Part 2

A gay pageant passed one day within sight of the noble yew. Men carrying branches of the beech, and damsels with flowers in their hands, wound up the road; and with them came a train of oxen, dragging a large tree, which had been cut from out the forest. The tree was wreathed with flowers; the horns of the oxen too were tastefully adorned, and when they reached the summit of the hill, the tree was set up, round which the light-hearted party danced right merrily. All this was done in honour of king Richard's marriage. He had sought the sister of the Emperor Wenceslaus, fair Anne of Luxemburg; and when, at length, the final arrangements were adjusted, she left the palace of her brother, attended by the Duke of Saxony, and a great number of knights and damsels, with men-at-arms, and a goodly company, all well appointed to do her honour. They journeyed through Brabant to Brussels, where the Duke and Duchess received the young queen with great respect, and caused her attendants to be honourably entertained, for the Duke was her uncle, and he rejoiced much in the prospects of his niece. Anne expected merely to have spent a few pleasant days in the society of the Duke and Duchess, but, when about to leave them, intelligence was brought that twelve large Norman vessels, well equipped, and filled with armed men, were cruising in the sea between Calais and Holland, and that, under the pretence of seizing all who fell into their hands, they were really waiting for the coming of the lady, whom the king of France was desirous of getting into his possession, that he might frustrate the intended alliance between the English and Germans. The young queen was exceedingly alarmed at such unexpected intelligence. She remained in consequence with her uncle and aunt, till the Lords de Roasselaus and de Bousquehoir, having been deputed by the Duke to negotiate with the King of France, obtained passports for the safe conveyance of Anne and her attendants through his dominions, as far as Calais, as also for the remanding of the Normans into port.

The young queen then set forwards, after taking leave of her august relations and the ladies of the court, who witnessed her departure with much regret. The Duke added to her train five hundred spears, and, as she passed through Ghent and Bruges, the citizens received her with the utmost honour. Thus she journeyed on, till being arrived at Gravelines, the earls of Salisbury and Devonshire approached to do her homage, with five hundred spears, and as many archers. They conducted her to Calais, and, having safely confided her to the care of the English barons, who were appointed to that honour by the king, they returned homeward. Great was the joy of the Londoners, when the train, having passed over the sea to Dover, came within sight of the city gates. Ladies of the highest rank were assembled to receive their queen, all in their best attire, and with them came the great authorities both of the court and city. The gates were then thrown open with much solemnity, and Anne of Luxemburg having been conducted with chivalrous magnificence to the Palace of Westminster, the ceremony of her marriage was completed on the twentieth day after Christmas.

Christmas was well kept that year both in town and country; but when the trees burst forth into leaf and beauty, and the contented note of the solitary cuckoo, was heard in the still forest, the country people thought that they would rejoice again, and this occasioned the May-pole to be set up. They did not gather any branches from the yew, for the yew is a funereal tree, used to deck the grave of him who has nought to do with the cheerful scenes of busy life.

With the noble train who entered London came Margaret of Silesia, daughter of the Duke of Theise, and niece to the King of Bohemia, as the confidential friend, and first-cousin of the queen. This lady was received with great distinction, and apartments were assigned her in the palace, not only on account of her youth, but that she might enjoy a frequent intercourse with the friend who was most dear to her. But these halcyon days were not of long continuance. The queen died at Shene in Surry, and so bitterly did the king bewail her loss, that he denounced a malediction on the scene of her last illness, and commanded, in the wildness of his grief, that not one stone should be left upon another of the palace where she died. Margaret felt the death of the queen severely; she loved her cousin with a sister's love, and the circumstance of their having left their native land together, and their being to each other what none else could be in a foreign country, had formed between them a bond of no common interest.

The queen deceased without children; but Margaret having married a gentleman of the ducal family of Norfolk, knight of the garter and standard-bearer of England, their only child and heiress, Alana, became the wife of Sir William Tyndale, who was equally respectable in point of antiquity and alliances. His family possessed the valuable domain and title of Tyndale in Northumberland, so called from the south Tyne, which, rising in the mountains and moors of Cumberland, waters that dale, and having joined the north Tyne near Hexham, falls into the German ocean at Tynmouth. Their baronial residence rose proudly on an eminence which commanded the southern banks of the river. It consisted of a spacious antique quadrangle; the roof and walls being of immense strength and thickness, extended in the form of the letter H; the whole was defended by a fosse, and surmounted with four principal towers, in the position of north and south.

"That castle rose upon the steep, of the green vale of Tyne; While far below, as low they creep, From pool to eddy dark and deep, Where alders bend and willows weep, You hear her streams repine."

The ancestral history of Margaret of Silesia, with that of her distinguished husband, was of no ordinary kind. Her paternal ancestors had filled for ten generations the throne of Poland, and on her mother's side she represented Winceslaus the Good, nearly the last of the ancient kings of Bohemia, as also the imperial houses of Luxemburg and Austria. Among the distinguished crowd of those who figured greatly in by-gone days, Piastus is the one, concerning whom I would briefly speak. His character, seen only through the twilight of remote antiquity, is necessarily involved in great obscurity, but light enough remains to discover the moral grandeur of its proportions, as well as to justify the curiosity of his descendants.

Ancient Polish chronicles relate concerning him, that after the tragical catastrophe of Popiel II., when a dreadful famine added to the calamities of the country, and people fell dead in the streets of Cruswitz, that two angels, in the disguise of pilgrims knocked at the door of a private citizen, named Piastus, and asked for relief. The citizen had only a single cask, which contained some nutritive beverage of the country, remaining in his house, but he would not refuse to help them, and he invited the strangers to partake. Charmed with his benevolence, they promised him the vacant throne, at the same time directing him to open his doors and draw for the relief of the famished population. He did so, and found his cask inexhaustible. The assembled crowds, in their transports, shouted, A miracle! and with one consent elevated their benefactor to the sovereignty of Poland.

From this period the history, both of prince and people, became the subject of authentic narrative. Piastus, like another Numa, retained in his elevation the virtues attributed to him in his private life. The Polish nobles, although accustomed to sanguinary catastrophes, felt their fierceness subside beneath the sway of a monarch who reigned only to make his people happy. He died at an advanced age, beloved, revered, and almost adored by his subjects; and, after the lapse of nearly a thousand years, the name of Piastus is yet repeated with affectionate veneration.

Such is the brief biographical memoranda, which it is possible to rescue from oblivion, concerning the remote ancestry of Margaret of Silesia. She came with great pomp and splendour to the shores of England, and curious has it been to see, while the stream of time flowed on, how some of the noble of the earth, her immediate descendants, were upborn upon its billows; how, in one case, knights and squires represented an elder branch, sober citizens a younger, and how, in a third, the lordly line sunk suddenly beneath the billows.

When the battle of Touton, in the year 1460, made it unsafe for those who adhered to the house of Lancaster to remain in public, the immediate descendant of Margaret, in that branch which is associated with the aged yew, withdrew from his paternal estate and settled in Gloucestershire, where he assumed the name of Hitchen. He married Alicia, daughter and sole heiress of Hunt of Hunt's Court, in Nibley, by whom he acquired that estate, and became the grandfather of William Tyndale, who is justly termed the apostle of the English Reformation.

As the gathering mists of a hot summer evening, when the sun is set, and dew begins to fall, veil the bold and prominent landscape, so the obscurity of time has settled on the Tyndale family. The outlines yet remain: the establishment of Hugh Tyndale in Gloucestershire, during the troubles of York and Lancaster, his marriage with Alicia, and the birth of his three grandsons, John, William, and Thomas, are events well known; but whether Tyndale suffered a long imprisonment in the castle of Vilvorde, near Louvain in Flanders, during the lifetime of his parents; whether days of sorrow and nights of weariness befell them on his account; or whether they were first laid to rest in Nibley churchyard, near which their mansion stood, is entirely unknown. Be this as it may, his brother Thomas had much to suffer on his account. He was abjured for receiving letters, and for remitting him five marks during his residence in Flanders.

Time went on, and religious animosities gradually subsided; a descendant of Hugh Tyndale purchased Melksham Court in Stinchcombe, on the verge of all that remained of the once great forest. It was a beautiful spot, embosomed in trees, and moated according to the olden fashion, with its terrace-walks and parterres. There his descendants continued to reside, and their days seem to have passed tranquilly, till the stormy reign of Charles I.

The valleys of Gloucestershire lying remote from the metropolis, and being in many respects almost inaccessible, from the steepness of the hills, having also no great public road near at hand, nor the sea within reach, had been often spared from much suffering in very disastrous times; it was otherwise at the present day. The forest, one of their great bulwarks, had been curtailed during successive generations, and much of the moor country having been brought into cultivation, towns and villages were built, and roads were made from place to place. This opened a communication with the thickly peopled parts of Gloucestershire, with such counties also as lay contiguous: the quiet of the valleys was therefore broken up, and the cities of Gloucester and of Worcester, having taken active parts in the stirring incidents of the time, bands of armed men overspread the country. Thomas Tyndale, the fifth in descent from the purchaser of Melksham Court, was then residing on his patrimonial estate: he married a lady on her mother's side, of the knightly family of Poyntz of Iron Acton; but whether--for the mists of time have settled again on the domestic incidents of the family--whether his lady was deceased, or whether he had sent her with their young son and four daughters to a place of greater security, cannot be ascertained. Certain it is, that seeing a band of armed men advancing to the house, he fled for shelter into the forest which skirted his domain. The forest could afford but little aid in his distress. It was otherwise when its crowding trees extended further than the eye could reach, now sinking into the deep, deep glens, whose circling banks, if such they might be termed, rose far above its topmost boughs; now ascending those high banks, and spreading over the vale country, sinking and rising with the undulations of hill and dale, and, when the wind howled among the branches, appearing like the tossing waves of a restless sea. This had been; but cultivation trenched upon the good green wood; spaces were even cleared, and its tall trees, for all the underwood was gone, afforded a ready access to whoever liked to invade its beautiful recesses. One hope for safety remained to the fugitive, and one only. The yew-tree stood in all its beauty and luxuriance, near to the summit of Stinchcombe wood, for such the old forest was now called, and thither he fled for shelter. He was seen to leave the house by a band of soldiers, and they hastened in pursuit of him. They thought that he would make for the nearest glen, or else that he would seek to hide himself in some sheltered nook among the trees. Heaven, in its mercy, prevented them from searching the old tree, whose intermingling branches formed a close and impervious shelter. Yet they passed, and repassed, beneath the shade, and their words were hard to bear. They vowed to have no pity on him, nor on his children, nor on anything that he possessed; and they said, "that if they could discover him in his retreat, they would hew him small as herbs for a porridge-pot." Being foiled in their search, they wreacked their vengeance on his mansion, and during his dolorous sojourn of three days and nights in the tree, he saw the burning of his once happy home, and heard at intervals the voices of his pursuers, as they sought for him again, among the glens, and through the secret passes of the wood. We know not how, nor when the family were reunited; nor can I speak concerning the joys and thankfulness with which they met, for the mists of time rest on this also.

The yew-tree is still standing; around it are the remains of the old forest, and beside it the wild common, with its thyme and flowers among the grass. All else has changed since the days when the noble ancestor of him who fled for refuge to the ample branches of the yew, first landed on the English coast. Neither is the surrounding country such as it was, in the days of Richard. The castles of Beverstone, of Brimsfield, and Dursley, whose turrets were seen in ancient times from the summits of the hill, are fallen to decay, and instead of these, modern dwellings, with parks and gardens, farms and cottages, overspread the country. The cheerful farm-house, with its lofty rookery, and wide arable, or ploughed fields, with low fences or gray stone walls, are prominent features in the southern portion of the landscape; as also well-timbered villages, occasional heaths, and tufted woods, or rather groves. At the end of summer, the strong colours of the yellow wheat and glaring poppy are finely contrasted with the dark hue of the woods; that hue which becomes deeper and more sombre, till the night-dews have done their work, and the autumnal winds begin to blow, and the dark green leaves are suddenly invested with a splendid variety of tints, from bright yellow to the deepest orpiment.

On the verge of the old forest extend rural villages and fertile meadows, high-aspiring elms, shallow brooks, and wooden bridges, crowding cottages and green lanes, with here and there a church-spire, or gray tower rising among the trees. Gentle swells and hollows, where sheep pasture on the green sward, are seen in another portion of the landscape, with apple-orchards and small enclosures; but along the banks of the Severn the country assumes a different aspect. Its general characteristics are breaks of lawn and thicket, with groves and stunted pollards, all footed and entangled with briars and creeping plants.

A dilapidated court-house, overrun with ivy, and near it an aged church, may be seen by him who knows their locality, from the summit of Stinchcombe hill. The church is the waymark, for the walls of the old court are low, and it is only when the wind favours the sight of them, by causing the branches of near trees to bend beneath its sway, that even the church-tower can be discerned among the young green foliage of the spring. The gardens of the once stately mansion are gone to decay, or else, being overgrown with grass, are fed upon by cattle; the windows were broken by the fierceness of the flames when it was set on fire; and though strong walls, still standing, tell of what has been, not a trace remains of the great oriel window, and the roof has long been gone. He who wishes to trace the former extent of the building may just discover the foundations in some parts; but in others, not even a few scattered stones, sunk deep in the untrodden grass, would reveal that a mansion had stood there.

Yet Nibley Court once occupied that spot; there a happy family dwelt, and busy scenes went on--the sports of childhood, and the daily incidents of domestic life. There my ancestors resided. But all are gone, and scarcely-discovered ruins, which, as regard all grandeur of appearance, might have belonged to a barn or an out-house, alone remain.

The yew-tree still lives, but that also betokens the lapse of time. Its once ample boughs are few; they yield no shelter now; the blue sky may be seen through them; the stem also teaches that ages have passed away, since it bore up a noble canopy of mingled boughs. A rabbit from the warren on the common might run up the scarred trunk, but it could not find a hiding-place among the scattered branches.

Bradgate Palace.

"This was thy home then, gentle Jane, This thy green solitude;--and here At evening, from thy gleaming pane, Thine eye oft watch'd the dappled deer, While the soft sun was in its wane, Browsing beneath the brooklet clear; The brook runs still, the sun sets now, The trees wave still; but where art thou?"

A rocky bank, with scattered sheep, are objects on which the mind loves to rest. Such is the back-ground of Bradgate ruin, the birth-place of the beautiful Jane Grey, the illustrious and ill-fated scion of the house of Suffolk, concerning whom it was related by one who had seen and loved her, that even in her eighteenth year she had the innocence of childhood, the beauty of youth, the solidity of middle, and the gravity of old age; the life of a saint, and yet the death of a malefactor. On that rocky bank she had often gazed, for though man passes from his inheritance, and noble dwellings crumble to the dust, nature changes not. Rude eminences extend further back, on which the wild rose and sweet-briar have long fixed themselves, with bramble-bushes, ferns, and fox-glove; they are skirted by low and romantic dingles, where sheep pasture, and butterflies sport from one flower to another. He who approaches the old ruin, from the little village of Cropston, can hardly picture to himself that time has done its work in laying low the ancient palace of the Greys. On the left, stands that noble group of chesnut-trees, under the shade of which little Jane used to play; on the right extends a slate coppice, intermingled with moss and flowers, in beautiful contrast with the deep shade of the old chesnuts, the roots of which are laved by the clear trout-stream, on which stood a corn-mill in Leland's days;--"that faire and plentiful springe of water, brought by master Brok, as a man would judge, agayne the hille, thorough the lodge, and thereby it dryveth the mylee." The mill came into decay when the mansion was deserted, and no one went thither for the grinding of his corn; some of the large stones fell into the stream, and interrupted for a short space the rapid flowing of the water, and among them grow the water-dock and bulrush, with large river-weeds and trailing plants. Again it hurries on, dancing from amid the roots and broken masses of huge stones, clear and sparkling, and fringed with ferns and flowers, the delight of Jane, when she used to watch beside it with Elmer, that "deare friend and schoolmaster, who taught her so gently and yet so pleasantly, that she thought the time as nothing, while she was with him." This streamlet laves in its course the once hospitable mansion of the Greys, and passes from thence into the fertile meadows of Smithland. Beautiful too is the vale of Newtown, lonely yet romantic, the favourite resort of all who delight in the sylvan solitudes of nature--where, as legends tell, Jane used to walk--with its hill and tower in the distance, the nearest neighbours of Bradgate Palace, now, like that, all roofless and deserted. What a contrast, in its loneliness, to the busy tide of care, ever rolling on, in the ancestral halls, the towns and villages, that vary the mighty landscape, which extends before the elevated solitude, with its aged ruin! That ruin was dwelt in once, not by the owl and bat, its sole tenants now, but by living men and women, who held pleasant intercourse with the inhabitants of Bradgate Palace; with dwellers too, in places, the sites of which, grass has long grown over, or which the antiquary can hardly trace. Woods and fields and streamlets are seen from the same high hill; wide commons and quiet valleys, with dells and dingles; and above them extends the glorious dome of heaven, where light summer-clouds are speeding, and the bright sun looks down on the lovely scene beneath.