CHAPTER XXIII.

THE TRIAL.

_Duke._ What, is Antonio here? _Ant._ Ready, so please your grace. _Duke._ I am sorry for thee. Thou art come to answer A strong adversary, an inhuman wretch.

MERCHANT OF VENICE.

There is nothing in all the reign of that wise, moderate, and able prince, as viewed according to the circumstances of his position and the intelligence of his era, the Second Henry of England, so remarkable, or in his character so praiseworthy, as his efforts to establish a perfect system both of judiciary power and of justice throughout England. In these efforts he more than mediately succeeded; and, although some corruptions continued to exist, and some instances of malfeasance to occur, owing in some degree to the king's own avaricious temperament and willingness to commute punishments, and perhaps, at times, even prosecutions, for pecuniary fines, justice was not for many centuries more equitably administered, certainly not four hundred years afterward, in the reign of the eighth monarch of the same Christian name, than in the latter portion of the twelfth century.

At this period, that justly celebrated lawyer, Ranulf de Glanville, was High Justiciary of England, besides holding the especial duty of administering justice, at the head of five others, in the circuit courts of all the counties north of the Trent; and he has left it on record "that there was not now in the King's Court one judge, who dared swerve from the path of justice, or to pronounce an opinion inconsistent with truth."

During the six weeks, which intervened between the liberation of Kenric from the arrest of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and the day appointed for the holding of the Lancaster assizes, there was great tribulation in the castle of Hawkshead; and it was known that Sir Yvo de Taillebois was in constant correspondence with the High Justiciary; flying posts were coming and going, night and day, booted and spurred, through rain or shine, from York, the present abode of Sir Ranulf, to the shores of Windermere.

The old chaplain was buried up to the eyes in old parchments and genealogies; and, to complete the mystery, Clarencieux, king-at-arms, came down to the castle, accompanied by a pursuivant, loaded with documents from the college of heralds, a fortnight before the decisive day, and tarried at the castle until the time came, no one knowing especially, save Sir Yvo, his daughter, Aradas de Ratcliffe, and the persons employed in the research, what was the matter at issue.

Necessary, however, as it was deemed, at that time, to hold the proceedings and their cause in perfect secrecy, no such reason exists now; and it may be stated that, the object being no other than to bring Sir Foulke d'Oilly to justice for the murder of Sir Philip de Morville, it was necessary to be prepared at every point.

Now, according to the criminal law of that day, no prosecutor could put in his charge for murder, until he should have proved himself to be of the blood of the deceased. And this it was now the object of Sir Yvo to do, there having always been a traditionary belief in a remote kindred between the two families, though the exact point and period were forgotten.

At length, in the middle of the month of October, a proclamation was issued, in the name of the King, offering a free pardon for all other offenses, with the exception of high treason and misprision of treason, and five hundred marks reward to any freeman, or freedom to any serf, who, not being a principal in the deed, should appear before the court of assize at Lancaster, on the first day of December next ensuing, and give such evidence as should result in the conviction of the murderer or murderers of the late Sir Philip de Morville, of Waltheofstow, in the county of York.

At the same time, orders were issued to Kenric, and all his associate foresters and keepers, to bring in Eadwulf, under assurance of pardon, if he might be found in any quarter; and rewards were offered to stimulate the men to exertion. But in vain. The foresters pushed their way into the deepest and wildest recesses of the Cumbrian wilderness, at the risk of some smart conflicts with the outlaws of that dark and desolate region, who fancied that they were trespassing on their own savage haunts, with no good or amicable intent; but of Eadwulf they found no traces.

Kenric persisted, alone, after all the rest had resigned the enterprise; and, relying on his Saxon origin and late servile condition, mingled with the outlaws, told his tale, showed the proclamation, and succeeded in interesting his auditors in his own behalf and that of his brother; but he, no more than the others, could find any traces of the fugitive, and he began almost to consider it certain that the unhappy Eadwulf had perished among the hills, of the inclemency of the weather. He too, at last, returned home, despairing of ever seeing the unhappy outlaw more.

In the mean time, an earnest and interesting contest was going on in the castle, between Guendolen and Aradas on the one hand, and Sir Yvo de Taillebois on the other. For it had been discovered by the heralds, that there did exist proofs of blood-connection between the two families, sufficient to justify Sir Yvo in putting in a charge of his kinsman's murder against Sir Foulke d'Oilly, on the grounds of common rumor and hearsay, if Eadwulf should not be found; and, if he should, then on his testimony.

That d'Oilly would forthwith claim trial by wager of battle, none might doubt, who knew the character and antecedents of that desperately bad but dauntless man.

Now, it was the suit of Guendolen and Aradas, that Sir Yvo should appoint his young esquire his champion to do battle for the judgment of God--for they were irrevocably convinced--what, between their real faith in the justice of this cause, and the zealous trust, of those who love, in the superiority of the beloved, and the generous confidence of youth in its own glowing and impulsive valor--that Aradas would surely beat the traitor down, and win the spurs of gold, to which he so passionately aspired. But the clear-headed veteran regarded matters with a cooler and perhaps a wiser eye. He knew Sir Foulke d'Oilly for a trained, experienced, and all-practiced soldier; not only brave at all times, and brave among the bravest--but a champion, such as there were few, and to be beaten only by a champion. He knew him also desperate, and fighting his last stake. He foresaw that, even for himself, the felon knight, unless the sense of guilt should paralyze his heart, or the visible judgment of God be interposed in the heat of battle--a thing in those days scarcely to be looked for--would prove no easy bargain in the lists; and, how highly soever he might estimate his young esquire's courage and prowess, he yet positively refused to allow him to assume the place of appellant in the lists; and denied utterly that such a conflict, being the most solemn and awful of appeals to the Almighty on his judgment-seat, was any proper occasion for the striving after spurs of gold, or aiming at the honors of knighthood.

So the lovers were obliged to decline into hopes of some indefinite future chance; and did decline into despondent and listless apathy, until, two days only before that appointed for the departure of the company into Lancashire, fortune or fate, which you will, thought fit to take the whole matter into its own hands, and to decide the much-vexed question of the championship by the misstep of a stumbling palfrey.

After having ridden all day long on a stout, sure-footed cob, which he had backed for ten years, without knowing him to make a solitary blunder, marking trees for felling, and laying out new plantations with his foresters, Sir Yvo was wending his way toward the castle gates, across the great home-park, when, a small blind ditch crossing his path, he put the pony at it in a canter.

Startled by some deer, which rose up suddenly out of the long fern, growing thick among the oak-trees, the pony shyed, set his forefeet in the middle of the drain, and came down on his head, throwing his heavy rider heavily on the hard frozen ground.

A dislocated shoulder was the consequence; and, though it was speedily reduced, and no ill consequences followed, the surgeons declared that it was impossible that the knight should support his armor, or wield a sword, within two months; and thus, perforce, Guendolen had her way; and it was decided that Aradas should be admitted to the perilous distinction of maintaining the charge, in the wager of battle.

Strange times! when to be permitted to engage in a conflict, in which there was no alternative but victory, or infamy and death, was esteemed a favor, and was sought for, as a boon, not by strong men and soldiers only, but by delicate and gentle girls, in behalf of their betrothed lovers, as a mode of winning _los_ on earth, and glory everlasting in the heavens.

Yet so it was; and when it was told to Guendolen, that her lover was nominated to that dreadful enterprise, a blush, indeed, mantled to her cheek, and a thrill ran through all her quivering frame, and an unbidden tear trembled in her beautiful clear eye; but the blush, and the thrill, and the tear, were of pride and excitement, not of fear or compassion; and the lady never slept sounder or more sweetly than on that eventful night, when she learned that, beyond a peradventure, her true love would be sleeping, within ten little days, under a bloody and dishonorable sod, or living, the winner of those golden-spurs and of her own peerless beauties.

There was, however, a strange mixture of simple and fervent faith in those days, with an infinitely larger amount of coarse and open wickedness, violence, and vice, than, perhaps, ever prevailed in any other age. And while the moral restraint on men's conduct and actions, arising from a sense of future responsibility and retribution, was vastly inferior to what now exists, owing to the open sale of indulgences, absolutions, and dispensations, and the other abominable corruptions of the Romish church, the belief in temporal judgments, and the present interference of divine justice in the affairs of men, was almost universal.

Infidelity in those days was a madness utterly unknown; and an atheist, materialist, or any phase of what we now call a free-thinker, would have been regarded with greater wonder than the strangest physical monster. It is not too much to say, that there were not in that day twenty men in England, who did not believe in the real efficacy of the ordeals, whether by water, fire, or battle, in discovering the truth, or one in a thousand who would not be half-defeated, before entering the lists, by the belief that God was fighting against him, or strengthened unto victory by the confidence that his cause was just.

One of these one men in a thousand it was, however, about to be the fortune of Aradas de Ratcliffe to encounter, in the person of Sir Foulke d'Oilly; but this he neither knew, nor would have thought of twice, had he known it. However hardened the heart of his adversary might be by the petrifying effects of habitual vice, however dulled his conscience by impunity and arrogance and self-relying contumacy, his own was so strongly panoplied in conscious honesty, so bucklered by confidence in his own good cause, so puissant by faith in God, that he no more feared what the might of that bad man could do against him, than he doubted the creed of Christ and his holy apostles.

Nor less was the undoubting assurance of the lady of his love, in whom, to her faith in divine justice, to her absolute conviction of d'Oilly's damning guilt, was added that over-weening confidence in her lover's absolute superiority, not only to all other men in general, but to every other man individually, which was common to love-sick ladies in those days of romance and chivalry.

But we must not anticipate, nor indeed is there cause to do so; for the days flew; until, after leaving Kendal Castle, the old fortalice of Yvo de Taillebois, who, coming in with the Conqueror, had wedded the sister of the Earls Morcar and Edwin, whence they took their departure as so much nearer to their destination, and journeying four pleasant winter days round the head of Morecambe Bay, they entered the old town of Lancaster. Sir Yvo de Taillebois was borne in a horse-litter, in consequence of his accident, at the head of a dozen knights, his vassals, all armed cap-à-pie; and a hundred spears of men-at-arms followed, with thrice as many of the already famous Kendal archers, escorting a long train of litters, conveying the lady and her female attendants, and a yet longer array of sumpter-mules and pack-horses.

The town was already crowded; but for a party so distinguished as that of Sir Yvo de Taillebois, High-Sheriff of the North-western counties, and chief local officer of the crown, apartments were prepared in the castle, adjoining those of the high justiciary and the itinerant, or, as we should now call them, circuit judges; while his train easily found quarters, some among the garrison of which they formed a part, as of right, and the rest in the vicinity of the castle.

At an early hour in the morning, preceded by trumpets and javelin men, clad in all the magnificence of scarlet and ermine, emblematic of judicial purity, but unencumbered by the hideous perukes of horse-hair which later ages have devised for the disfigurement of forensic dignitaries, the high justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, followed by his five associate judges, proceeded to the superb oak-wainscoted and oak-groined hall, in which it was used to hold the sittings of "the King's court," at that time the highest tribunal in the realm.

This noble apartment, which was above a hundred feet in length by half that width, and measured sixty feet from the floor to the spring of the open arches, independent of the octagon lantern in the center, beneath which burned nearly a ton of charcoal, in a superb brazier of carved bronze, was crowded from the floor to the light, flying galleries, with all the flower of the Northern counties, ladies as well as knights and nobles, attracted by one of those untraceable but ubiquitous rumors, which so often precede remarkable events, to the effect that something of more than ordinary moment was likely to occur at the present assize. Among this noble assemblage, all of whom rose to their feet, with a heavy rustle of furred and embroidered robes, and a suppressed murmur of applause, as the judges entered, conspicuous on the right-hand side of the nave was Sir Foulke d'Oilly, attended by two or three barons and bannerets of his immediate train, and not less than twenty knights, who held fiefs under him.

What, however, was the astonishment of the assembly, when, after the guard of pensioners, in royal livery, armed with halberts, which followed the judges, Clarencieux, king-at-arms, in his magnificent costume, supported by six pursuivants, in their tabards, with trumpets, made his appearance in the nave, and then two personages, no less than Humphrey de Bohun, Lord High Constable, and William de Warrenne, Earl Mareschal of England, indicating by their presence that the court, about to be held, would be one of chivalry as well as of justice. Sir Yvo de Taillebois, and other officers of the crown, followed in the order; the justiciary and other high dignitaries took their seats, the trumpets sounded thrice, and, with the usual formalities, "the King's court" was declared open.

It was remarked afterward, though at the time no one noticed it, none suspecting the cause, that when the heralds and pomp, indicating the presence of a Court of Chivalry made their appearance, the face of Sir Foulke d'Oilly flushed fiery-red for a moment, and then turned white as ashes, even to the lips; and that he trembled so violently, that he was compelled to sit down, while all the rest were standing.

During the first three days of the assize, though many causes were tried of great local and individual interest, nothing occurred to satisfy the secret and eager anticipations of the excited audience, nothing to account for the unusual combination of civil and military powers on the judicial bench; and though all manner of strange rumors were afloat, there were none certainly that came very near the truth.

On the fourth morning, however, the crier, at command of the court, called Sir Foulke d'Oilly; who, presently appearing, stated that he was there, in pursuance of the king's order, to prosecute his claim to the possession of one Eadwulf the Red, alias Kenric, a fugitive villeyn, who had fled from his manor of Waltheofstow, within the precincts of Sherwood Forest, against his, Sir Foulke d'Oilly's, will; and who was now in the custody of the sheriff of the county. He concluded by appointing Geoffrey Fitz Peter and William of Tichborne, two sergeants, learned in the law, as his counsel.

The sheriff of the county was then called into court, to produce the body of the person at issue, and Kenric was placed at the bar, his bondsmen surrendering him to take his trial.

Sir Yvo de Taillebois then stated the preliminary proceedings, the arrest of Kenric by seizure, his purchasing a writ _de libertate probanda_; and that, whereas he, the Sheriff, might not try that question in his court, it was now brought up before the Eyre of justices for trial.

Kenric was then called upon to plead, which he did, by claiming to be a free man, and desiring liberty to prove the same before God and a jury of his countrymen.

The sheriff was thereupon commanded to impannel a jury; and this was speedily accomplished, twelve men being selected and sworn, six of whom were belted knights, two esquires of Norman birth, and four Saxon franklins, as they were now termed, who would have been thanes under their ancient dynasty, all free and lawful men, and sufficient to form a jury.

Then, the defendant in the suit being a poor man, and of no substance, counsel, skilled in the law, were assigned him by the court, Thomas de Curthose, and Matthew Gourlay, that he might have fair show of justice; and so the trial was ordered to proceed.

Then Geoffrey Fitz Peter rose and opened the case by stating that they should prove the person at the bar to be a serf, known as "Eadwulf the Red," who has escaped from the manor of his lord at Waltheofstow, in Sherwood Forest, against his lord's will, on the 13th day of July last passed--that he had killed a deer, with a cross-bolt, on that same day, in the forest between Thurgoland and Bolterstone--and afterward murdered the bailiff of the manor of Waltheofstow, as aforesaid, with a similar weapon, at or near the same place, which weapons would be produced in court, and identified by comparison with corresponding weapons, and the arbalast to which they belong, found in the possession of the prisoner, when taken at Kentmere in Westmoreland--that he had been hunted hot-foot, with bloodhounds, through the forest, and across the moors to the Lancaster sands, when he had escaped only by the aid of the fatal and furious tide which had overwhelmed the pursuing horsemen--that he had been seen to land on the shore of Westmoreland, by a party of the pursuers, who had escaped the flood-tide by skirting the coastline, and had been traced, foot by foot, by report of the natives of the country, who had heard of the arrival of a fugitive serf in the neighborhood, until he was captured in a cottage beside Kentmere, on the 10th day of October of this present year. And to prove this, he called Sir Foulke d'Oilly.

He, being sworn, testified that he knew, and had often seen, his serf "Eadwulf the Red," on the manor of Waltheofstow, and fully believed the person at the bar to be the man in question. He had joined the pursuers of the fugitive on the day after the catastrophe of the sands, had been engaged in tracing him to the cottage on Kentmere, and fully believed the person captured to be the same who was traced upward from the sands. Positively identified and swore to the person at the bar, as the man captured on the 10th day of October, and to the crossbow and bolts produced in court, and branded with the name "Kenric," as taken in his possession.

Being cross-examined--he could not swear positively to any personal recollection of the features of "Eadwulf the Red," or that the person at the bar _was_ the man, or _resembled_ the man, in question. Believed him to be the man Eadwulf, because it was the general impression of his people that he was so.

Thomas de Curthose said--"This, my lords, is mere hearsay, and stands for naught." And Sir Ranulf de Glanville bowed his head, and replied--"Merely for naught."

Then Sir Foulke d'Oilly, being asked how, when he assumed this person's name to be Eadwulf, he ascribed to him the ownership of weapons stamped "Kenric," he replied, that "Kenric" was a name prepared aforehand, to avert suspicion, and assumed by Eadwulf, so to avoid suspicion.

Being asked where he showed that Eadwulf had assumed such other name, or that the name "Kenric" had ever been assumed by one truly named "Eadwulf," he replied, that "It was probable."

Thomas de Curthose said--"That is mere conjecture."

And, again, the justiciary assented.