Hugh gave a soft little laugh.

"Good friend, I could prove any gear in the world by that manner of reasoning. If it be good to confess unto any, then unto anything that liveth; and if so, then to a beast; and if to a beast, then to yonder cat. Come hither, Puss, and hear this my friend his confession!"

"Have done with thy mocking!" cried Bertram. "And mind thou, the Lord did charge the holy apostles with power to forgive sins."

"Granting that so be--what then?"

"What then? Why, that priests have now the like power."

"But what toucheth it the priests?"

"In that they be successors unto the apostles."

"In what manner?"

Hugh was evidently not disposed to take any links of the chain for granted.

"Man!" exclaimed Bertram, almost in a pet, "wist not that Paul did ordain Timothy Bishop of Ephesus, and bade him do the like to other,-- and so from each to other was the blessed grace handed down, till it gat at the priests that now be?"

"Was it so?" said Hugh coolly. "But when and where bade Paul that Timothy should forgive sins?"

Bertram found it much harder to prove his a.s.sertion than to state it.

He could only answer that he did not know.

"Nor I neither," returned Hugh. "Nor Timothy neither, without I much mistake."

"I must needs give thee up. Thou art the worst caitiff to reason withal, ever mortal man did see!"

Hugh laughed.

"Lo' you, friend, I ask but for one instance of authority. Show unto me any pa.s.sage of authority in G.o.d's Word, whereby any priest shall forgive sins; or show unto me any priest that now liveth, which shall bring forth his letters of warrant by healing a man all suddenly of his sickness whatsoever, and I am at a point. Bring him forth, prithee; or else confess thou hast no such to bring."

"Hold thy peace, for love of Mary Mother!" said Bertram, pa.s.sing his irrepressible opponent a plateful of smoking pasty, for the party were at supper; "and fill thy jaws herewith, the which is so hot thou shalt occupy it some time."

"My words being, somewhat too hot for thee, trow?" rejoined Hugh comically. "Good. I can hold my peace right well when I am wanted so to do."

When Constance returned home to Cardiff, she remained there for some little time without any further visit to Court. She alone of all the Princesses was absent from the Church of Saint Nicholas at Calais, when the King was married there to the Princess Isabelle of France--a child of only eight years old. Something far more interesting to herself detained her at Cardiff; where, on the 30th of November, 1396, an heir was born to the House of Le Despenser.

That the will of "the Lady" stood paramount we see in the name given to the infant. He was christened after her favourite brother, Richard--a name unknown in his father's line, whose family names were always Hugh and Edward.

In their unfeigned admiration of this paragon of babies, its mother and grandmother sank all their previous differences. But when the difficult question of education arose, the differences reappeared as strongly as ever. The only notion which Constance had of bringing up a child was to give it everything it cried for; while the Dowager was prepared to go a long way in the opposite direction, and give it nothing in respect to which it showed the slightest temper. The practical result was that the boy was committed to the care of Maude, whom both agreed in trusting, with the most contradictory orders concerning his training. Maude followed the dictates of her own common sense, and implicitly obeyed the commands of neither of the rival authorities; but as little Richard throve well under her care, she was never called to account by either.

The year 1397 brought a political earthquake, which ended in the destruction of three of the five grand traitors, the Lords Appellants.

The commons had at last opened their eyes to the real state of affairs.

The conspirators were meditating fresh projects of treachery, when by the advice of the Dukes of Lancaster and York, Gloucester was arrested and imprisoned at Calais, where he died on the 15th of September, either from apoplexy or by a private execution. Richard Earl of Arundel, the tool of his priestly brother, was beheaded six days later. The Earl of Warwick, who had been merely the blind dupe of the others, was banished to the Isle of Man. The remaining two--the ambitious Derby, and the conceited Nottingham--contrived in the cleverest manner, not only to escape punishment, but to obtain substantial rewards for their loyalty!

Derby presented a very humble pet.i.tion on behalf of both, in which he owned, with so exquisite a show of penitence, to having _listened_ to the suggestions of the deceased traitors, and been concerned in "several riotous disturbances"--professed himself and his friend to be so abjectly repentant, and so irrevocably faithful for ever henceforward-- that King Richard, as easily deceived as usual, hastened to pardon the repenting sinners. But there was one man in the world who was not deceived by Derby's plausible professions. Old Lancaster shook his white head when he heard that his son was not only pardoned, but restored to favour.

"'Tis hard matter for father thus to speak of son," he said to his royal nephew; "nathless, my gracious Lord, I do you to wit that you have done a fool deed this day. You shall never have peace while Hal is in this kingdom."

"Fair Uncle, I am sure he will repay me!" was the response of the warm-hearted Richard.

"Ha!" said John of Gaunt, and sipped his ipocras with a grim smile.

"_Sans doute, Monseigneur, sans doute_!"

Westminster Hall beheld a grand and imposing ceremony on the Michaelmas Day of 1397. The King sat in state upon his throne at the further end, the little Queen beside him, and the various members of the royal line on either side--Princes on the right, Princesses on the left. The d.u.c.h.ess of Lancaster had the first place; then the d.u.c.h.ess of York, particularly complacent and resplendent; the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, who should have sat third, was closely secluded (of her free will) in the Convent of Bermondsey. Next sat the Countess of March, the elder sister of the d.u.c.h.ess Joan, and wife of the Lollard heir of England. The daughters of the Princes followed her. Elizabeth, Countess of Huntingdon, daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, whom that day was to make a d.u.c.h.ess, and who bore away the palm from the rest as "the best singer and the best dancer" of all the royal ladies, held her place, beaming with smiles, and radiant with rubies and crimson velvet. Next, arrayed in blue velvet, sat the only daughter of York, Constance Lady Le Despenser. Round the hall sat the n.o.bles of England in their "Parliament robes," each of the married peers with his lady at his side; while below came the House of Commons, and lower yet, outside the railing, the people of England, in the shape of an eager, sight-seeing mob. There was to be a great creation of peers, and one by one the names were called. As each of the candidates heard his name, he rose from his seat, and was led up to the throne by two n.o.bles of the order to which he was about to be raised.

"Sir Henry of Bolingbroke, Earl of Derby!" The gentleman whose unswerving loyalty was about to be recompensed by the gift of a coronet (!) rose with his customary grace from his seat, third on the right hand of the King, and was led up by his father of Lancaster and his uncle of York. He knelt, bareheaded, before the throne. A sword was girt to his side, a ducal coronet set on his head by the royal hand, and he rose Duke of Hereford. As old Lancaster resumed his seat, he smiled grimly under his white beard, and muttered to himself--"_Sans doute_!"

"Sir Edward of Langley, Earl of Rutland!"

Constance's brother was similarly led up by his father and his cousin, the newly-created Duke, and he resumed his princely seat, Duke of Aumerle, or Albemarle.

"Sir Thomas de Holand, Earl of Kent, Baron Wake!"

Hereford and Aumerle were the two to lead up the candidate. He was the son of the King's half-brother, and was reputed the handsomest of the n.o.bles: a tall, finely-developed man, with the shining golden hair of his Plantagenet ancestors. He was created Duke of Surrey.

Hereford sat down, and Surrey and Aumerle conducted John Earl of Huntingdon to the throne. He was half-brother of the King, uncle of Surrey, and husband of the royal songstress who sat and smiled in crimson velvet. He had stepped out of the family ranks; for instead of being tall, fair, and good-looking, like the rest of his house, he was a little dark-haired man, whom no artist would have selected as a model of beauty. A strong anti-Lollard was this n.o.bleman, a good hater, a prejudiced, violent, unprincipled man; possessed of two virtues only-- honesty and loyalty. He had been cajoled for a time by Gloucester, but his brother knew him too well to doubt his sincerity or affection. He was made Duke of Exeter.

The next call was for--"Sir Thomas de Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham!" And up came the last of the "Lords Appellants," painfully conscious in his heart of hearts that while he might have been in his right place on the scaffold in Cheapside, he was very much out of it in Westminster Hall, kneeling to receive the coronet of Norfolk.

A coronet was now laid aside, for the recipient was not present. She was an old lady of royal blood, above seventy years of age, the second cousin of the King, and great-grandmother of Nottingham. Her style and t.i.tles were duly proclaimed as d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk for life.

But when "Sir John de Beaufort, Earl of Somerset!" was called for, the peer summoned rose and walked forward alone. He was to be created a marquis--a t.i.tle of King Richard's own devising, and at that moment borne by no one else. The Earl came reluctantly, for he was very unwilling to be made unlike other people; and he dropped his new t.i.tle, and returned to the old one, as soon as he conveniently could. He had a tall, fine figure, but not a pleasant face; and his religion, no less than his politics, he wore like a glove--well-fitting when on, but capable of being changed at pleasure. Just now, when Lollardism was "walking in silver slippers," my Lord Marquis of Dorset was a Lollard.

Rome rarely persecutes men of this sort, for she makes them useful in preference.

And now the herald cried--"Sir Thomas Le Despenser, Baron of Cardiff!"

The Earls of Northumberland and Suffolk were the supporters of Le Despenser, who walked forward with a slow, graceful step, to receive from the King's hand an earl's coronet, accompanied by the ominous name of Gloucester--a t.i.tle stained by its last bearer beyond remedy. In truth, the royal dukedom had been an interpolation of the line, and the King was merely giving Le Despenser back his own--the coronet which had belonged to the grand old family of Clare, whose co-heiress was the great-grandmother of Thomas Le Despenser. The t.i.tle had been kept as it were in suspense ever since the attainder of her husband, the ill-fated Earl Hugh, though two persons had borne it in the interim without any genuine right.

Three other peers were created, but they do not concern the story. And then the King rose from his throne, the ceremony was over; and Constance Le Despenser left the hall among the Princesses by right of her birth, but wearing her new coronet as Countess of Gloucester.

Four months later, the Duke of Hereford knelt before the throne, and solemnly accused his late friend and colleague, the Duke of Norfolk, of treason. He averred that Norfolk had tempted him to join another secret conspiracy. Norfolk, when questioned, turned the tables by denying the accusation, and adding that it was Hereford who had tempted him. Since neither of these n.o.ble gentlemen was particularly worthy of credit, and they both swore very hard on this occasion, it is impossible to decide which (if either) was telling the truth. The decision finally arrived at was that both the accusers should settle their quarrel by wager of battle, for which purpose they were commanded to meet at Coventry in the following autumn.

Before the duel took place, an important event occurred in the death of Roger Mortimer, the Lollard Earl of March, whom the King had proclaimed heir presumptive of England. He was Viceroy of Ireland, and was killed in a skirmish by the "wild Irish." March, who was only 24 years of age, left four children, of whom we shall hear more anon, to be educated by their mother, Archbishop Arundel's niece, in her own Popish views. He is described by the monkish chroniclers as "very handsome and very courteous, most dissolute of life, and extremely remiss in all matters of religion." We can guess pretty well what that means. "Remiss in matters of religion," of course, refers to his Lollardism, while the accusation of "dissolute life" is notoriously Rome's pet charge against those who escape from her toils. Such was the sad and early end of the first and only Lollard of the House of Mortimer.

The duel between Hereford and Norfolk was appointed to take place on Gosford Green, near Coventry, on the 16th of September. The combatants met accordingly; but before a blow was struck, the King took the matter upon himself and forbade the engagement. On the 3rd of October, licence was granted to Hereford to travel abroad, this being honourable banishment; no penalty was inflicted upon Norfolk. But some event-- perhaps never to be discovered--occurred, or came to light during the following ten days, which altered the whole aspect of affairs. Either the King found out some deed of treason, of which he had been previously ignorant, or else some further offence was committed by both Hereford and Norfolk. On the 13th both were banished--Hereford for ten years, Norfolk for life; the sentence in the former case being afterwards commuted to six years. Those who know the Brutus-like character of John of Gaunt, and his real opinion of his son's proceedings, may accept, if they can, the representations of the monastic chroniclers that the commutation of Hereford's sentence was made at his intercession.

In the interim, between the duel and the sentence, Archbishop Arundel was formally adjudged a traitor, and the penalty of banishment was inflicted on him also.

Constance was too busy with her nursery to leave Cardiff, where this autumn little Richard was joined by a baby sister, who received the name of Elizabeth after the Dowager Lady. But the infant was not many weeks old, when, to use the beautiful phrase of the chroniclers, she "journeyed to the Lord." She was taken away from the evil to come.

It was appropriate enough that the last dread year of the fourteenth century should be ushered in by funeral knells. And he who died on the third of February in that year, though not a very sure stay, was the best and last support of the Gospel and the throne. It was with troubled faces and sad tones that the Lollards who met in the streets of London told one to another that "old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster," was lying dead in the Bishop of Ely's Palace.

But the storm was deferred for a few weeks longer. There were royal visits to Langley and Cardiff, on the way to Ireland, the Earl of Gloucester accompanying the King to that country. And then, when Richard had left the reins of government in the feeble hands of York, the tempest burst over England which had been lowering for so long.

The Lady Le Despenser and the Countess of Gloucester were seated at breakfast in Cardiff Castle, on a soft, bright morning in the middle of July. Breakfast consisted of fresh and salt fish, for it was a fast-day; plain and fancy bread, different kinds of biscuits (but all made without eggs or b.u.t.ter); small beer, and claret. Little Richard was energetically teasing Maude, by whom he sat, for another piece of red-herring, and the Dowager, deliberate in all her movements, was slowly helping herself to Gascon wine. The blast of a horn without the moat announced the arrival of a guest or a letter, and Bertram Lyngern went out to see what it was. Ten minutes later he returned to the hall, with letters in his hand, and his face white with some terrible news.

"Ill tidings, n.o.ble ladies!"