solemn localities as a chapel. In 1445, Henry VI., held a chapter at the Lion Inn in Brentford. In this hostelrie the King created Sir Thomas Hastings and Sir Alonzo d’Almade, Knights of the Garter. To the latter, who was also made Earl of Avranches, in the best room of a Brentford inn, the monarch also presented a gold cup. The whole party seems to have made a night of it in the pleasant locality, and the new chevaliers were installed the next morning--after which, probably, mulled sack went round in the golden cup.