At the break of dawn, in the far-distant region where the great spirits reside, St. Magnus must have been at work burnishing his spiritual armor; for, according to the word that later spread over all of Scotland, he had work to do that day.

The Scots had spent the night in prayer. The Abbot of Inchaffray had said ma.s.s and the foot soldiers were still on their knees when King Edward, arrayed in shining chain mail and jeweled tabard, and full of confidence in an easy victory, rode along his lines.

"They kneel," he remarked to those about him.

"Ay, Sir King," said Sir Reginald de Umfraville, who had been fighting Scots for ten grim years, "but to G.o.d. Not to us."

The English attack had been badly conceived. Because of the narrow front on which they must operate, the army had been divided into three main "battles," each of three lines. The first, made up of cavalry in the lead and foot soldiers behind, went across the Ca.r.s.e and up the sloping ground, behind the crest of which the Scots had been a.s.sembled in a dense adaptation of Wallace's schiltrons. The existence of the pits had not been suspected, and a toll of the hors.e.m.e.n was taken before the first of the attack came into contact with the hedge of Scottish spears. Their efforts to break through the cl.u.s.tering pike points was of no avail. In the meantime the second "battle" had followed up the hill. They could not get close enough to take a hand in the fighting and could do no more than halt and wait, conscious of the fact that the third "battle" had been ordered forward on their heels and would soon be on the hillside also. The attack, in fact, had been so clumsily contrived that the arrows of the English archers, ma.s.sed on their right, were falling as thick on the attacking lines as among the Scots.

There was worse to follow. The lesson of Falkirk had been so faultily remembered that the archery division had not been provided with any form of protection. Robert Bruce, who was in personal command of the reserves behind the lines, saw at once the great opportunity which had thus been thrown his way. He ordered Keith to take his handful of cavalry around the left of the line and attack the English bowmen.

It was not an easy task, but Keith and his gallant five hundred accomplished it. They made their way around Milton Bog and came out against the flank of the archery corps. Great battles have often been won by a charge of cavalry in small numbers, delivered at exactly the right time and the right place. This was one, for in a matter of minutes Keith's hors.e.m.e.n, shouting a keening battle cry of "On them!" had thrown the bowmen into utter confusion and had slain large numbers.

Bruce, seeing victory in his grasp, led his reserves, who had been chafing for a share in the fighting, through the gaps between the schiltrons and fell on the fatigued first "battle" with claymore and pike. The first English line fell back on the second and forced a retreat into the laboring ranks of the third. It was utter confusion then on the slopes, which were already slippery with blood. Nothing much was left now of the bowmen who might have won the day for the English if the knights had been a.s.signed to protect them up the slope to the point where they could riddle the Scottish ranks with steel-tipped death. Perhaps the gallant knights had refused to play pap-nurse to greasy varlets; this had been known to happen. Whatever the reason, the bowmen had no chance to display their worth on this tragic field.

The whole English line began to waver. Thousands of men who had not yet struck a blow fell into a panic and tried to break through the ranks of fresh troops coming to their aid.

And then the miracle happened which might be termed the Coup of the Camp Followers. The men and women of menial role who had been relegated to a place of safety back of Gillies Hill had been able to watch the course of the battle below them. It was clear to them now that the day was going very well indeed. Some unidentified and mute but not inglorious Wallace conceived a way to have a part in victory. The command was given and all of them-drivers, cooks, nurses, knaves-began to strip the leaves from branches. They used broken pike handles and broomsticks and even crutches and attached to them old clouts and the petticoats of the women and the tails of their plaid cloaks. Waving these improvised flags, they went charging through the underbrush, shouting at the tops of their voices.

To the panic-stricken English this could mean only one thing: that reinforcements had arrived for the Scots who were so eager to take a hand in the fighting that they had not chosen the slower course around the foot of the hill but had come charging over the crest. The faltering English line broke at this. Gilbert of Gloucester tried to rally the troops but was killed. Clifford fell into one of the pits and was killed before he could extricate himself. Twenty-seven other barons fell in the pandemonium.

Edward and his closest advisers had watched the confusion into which the army had fallen with bitter wonder and dismay. When the retreat from the hillside turned into a rout, Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, who knew a defeat when he saw one, having figured in many in his time, seized the reins of the king's horse. It was time for Edward to leave. Surrounded by the five hundred picked hors.e.m.e.n who served as the royal guard, they rode at a furious gallop around the left of the Scottish lines and cut north in the direction of Stirling Castle. One of the knights with the king was a Gascon named Giles de Argentine, who stayed with the beaten monarch until they shook off a fierce attack by Edward Bruce. "It is not my custom to fly," he said then. Wheeling about, he rode straight for the Scottish lines, crying, "An Argentine! An Argentine!" In a very few minutes he had begun a flight to wherever it is that brave soldiers are transported.

On other occasions Edward had not shown much courage in battle, but now, perhaps in desperation, he showed some of the Plantagenet mettle. They encountered more pursuers and an effort was made to drag him from his horse. He beat the enemy off. With a mace, which became a lethal weapon in his strong hands, he cut his way through to safety.

At Stirling Castle the royal party was refused admittance. It was pointed out that, inasmuch as the effort to relieve the fortress had failed, the castle must now capitulate. They did not want the king stepping into that kind of trap. Accordingly Edward and his morose followers rode sixty miles to Dunbar, where they made their escape by sea.

What part did St. Magnus play in the victory? All Scotland was thrilled with a story that late in the morning he appeared from the clouds above Aberdeen in a coat of shining mail and on a great white horse. He rode down the streets of the granite city, crying out in a mighty voice that Robert the Bruce had that day defeated Edward of England on the field of Bannockburn.

4.

The pursuit of the English was conducted briskly but not to the exclusion of looting. The equipment of the beaten army had not only been ample but luxurious. An estimate places the loot taken from the field at two hundred thousand pounds, but this seems as exaggerated as the figures given of the size of the armies. It was considerable enough, however, to compensate the people of Scotland for the losses they had sustained in the twenty years of warfare. In addition to what had been left on the field there were many hundred knights captured, and the Scots saw that each of them paid a heavy ransom.

Scotland had been a poor country to begin with; and the continual burning of the countryside and the destruction of their herds and flocks had brought the people close to starvation. Bannockburn paid most of it back.

There were exchanges, of course. The Earl of Hereford had been taken prisoner on the field and the Scots demanded for him fifteen prisoners held by the English. These included the wife and daughter of Robert the Bruce and the venerable Bishop of Glasgow.

When Robert Burns sat himself down to write his famous war song, Scots wha hae, he intended to set it to the air of the Bruce marching song, Hey, Tuttie Taitie. His publishers did not approve the idea, thinking the air lacking in distinction and grandeur. It was for a time sung to that measure, nonetheless, with great success. A new setting has been used ever since for this famous epic.

5.

The Scottish victory at Bannockburn did not bring peace. The Scots, having driven the last of the Sa.s.senachs across the border, save for the city of Berwick, were willing and anxious to discuss terms. The English, humiliated and angered beyond measure, were not so disposed; they proceeded to take the military command out of the feeble hands of Edward and entrusted the army to Cousin Lancaster, who, as it soon developed, was no better. Realizing that the end to the long struggle was not yet in sight, Robert strove to make the English realize the cost of war by striking fiercely at the border counties. As a further measure he sent troops into Ireland in an effort to divert the attention of the foe. Edward Bruce was put in command, and it was announced that the King of Scotland intended to raise his resourceful and ever daring younger brother to the Irish throne. Roger de Mortimer, who has been mentioned as one of the young knights who won his spurs during the wholesale knighting of adolescent Englishmen by Edward I, was in command in Dublin at the time.

The resourcefulness and daring of Edward Bruce were not equal to the task. He established his rule over Ulster and remained there until 1318, when he sallied out to attack a large English force in a particularly foolhardy mood and was defeated and killed. In the meantime the mercenary Mortimer had also departed, leaving behind him personal debts contracted during his term of office amounting to one thousand pounds, "whereof he payde not one smulkin." A smulkin was a pleasantly characteristic Irish word for a bra.s.s farthing. This act of high-handed unconcern for everything but his own interests was the first in a career which would be marked by an insolence greater even than the open mockery of Gaveston and an avarice beyond all measure.

Bruce became doubly anxious for peace when he realized that a touch of leprosy which he had acquired in his wanderings was beginning to tighten its grip on his system and to rob him of power in his limbs. The mickle ail, it was called in Scotland, where it was widely prevalent. Every town had been obliged to provide some kind of leper hospital, which had its own churchyard, chapel, and ecclesiastics, even though the building itself might be no more than a frame shack on the edge of a wind-swept moor. It was highly ironic that the great fighting king, after struggling so long and enduring so much hardship, should thus be barred from the peace and comfort for which he had longed.

Realizing that his days were numbered, King Robert appealed to the Pope to bring about peace between the two countries. In 1320 he directed a message in the name of the barons of Scotland to Pope John XXII. It was a well-reasoned presentation and contained one clause which tells in a heartfelt way the plight of the northern kingdom.

Admonish and entreat the king of the English, for whom that which he possesses ought to suffice, seeing that of old England used to be ample for seven kings or more, to leave in peace us Scots dwelling in this little Scotland, beyond which there is no human abode, and desiring nothing but our own.

It was unfortunate for Scotland that John XXII was Pope at this period. He was an appointee of Philip the Unfair and had been elevated to the papacy at Avignon through the efforts of that monarch; after, it may be added, a stalemate of two years. He proved to be a heavy-handed pontiff, as witness his course when a second pope was raised to the Vatican in Rome through German influence. This was a Minorite friar named Pietro Rainalducci de Corbara, who was given the t.i.tle of Nicholas V. When the German influence declined, leaving Nicholas alone, he sought to make his peace with Avignon and was brought into the presence of John with a halter around his neck. A sentence of perpetual imprisonment was pa.s.sed on him and he died in a prison cell in Avignon.

John disregarded the Scottish appeal. In fact, he went to the other extreme and in 1323 laid all Scotland under an interdict.

CHAPTER VI.

After Bannockburn

1.

IN 1315, the year after Bannockburn, England experienced heavy and continuous rains. There was something strange and fearsome about them. They were not of the steady, mizzling variety nor the pleasant rains which blew up suddenly and as suddenly pa.s.sed, leaving the air cool and the earth sweet. Instead they came in the wake of sullen gray-black clouds from the northeast which closed off all view of the sky and of the sun by day and the moon and the stars by night. The lashing downpour turned the ground into quagmires, and the continuous drip from the trees and underbrush and from the eaves of the houses drove people finally into a state of despair.

Everything was going wrong since the old king died and this foolish, f.e.c.kless son had taken his place. The national pride had been humbled at Bannockburn and now a divine hand was showing its disapproval: so ran the story throughout the country.

The crops rotted in the fields and the fruit on the trees did not ripen. Lucky the husbandman who had cut and stored his hay early, for his stock at least would have something to eat. The inevitable sequel followed: the rivers grew swollen and overflowed their banks. Even the smallest brooks and becks became angry and vehement. Whole villages were inundated. The toftman whose home had been destroyed or carried away found small comfort in the wreckage deposited by the hostile waters on his land.

Finally the rain stopped and the waters receded, becoming gentle again. Somehow the people of England lived through the dismal winter that followed. But in the spring it was the same again, and the untilled and unplanted fields became soggy and rank. There was a serious famine in 1315. A plague carried off the cattle, and it became commonplace to find on the highways and under the trees the bodies of the homeless who had died of starvation. None of this could be laid at Edward's door, and there may have been some slight consolation for the unhappy and hungry people in the lack of bread at times on the royal table. In their minds, however, there were bitterness and a sense of dissatisfaction. Would not a good king, an energetic king, have been able to do something for his people?

During the Whitsuntide festival the king and queen kept court at Westminster. One evening they were dining in public in the great banqueting hall; a foolish thing to do, for the sight of ladies and gentlemen in fine silks and furs regaling themselves with meat and wine is certain to rouse resentment among people who are gaunt and ill from hunger. In the midst of the meal a woman on horseback and wearing a mask guided her mount in through the wide-open door and rode up to the head table. Without a word she delivered a sealed letter into the hands of the king.

Edward, suspecting nothing, had it opened and read aloud, discovering to his anger that it contained an indictment of his conduct as king. The woman, who had tarried outside the hall, was unmasked and brought in again to the royal presence. She had no hesitation in naming the knight who had entrusted the missive to her: the scion of a good house and known for his bravery and sobriety. When apprehended, the knight said "he had taken this method of apprizing the king of the complaints of his subjects."

In the meantime things seemed to be going wrong in every way. The Scottish raiders ranged as far south as Furness, a part of Lancashire which includes the Lake District. They came close to getting their hands on the wealth of Furness Abbey, one of the richest in England. Whatever the rains and the floods had left, the Scots burned behind them. Philip the Fair lived long enough to learn of his son-in-law's failure at Bannockburn and then turned away from life, perhaps to answer the summons issued from the flames by the dying Grand Master of the Templars. Llewelyn Bren, dispossessed by the heirs of the Earl of Gloucester and brushed aside scornfully when he complained to Edward, rose in rebellion with his six sons and seized all of Glamorganshire. The son of a tanner named John Drydras, although sometimes spoken of as John of Powderham, took advantage of the general discontent to announce himself as the real son of Edward I and to declare the ruling king a changeling. The man was an impostor, for he had no kind of proof whatever, save long legs and blond hair, but for a time people listened to him and wondered. In the end, of course, they took Master Drydras and hanged him with the usual extremes of cruelty. The queen bore another son at the royal castle of Eltham, a healthy specimen who was given the name of John and who would live a rather uneventful and not long life as a bachelor. Edward was so pleased that he gave one hundred pounds (an absurd extravagance at such a time) to Sir Eubulo de Montibus, the bearer of the good tidings. The queen increased her popularity with the people by pleading for the life of one Robert de Messager, who had been convicted of speaking "irreverent and indecent words" about the king.

2.

It happened that before Bannockburn the Earl of Lancaster had displayed his lack of patriotism in a rather extraordinary way. He did not accompany the royal army and he did not send any of his men. Instead he a.s.sembled quite a considerable army at his castle of Pontefract in the openly expressed belief that if Edward were successful against the Scots he would return with his victorious army and compel the barons to give up the concessions they had won from him. This sorry pretense paid him golden dividends. Edward returned a fugitive to face an angry Parliament at York; and there was Lancaster with his fresh troops to make sure of the king's submission. It was said that the earl had stood on the battlements of Pontefract as the defeated Edward pa.s.sed and had jeered at him.

The recalcitrant barons contented themselves at York with demanding the dismissal of the king's chief officers. Archbishop Reynolds, who had been filling the role of chancellor as well, had to surrender the Great Seal to John de Sandale. This mediocre individual did nothing outstandingly right in his term of four years, nor anything particularly wrong. He was guilty of one error of common decency in using his position to get delicacies for his table in the middle of the famine. Two purchasers were sent out to all parts of the country to take the best poultry they could get their hands on, with letters patent under the Great Seal to compel compliance. While England starved, the good chancellor lived, literally, off the fat of the land.

Walter of Norwich took Sandale's place as treasurer. Most of the sheriffs were dismissed also and replaced by nominees of the barons; to be more exact, the selections of the great Earl of Lancaster.

A general Parliament was held next year from January to March, and here the work begun at York was followed to the logical conclusion with great thoroughness. Hugh le Despenser, who had been standing very high in the king's favor, was dismissed from the council, and the same fate was meted out to Walter Langton. Lancaster was appointed commander-in-chief against the Scots. When Edward accepted these conditions, a reasonable grant was made to him. It was stipulated, however, that the ordinances must be observed and that the expenditure of the money thus obtained should be governed by the Ordainers. The prime humiliation was the setting of an allowance of ten pounds a day for the upkeep of the royal household.

Lancaster followed up his advantage the next year when a special session of Parliament was held at Lincoln. Here he was appointed head of the council to govern all the acts of the king.

Edward's cousin had won a complete victory. The king was now under his thumb. Lancaster had made himself the power behind the throne.

But his use of this authority soon made it clear that he was a man of most limited capacity. None of the steps he took to alleviate the distress of the nation during the famine had any usefulness. He objected to everything without having alternatives to suggest. He seldom attended the meetings of Parliament or council and, when he did, was invariably many days late, causing endless delays. In fact, he was like the critic who has bullied the administration for years from the opposition bench and then makes a sorry failure of it when he gets into power himself.

It was whispered also that he had accepted a bribe of forty thousand pounds to hamper English operations against Scotland. This charge can be set aside as pure invention. Where would the poverty-stricken King of Scotland get such an enormous sum for such a purpose? It was very clear that Lancaster's failure in the Scottish campaign was not deliberate but had been due to his utter lack of military capacity.

To make matters worse, he found himself involved at this time in a private war. He had married Alice, the handsome twelve-year-old daughter of Henry de Lacy, and through her had inherited the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury. It was not a happy marriage. They had no children, and the good earl indulged himself in one illicit romance after another. About the time he began to realize that holding the reins of power was not an unmixed advantage, the lady ran away from their castle at Caneford in Dorset. There was one trait in Lancaster's character that everyone knew: he would pursue a personal grudge with unrelenting bitterness to the end of his days. His wife's defection roused him to unusual fury and he accused the Earl of Warenne of carrying her off. Warenne denied this but he did acknowledge that he had a.s.sisted the lady in making her escape. Lancaster refused to believe him and proceeded to burn the Warenne lands. He even seized the earl's castle at Knaresborough.

It turned out later that Warenne had told the truth. The lady disappeared from sight, but when Lancaster died she emerged from hiding and married the man she had loved all the time. He was a landless squire, lame moreover, named Ebulo le Strange. It is not likely that the runaway countess lived happily ever after. The path of one who stooped low enough to marry a mere squire was almost certain to be a th.o.r.n.y one.

3.

During this unsettled period Queen Isabella seems to have become reconciled to the role she was fated to play. She certainly felt no depth of affection for Edward, but on the surface at least she was a dutiful wife. She occasionally wrote to her brother, who had succeeded to the French throne, but in none of the letters is there a reference to how she felt. There is this on which to base an opinion: after the birth of the second son, John of Eltham, she brought two daughters into the world. Eleanor, the first, was born at Woodstock in 1318. The second, named Joanna, was born in the Tower of London in 1321, a gloomy place for what should have been a joyous and festive event, and one little to the taste of the beautiful mother.

At the same time it was no secret that she looked with favor on the Earl of Lancaster. He was, in the first place, her own cousin through his mother of Artois. He had taken it on himself to rid the country of the hated Gaveston, and that endeared him to the queen, although she may have been politic enough to dissemble her feelings. Undoubtedly she considered the ambitious earl an instrument to keep her husband in order, for Isabella had no illusions about the character of the man she had married.

In spite of her political views the beautiful queen was, if not a model wife, an obedient and useful consort during the years which followed Bannockburn and saw the ripening of the feud between the king and his cousin. There had never been a hint that she took any illicit interest in other men. She might have glanced slyly out of the corner of a starry eye at stout London aldermen and swished her scented wiliecoats at court receptions, but this was no more than the habitual exercise in ma.s.s subjugation in which beautiful women indulge, and it was never done for the sole benefit of one candidate for favors. In view of Edward's shortcomings as a husband, this is much to her credit. She was striving, quite clearly, to make the best of a quite bad bargain.

Eleanor, the first of the two princesses, resembled her parents in looks only. She was gentle in disposition and manner and with the patience to accept with grace the adversities of an unkind life. That she was gentle was made clear by the equanimity with which she accepted the failures of two efforts made by her father to secure brilliant marriages for her. The first was with Alfonso V, the young King of Castile, the second with Prince John, heir to the throne of France. Both efforts failed through dower disputes, and so the little Eleanor lost the opportunity to wear a queenly crown.

It was made clear that she was unusually pretty when Raynald II, Earl of Gueldres and Zutphen, provinces in the Netherlands, came to England on a visit. This is taking a plunge some years ahead of our story. A strong and stocky Low Countryman, Raynald was generally known as Reynaldus de Fusco-Capite, which meant Raynald the Black-Haired; and, as it was later learned, he was not an admirable character in many respects. In fact, he had headed an opposition party to the rule of his somewhat wander-witted father and had taken over the government himself. The poor old man was confined to prison for six years until he died.

Raynald had recently become a widower. Not more than one glance at the quiet, blue-eyed princess was needed to bring him to the point of an avowal. He asked, begged, beseeched, and finally demanded the fair Eleanor as his wife. So determinedly did he press his suit that the match was finally arranged.

It is fortunate that a record was kept of the wardrobe and appointments of the little princess, for it offers a detailed view of the elaborate sham with which the bareness, discomfort, and ugliness of life, even for rulers and their families, were hidden under a pretense of elegance.

She was going to the land where the finest and richest of cloth was woven, the land of great industrial cities and immense trading fleets. It behooved the English, therefore, to see that she did them credit. Her bridal trousseau (the word meant no more than "bundle" at that time, but there does not seem to have been any other in use to convey the exact meaning) was large and varied and beautiful. Never before had such clothes been made, at least not for an English princess. The materials represented the weaving artistry of the whole known world. There were samite and baudequin and the richest velvets and brocades from the East. There were silks from far Cathay which held imprisoned the ardent rays of a distant sun and were called variously Kiss-me and Fairy's Eye and Beyond-the-sea. There were substantial materials which were still startlingly attractive, called Camelot (an English make) and Camocas and Turkey cloth. The materials from Turkey were in a great variety of shades, including deep reds and greens, bewitching blues, and less determinate shades such as pansy, canary, and summer gray.

Consider, first, her wedding gown. It was made of Spanish cloth of gold, a perfect match for her hair, and was embroidered in colors with some, at least, of the divine skill which went into the modeling of the tiny snowflake. To wear over this dazzling robe there was a short mantle of crimson velvet, also decorated by skilled though sometimes tired fingers. Her veil was of the finest lace, as delicate as the pattern on a frosted pane and so fragile that it would be little short of sacrilege to stretch it on the frames of the tall hairdresses which ladies were beginning to wear.

There were dozens of other costumes for less ceremonial use: a mantle with hood made of blue Brussels cloth and trimmed with ermine, completely suited to displaying the fair English charm of the bride; a surtunic of cloth of gold on which hunting scenes with stags and dogs had been embroidered; a pair of pelisses of green cloth with strings of golden beads, for use in autumnal days before the cold of winter made it necessary for princesses to conceal their charms under heavy cloaks equipped with the device to hold clothes together and insure warmth which the French would improve later and call the toute-autour. And there were, of course, an infinite variety of caps and gloves and shoes. In the matter of shoes there were many pairs of the finest Cordovan leather which had been brought into use in England in the days of the fair Eleanor of Castile.

But it was in other directions that the most affectionate ingenuity had been called upon to make certain the little princess (she was under fifteen at that time) would properly impress the rich and observant burghers of the Low Countries. There was, in particular, her chariot. It was not one of the ugly whirlicotes which were coming into use in both England and France and were little more than chairs on wheels. Eleanor was to have for her own use, on ceremonial occasions and when the weather was fine, a very special coach, painted most gaily with the coats of arms of both countries. It was lined inside with purple velvet on which gold stars glistened. A degree even of comfort for the occupant had been attained. There were silken curtains at the side windows, cushions for her feet, and supports to grasp when the roads were rough and the coach rocked and swayed like a ship at sea.

Even more special and feminine was the bed which had been made for her. It was covered with green velvet in which the lions of England had been combined in a design with the crowned lions of Gueldres. There were voluminous curtains of Tripoli silk on the sides, for protection from night drafts and staff curiosity. This latter was a point of some moment, for of privacy in royal apartments there was none. Rising in the morning and retiring at night were events shared with the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, of whom there were many. Each had special and sometimes hereditary duties, such as holding the chemise of their lady or coming forward at the right moment with the kingly boots. Even after retirement a number of male aides slept in an adjoining room, two or three to a bed, with swords drawn and ready in case an attempt were made at a.s.sa.s.sination. In an equally accessible closet were a bevy of ladies, for visits to the oratory or the bishop's throne during the night could not be undertaken unaccompanied.

It was quite probable, of course, that Eleanor found she was expected to share the ancestral bed of the earls of Gueldres.

Life on the continent was more sumptuous than in England, but it had been seen to that the delicate palate of little Eleanor was protected. There is in the Wardrobe Roll of the year a long list of the items contained in her larder for the journey, including cloves, ginger, cinnamon, saffron, dates, figs, raisins from Corinth, and many pounds of white loaf sugar, particularly the much-prized variety from Cyprus.

As has been said before, a glimpse at the wedding plans for Princess Eleanor at this point involves a view of the future. The king, her father, was dead when her betrothal took place, and her mother was being held in Castle Rising, for reasons which will be reached later. The affection and perception shown in preparing the girl for her venture alone into a strange country was due, therefore, to the admirable wife, Philippa of Hainaut, who had been found for the older son of the family.

The princess did not go alone exactly. Her train was large enough to fill many vessels when she sailed from Sandwich for the port of Helvoet-sluys in May 1332. With her were William Zouch of Mortimer, Sir Constantine Mortimer, who was to act as her household steward, Robert Tong, her treasurer, eight knights and as many ladies-in-waiting, one hundred and thirty-six men servants, including minstrels, squires, and pages, and a host of women servants.

4.

The marriage of the Princess Eleanor was not a happy one, although it started well. Her husband, proud of the eminent birth of his lovely bride, brought her to his palace in the city of Nimeguen, where she was enthusiastically received by his subjects. In course of time, largely through English influence, he was elevated to the rank of duke. This gave him the right to issue coinage and to control forests and added greatly to the pride of the new duke, who proceeded to inst.i.tute hereditary offices such as marshal, chamberlain, cup-bearer, and steward. He purchased or conquered adjacent lands and added many fortresses to his holdings. He was, in fact, a capable ruler, strengthening the dikes, making better use of wastelands and turf bogs, and dividing common lands and forests among the poorer people. These enlightened measures not only brought immigrants in large numbers but added to the ducal revenues.

He had four daughters by his first marriage, and so it was an event for wide and boisterous rejoicing when the little Eleanor gave birth to a son. The child was named Raynald and, when a second son arrived two years later, he was called Edward after the English kings.

Raynald would have been better suited, perhaps, with a wife of vivacious ways or even one of unpredictable character who would match his tempers and provide zest to the daily life of the huge ducal palace. The sweetness and social timidity of his fair English wife (the result, it was believed, of her unhappy life at home) seemed to pall on him. Two years after the arrival of his second son, Duke Raynald had his consort moved to a separate house in a part of the city far from the palace. The reason he gave was that she had contracted leprosy. As she was allowed to take her sons with her, this was a most transparent excuse. No examination of her condition had been made by the court physicians, and so the duke's subjects waited until the real reason came out. Raynald was taking steps to obtain a divorce. He had already selected a livelier woman to take the fair Eleanor's place.

Eleanor, who had accepted her dismissal with gentle resignation at first, was stirred to action at this point. She arrayed herself in no more than a single garment of the flimsiest material and over this threw a warm mantle. Taking her two young sons with her, she came to the palace on a day when Raynald had summoned all his n.o.bles for consultation.

"I am your mistress and lady," she said proudly to the guards at the gates and the well-fed custodians of the duke's dignity who strove to stop her in the halls.

So, without being announced, she came through the door and into the company of her husband and the attendant n.o.bles. Leading her small sons by the hand, she walked forward until she stood by the chair at the head of the table where Raynald sat.

Some accounts of what followed say that she threw off her cloak and displayed her slender figure in its single garment "as far as delicacy permitted." Others a.s.sert she revealed herself in complete nudity to prove that she was in perfect health. At first thought it is hard to believe that one of her gentleness of spirit could be guilty of such an act. Sometimes, however, the most timid of mortals, when pressed to an extremity, will go farther, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, than the boldest. Let it be a.s.sumed, therefore, that the modest Eleanor did not scruple to show enough of her fair white body to the a.s.sembled company to prove that she was without disease or contamination.

What is more, she made a speech. "My beloved lord," she is reported to have said, warmly wrapped again in her cloak, "here am I, earnestly seeking a diligent examination in reference to the corporeal taint of which I am frivolously accused. Let it be seen whether I am subject to any loathsomeness or impurity." The hand of a monkish writer of chronicles can be seen in that use of words.

She had made it abundantly clear that she was in perfect condition. Not all the reports of all the doctors in Christendom, not all the wisdom of the East could have proved her case so well. The presence of her sons beside her, both in the best of health, was additional proof if such had been needed.

The duke took her back and the application for divorce was dropped.