Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

  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 ableprince, as viewed according to the circumstances of his position andthe intelligence of his era, the Second Henry of England, soremarkable, or in his character so praiseworthy, as his efforts toestablish a perfect system both of judiciary power and of justicethroughout England. In these efforts he more than mediately succeeded;and, although some corruptions continued to exist, and some instancesof malfeasance to occur, owing in some degree to the king's ownavaricious temperament and willingness to commute punishments, andperhaps, at times, even prosecutions, for pecuniary fines, justice wasnot for many centuries more equitably administered, certainly not fourhundred years afterward, in the reign of the eighth monarch of thesame Christian name, than in the latter portion of the twelfthcentury.

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

  During the six weeks, which intervened between the liberation ofKenric from the arrest of Sir Foulke d'Oilly, and the day appointedfor the holding of the Lancaster assizes, there was great tribulationin the castle of Hawkshead; and it was known that Sir Yvo deTaillebois 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, tothe shores of Windermere.

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

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

  Now, according to the criminal law of that day, no prosecutor couldput in his charge for murder, until he should have proved himself tobe of the blood of the deceased. And this it was now the object of SirYvo to do, there having always been a traditionary belief in a remotekindred between the two families, though the exact point and periodwere forgotten.

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

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

  Kenric persisted, alone, after all the rest had resigned theenterprise; and, relying on his Saxon origin and late servilecondition, mingled with the outlaws, told his tale, showed theproclamation, and succeeded in interesting his auditors in his ownbehalf and that of his brother; but he, no more than the others, couldfind any traces of the fugitive, and he began almost to consider itcertain that the unhappy Eadwulf had perished among the hills, of theinclemency of the weather. He too, at last, returned home, despairingof ever seeing the unhappy outlaw more.

  In the mean time, an earnest and interesting contest was going on inthe castle, between Guendolen and Aradas on the one hand, and Sir Yvode Taillebois on the other. For it had been discovered by the heralds,that there did exist proofs of blood-connection between the twofamilies, sufficient to justify Sir Yvo in putting in a charge of hiskinsman's murder against Sir Foulke d'Oilly, on the grounds of commonrumor 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, nonemight doubt, who knew the character and antecedents of thatdesperately bad but dauntless man.

  Now, it was the suit of Guendolen and Aradas, that Sir Yvo shouldappoint his young esquire his champion to do battle for the judgmentof God--for they were irrevocably convinced--what, between their realfaith in the justice of this cause, and the zealous trust, of thosewho love, in the superiority of the beloved, and the generousconfidence of youth in its own glowing and impulsive valor--thatAradas would surely beat the traitor down, and win the spurs of gold,to which he so passionately aspired. But the clear-headed veteranregarded matters with a cooler and perhaps a wiser eye. He knew SirFoulke d'Oilly for a trained, experienced, and all-practiced soldier;not only brave at all times, and brave among the bravest--but achampion, such as there were few, and to be beaten only by a champion.He knew him also desperate, and fighting his last stake. He foresawthat, even for himself, the felon knight, unless the sense of guiltshould paralyze his heart, or the visible judgment of God beinterposed in the heat of battle--a thing in those days scarcely to belooked for--would prove no easy bargain in the lists; and, how highlysoever he might estimate his young esquire's courage and prowess, heyet positively refused to allow him to assume the place of appellantin the lists; and denied utterly that such a conflict, being the mostsolemn and awful of appeals to the Almighty on his judgment-seat, wasany proper occasion for the striving after spurs of gold, or aiming atthe honors of knighthood.

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

  After having ridden all day long on a stout, sure-footed cob, which hehad backed for ten years, without knowing him to make a solitaryblunder, marking trees for felling, and laying out new plantationswith his foresters, Sir Yvo was wending his way toward the castlegates, across the great home-park, when, a small blind ditch crossinghis 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 inthe middle of the drain, and came down on his head, throwing his heavyrider heavily on the hard frozen ground.

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

  Strange times! when to be permitted to engage in a conflict, in whichthere was no alternative but victory, or infamy and death, wasesteemed a fav
or, and was sought for, as a boon, not by strong men andsoldiers only, but by delicate and gentle girls, in behalf of theirbetrothed lovers, as a mode of winning _los_ on earth, and gloryeverlasting in the heavens.

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

  There was, however, a strange mixture of simple and fervent faith inthose days, with an infinitely larger amount of coarse and openwickedness, violence, and vice, than, perhaps, ever prevailed in anyother age. And while the moral restraint on men's conduct and actions,arising from a sense of future responsibility and retribution, wasvastly inferior to what now exists, owing to the open sale ofindulgences, absolutions, and dispensations, and the other abominablecorruptions 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 anatheist, materialist, or any phase of what we now call a free-thinker,would have been regarded with greater wonder than the strangestphysical monster. It is not too much to say, that there were not inthat day twenty men in England, who did not believe in the realefficacy of the ordeals, whether by water, fire, or battle, indiscovering the truth, or one in a thousand who would not behalf-defeated, before entering the lists, by the belief that God wasfighting against him, or strengthened unto victory by the confidencethat his cause was just.

  One of these one men in a thousand it was, however, about to be thefortune of Aradas de Ratcliffe to encounter, in the person of SirFoulke d'Oilly; but this he neither knew, nor would have thought oftwice, had he known it. However hardened the heart of his adversarymight be by the petrifying effects of habitual vice, however dulledhis conscience by impunity and arrogance and self-relying contumacy,his own was so strongly panoplied in conscious honesty, so buckleredby confidence in his own good cause, so puissant by faith in God, thathe 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, inwhom, to her faith in divine justice, to her absolute conviction ofd'Oilly's damning guilt, was added that over-weening confidence in herlover's absolute superiority, not only to all other men in general,but to every other man individually, which was common to love-sickladies in those days of romance and chivalry.

  But we must not anticipate, nor indeed is there cause to do so; forthe days flew; until, after leaving Kendal Castle, the old fortaliceof Yvo de Taillebois, who, coming in with the Conqueror, had weddedthe sister of the Earls Morcar and Edwin, whence they took theirdeparture as so much nearer to their destination, and journeying fourpleasant winter days round the head of Morecambe Bay, they entered theold town of Lancaster. Sir Yvo de Taillebois was borne in ahorse-litter, in consequence of his accident, at the head of a dozenknights, his vassals, all armed cap-a-pie; and a hundred spears ofmen-at-arms followed, with thrice as many of the already famous Kendalarchers, escorting a long train of litters, conveying the lady and herfemale attendants, and a yet longer array of sumpter-mules andpack-horses.

  The town was already crowded; but for a party so distinguished as thatof Sir Yvo de Taillebois, High-Sheriff of the North-western counties,and chief local officer of the crown, apartments were prepared in thecastle, adjoining those of the high justiciary and the itinerant, or,as we should now call them, circuit judges; while his train easilyfound 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 ofjudicial purity, but unencumbered by the hideous perukes of horse-hairwhich later ages have devised for the disfigurement of forensicdignitaries, the high justiciary, Ranulf de Glanville, followed by hisfive associate judges, proceeded to the superb oak-wainscoted andoak-groined hall, in which it was used to hold the sittings of "theKing's court," at that time the highest tribunal in the realm.

  This noble apartment, which was above a hundred feet in length by halfthat width, and measured sixty feet from the floor to the spring ofthe open arches, independent of the octagon lantern in the center,beneath which burned nearly a ton of charcoal, in a superb brazier ofcarved bronze, was crowded from the floor to the light, flyinggalleries, with all the flower of the Northern counties, ladies aswell as knights and nobles, attracted by one of those untraceable butubiquitous rumors, which so often precede remarkable events, to theeffect that something of more than ordinary moment was likely to occurat the present assize. Among this noble assemblage, all of whom roseto 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 theguard of pensioners, in royal livery, armed with halberts, whichfollowed the judges, Clarencieux, king-at-arms, in his magnificentcostume, supported by six pursuivants, in their tabards, withtrumpets, made his appearance in the nave, and then two personages, noless than Humphrey de Bohun, Lord High Constable, and William deWarrenne, Earl Mareschal of England, indicating by their presence thatthe court, about to be held, would be one of chivalry as well as ofjustice. Sir Yvo de Taillebois, and other officers of the crown,followed in the order; the justiciary and other high dignitaries tooktheir seats, the trumpets sounded thrice, and, with the usualformalities, "the King's court" was declared open.

  It was remarked afterward, though at the time no one noticed it, nonesuspecting the cause, that when the heralds and pomp, indicating thepresence of a Court of Chivalry made their appearance, the face of SirFoulke d'Oilly flushed fiery-red for a moment, and then turned whiteas ashes, even to the lips; and that he trembled so violently, that hewas compelled to sit down, while all the rest were standing.

  During the first three days of the assize, though many causes weretried of great local and individual interest, nothing occurred tosatisfy the secret and eager anticipations of the excited audience,nothing to account for the unusual combination of civil and militarypowers on the judicial bench; and though all manner of strange rumorswere 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 hewas there, in pursuance of the king's order, to prosecute his claim tothe possession of one Eadwulf the Red, alias Kenric, a fugitivevilleyn, who had fled from his manor of Waltheofstow, within theprecincts of Sherwood Forest, against his, Sir Foulke d'Oilly's, will;and who was now in the custody of the sheriff of the county. Heconcluded 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 thebody of the person at issue, and Kenric was placed at the bar, hisbondsmen surrendering him to take his trial.

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

  Kenric was then called upon to plead, which he did, by claiming to bea free man, and desiring liberty to prove the sam
e before God and ajury of his countrymen.

  The sheriff was thereupon commanded to impannel a jury; and this wasspeedily accomplished, twelve men being selected and sworn, six ofwhom were belted knights, two esquires of Norman birth, and four Saxonfranklins, as they were now termed, who would have been thanes undertheir ancient dynasty, all free and lawful men, and sufficient to forma 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 deCurthose, and Matthew Gourlay, that he might have fair show ofjustice; and so the trial was ordered to proceed.

  Then Geoffrey Fitz Peter rose and opened the case by stating thatthey 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 atWaltheofstow, in Sherwood Forest, against his lord's will, on the13th day of July last passed--that he had killed a deer, with across-bolt, on that same day, in the forest between Thurgoland andBolterstone--and afterward murdered the bailiff of the manor ofWaltheofstow, as aforesaid, with a similar weapon, at or near the sameplace, which weapons would be produced in court, and identified bycomparison with corresponding weapons, and the arbalast to which theybelong, found in the possession of the prisoner, when taken atKentmere in Westmoreland--that he had been hunted hot-foot, withbloodhounds, through the forest, and across the moors to the Lancastersands, when he had escaped only by the aid of the fatal and furioustide which had overwhelmed the pursuing horsemen--that he had beenseen 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 beentraced, foot by foot, by report of the natives of the country, who hadheard of the arrival of a fugitive serf in the neighborhood, until hewas captured in a cottage beside Kentmere, on the 10th day of Octoberof 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 believedthe person at the bar to be the man in question. He had joined thepursuers of the fugitive on the day after the catastrophe of thesands, had been engaged in tracing him to the cottage on Kentmere, andfully believed the person captured to be the same who was tracedupward from the sands. Positively identified and swore to the personat the bar, as the man captured on the 10th day of October, and to thecrossbow 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 personalrecollection of the features of "Eadwulf the Red," or that the personat the bar _was_ the man, or _resembled_ the man, in question.Believed him to be the man Eadwulf, because it was the generalimpression of his people that he was so.

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

  Then Sir Foulke d'Oilly, being asked how, when he assumed thisperson's name to be Eadwulf, he ascribed to him the ownership ofweapons stamped "Kenric," he replied, that "Kenric" was a nameprepared aforehand, to avert suspicion, and assumed by Eadwulf, so toavoid 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.