Charles Major - When Knighthood Was in Flower
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Charles Major >> When Knighthood Was in Flower
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| A number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected |
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WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER
or, the Love Story of
Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor
the King's Sister, and Happening
in the Reign of
His August Majesty
King Henry the
Eighth
Rewritten and Rendered into Modern English from
Sir Edwin Caskoden's Memoir
by
EDWIN CASKODEN
[Charles Major]
Julia Marlowe Edition
With Scenes from the Play
[Illustration]
Indianapolis, U.S.A.
The Bowen-Merrill Company
Publishers
Copyright, Eighteen Hundred Ninety
Eight, and Nineteen Hundred One
by The Bowen-Merrill Company
Press of
Braunworth & Co.
Bookbinders and Printers
Brooklyn, N.Y.
_"There lived a Knight, when Knighthood was in flow'r,
Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bow'r_."
To My Wife
CONTENTS
The Caskodens 1
I The Duel 6
II How Brandon Came to Court 13
III The Princess Mary 23
IV A Lesson in Dancing 45
V An Honor and an Enemy 74
VI A Rare Ride to Windsor 89
VII Love's Fierce Sweetness 102
VIII The Trouble in Billingsgate Ward 128
IX Put Not Your Trust in Princesses 146
X Justice, O King! 169
XI Louis XII a Suitor 182
XII Atonement 202
XIII A Girl's Consent 213
XIV In the Siren Country 226
XV To Make a Man of Her 244
XVI A Hawking Party 256
XVII The Elopement 268
XVIII To the Tower 289
XIX Proserpina 302
XX Down into France 320
XXI Letters from a Queen 337
_"Cloth of gold do not despise,
Though thou be match'd with cloth of frize;
Cloth of frize, be not too bold,
Though thou be match'd with cloth of gold_."
Inscription on a label affixed to Brandon's lance under a picture
of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, at Strawberry Hill.
The Play
The initial performance of the play was given in St. Louis on the
evening of November 26, 1900, and the first New York production was on
the fourteenth of the following January.
Its instant and continued success is well known. A prominent dramatic
critic of the press has said:
"Julia Marlowe fully realized the popular idea of the Mary described
by the novelist. She seemed to revel in the role. With its
instantaneous changes from gay daring to anger and fear, from coyness
to the dignity that hedges a princess, from resentment to ardent love,
the part of Mary Tudor gives Julia Marlowe full scope for the display
of her talent. She has never appeared to better or as good advantage
as in this play for the reason that it gives opportunity for broader
and more effective lights and shades than anything she has hitherto
given us."
When Knighthood Was in Flower
When Knighthood Was in Flower....
_The Caskodens_
We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know,
hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity,
but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who
does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would
not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because
they know both who and what.
Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort of
failing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans virtueward;
for the man who fears to disgrace his ancestors is certainly less
likely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellent
persons who can go no farther back than father and mother, who,
doubtless, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as if
they could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Noah, or
somebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of our
ancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter,
regardless of whom it pleases or displeases.
We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line from
William the Conqueror down to the present time. In this lineal list
are fourteen Barons--the title lapsed when Charles I fell--twelve
Knights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of the Bath and other
orders. A Caskoden distinguished himself by gallant service under the
Great Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride,
albeit an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwilling
Saxon bride and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty,
pathetic story, which I may tell you at some future time if you take
kindly to this. A Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat at
the rich, half barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Still
another was one of the doughty barons who wrested from John the Great
Charter, England's declaration of independence; another was high in
the councils of Henry V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail to
mention: Adjodika Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Parliament
of Henry IV, so called because there were no lawyers in it.
It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop to
trade, but it was trade of the most dignified, honorable sort; he was
a goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers and
international clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, it
is stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein the
goldsmith's wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble King
Edward; so we learn that even in trade the Caskodens were of honorable
position and basked in the smile of their prince. As for myself, I am
not one of those who object so much to trade; and I think it
contemptible in a man to screw his nose all out of place sneering at
it, while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits.
This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might call
his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of those
happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even
misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the
alchemy of common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So he
coined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife--he being
powerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listed
nearly everywhere--into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a
glorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about the
fourth generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think.
How few of them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the
third! It was during the third generation of this fortune that the
events of the following history occurred.
Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centuries to keep a
record of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Some
are in the form of diaries and journals like those of Pepys and
Evelyn; others in letters like the Pastons'; others again in verse and
song like Chaucer's and the Water Poet's; and still others in the
more pretentious form of memoir and chronicle. These records we always
have kept jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like the
Pastons, to submit our private affairs to public gaze.
There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely of
outside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determined
to choose for publication such portions as do not divulge family
secrets nor skeletons, and which really redound to family honor.
For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthy
ancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden--grandson of the goldsmith,
and Master of the Dance to Henry VIII--the story of Charles Brandon
and Mary Tudor, sister to the king.
This story is so well known to the student of English history that I
fear its repetition will lack that zest which attends the development
of an unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is so
full, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble
by time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir
Edwin's memoir. Not so much as an historical narrative, although I
fear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as a
picture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside the
hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack of
sharp detail, toning down and mellowing the hard aspect of real
life--harder and more unromantic even than our own--into the blending
softness of an exquisite mirage.
I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shall
now and then quote from contemporaneous chronicles in the language of
his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal
would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King
is almost a foreign tongue to us. I shall, therefore, with a few
exceptions, give Sir Edwin's memoir in words, spelling and idiom which
his rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of his
whatsoever. So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thought
hob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, be
not disturbed; I did it. If the little old fellow grows grandiloquent
or garrulous at times--_he_ did that. If you find him growing
super-sentimental, remember that sentimentalism was the life-breath of
chivalry, just then approaching its absurdest climax in the bombastic
conscientiousness of Bayard and the whole mental atmosphere laden with
its pompous nonsense.
_CHAPTER I_
_The Duel_
It sometimes happens, Sir Edwin says, that when a woman will she
won't, and when she won't she will; but usually in the end the adage
holds good. That sentence may not be luminous with meaning, but I will
give you an illustration.
I think it was in the spring of 1509, at any rate soon after the death
of the "Modern Solomon," as Queen Catherine called her old
father-in-law, the late King Henry VII, that his august majesty Henry
VIII, "The Vndubitate Flower and very Heire of both the sayd Linages,"
came to the throne of England, and tendered me the honorable position
of Master of the Dance at his sumptuous court.
As to "worldly goods," as some of the new religionists call wealth, I
was very comfortably off; having inherited from my father, one of the
counselors of Henry VII, a very competent fortune indeed. How my
worthy father contrived to save from the greedy hand of that rich old
miser so great a fortune, I am sure I can not tell. He was the only
man of my knowledge who did it; for the old king had a reach as long
as the kingdom, and, upon one pretext or another, appropriated to
himself everything on which he could lay his hands. My father,
however, was himself pretty shrewd in money matters, having inherited
along with his fortune a rare knack at keeping it. His father was a
goldsmith in the time of King Edward, and enjoyed the marked favor of
that puissant prince.
Being thus in a position of affluence, I cared nothing for the fact
that little or no emolument went with the office; it was the honor
which delighted me. Besides, I was thereby an inmate of the king's
palace, and brought into intimate relations with the court, and above
all, with the finest ladies of the land--the best company a man can
keep, since it ennobles his mind with better thoughts, purifies his
heart with cleaner motives, and makes him gentle without detracting
from his strength. It was an office any lord of the kingdom might have
been proud to hold.
Now, some four or five years after my induction into this honorable
office, there came to court news of a terrible duel fought down in
Suffolk, out of which only one of the four combatants had come
alive--two, rather, but one of them in a condition worse than death.
The first survivor was a son of Sir William Brandon, and the second
was a man called Sir Adam Judson. The story went that young Brandon
and his elder brother, both just home from the continental wars, had
met Judson at an Ipswich inn, where there had been considerable
gambling among them. Judson had won from the brothers a large sum of
money which they had brought home; for, notwithstanding their youth,
the elder being but twenty-six and the younger about twenty-four years
of age, they had gained great honor and considerable profit in wars,
especially the younger, whose name was Charles.
It is a little hard to fight for money and then to lose it by a single
spot upon the die, but such is the fate of him who plays, and a
philosopher will swallow his ill luck and take to fighting for more.
The Brandons could have done this easily enough, especially Charles,
who was an offhand philosopher, rather fond of a good-humored fight,
had it not been that in the course of play one evening the secret of
Judson's winning had been disclosed by a discovery that he cheated.
The Brandons waited until they were sure, and then trouble began,
which resulted in a duel on the second morning following.
This Judson was a Scotch gentleman of whom very little was known,
except that he was counted the most deadly and most cruel duelist of
the time. He was called the "Walking Death," and it is said took pride
in the appellation. He boasted that he had fought eighty-seven duels,
in which he had killed seventy-five men, and it was considered certain
death to meet him. I got the story of the duel afterwards from Brandon
as I give it here.
John was the elder brother, and when the challenge came was entitled
to fight first,--a birthright out of which Charles tried in vain to
talk him. The brothers told their father, Sir William Brandon, and at
the appointed time father and sons repaired to the place of meeting,
where they found Judson and his two seconds ready for the fight.
Sir William was still a vigorous man, with few equals in sword play,
and the sons, especially the younger, were better men and more skilful
than their father had ever been, yet they felt that this duel meant
certain death, so great was Judson's fame for skill and cruelty.
Notwithstanding they were so handicapped with this feeling of
impending evil, they met their duty without a tremor; for the motto of
their house was, "_Malo Mori Quam Fedrai_."
It was a misty morning in March. Brandon has told me since, that when
his elder brother took his stand, it was at once manifest that he was
Judson's superior, both in strength and skill, but after a few strokes
the brother's blade bent double and broke off short at the hilt when
it should have gone home. Thereupon, Judson, with a malignant smile of
triumph, deliberately selected his opponent's heart and pierced it
with his sword, giving the blade a twist as he drew it out in order to
cut and mutilate the more.
In an instant Sir William's doublet was off, and he was in his dead
son's tracks, ready to avenge him or to die. Again the thrust which
should have killed broke the sword, and the father died as the son had
died.
After this, came young Charles, expecting, but, so great was his
strong heart, not one whit fearing, to lie beside his dead father and
brother. He knew he was the superior of both in strength and skill,
and his knowledge of men and the noble art told him they had each been
the superior of Judson; but the fellow's hand seemed to be the hand of
death. An opening came through Judson's unskilful play, which gave
young Brandon an opportunity for a thrust to kill, but his blade, like
his father's and brother's, bent double without penetrating. Unlike
the others, however, it did not break, and the thrust revealed the
fact that Judson's skill as a duelist lay in a shirt of mail which it
was useless to try to pierce. Aware of this, Brandon knew that victory
was his, and that soon he would have avenged the murders that had gone
before. He saw that his adversary was strong neither in wind nor arm,
and had not the skill to penetrate his guard in a week's trying, so he
determined to fight on the defensive until Judson's strength should
wane, and then kill him when and how he chose.
After a time Judson began to breathe hard and his thrusts to lack
force.
"Boy, I would spare you," he said; "I have killed enough of your
tribe; put up your sword and call it quits."
Young Brandon replied: "Stand your ground, you coward; you will be a
dead man as soon as you grow a little weaker; if you try to run I will
thrust you through the neck as I would a cur. Listen how you snort. I
shall soon have you; you are almost gone. You would spare me, would
you? I could preach a sermon or dance a hornpipe while I am killing
you. I will not break my sword against your coat of mail, but will
wait until you fall from weakness and then.... Fight, you bloodhound!"
Judson was pale from exhaustion, and his breath was coming in gasps as
he tried to keep the merciless sword from his throat. At last, by a
dexterous twist of his blade, Brandon sent Judson's sword flying
thirty feet away. The fellow started to run, but turned and fell upon
his knees to beg for life. Brandon's reply was a flashing circle of
steel, and his sword point cut lengthwise through Judson's eyes and
the bridge of his nose, leaving him sightless and hideous for life. A
revenge compared to which death would have been merciful.
The duel created a sensation throughout the kingdom, for although
little was known as to who Judson was, his fame as a duelist was as
broad as the land. He had been at court upon several occasions, and,
at one time, upon the king's birthday, had fought in the royal lists.
So the matter came in for its share of consideration by king and
courtiers, and young Brandon became a person of interest. He became
still more so when some gentlemen who had served with him in the
continental wars told the court of his daring and bravery, and related
stories of deeds at arms worthy of the best knight in Christendom.
He had an uncle at the court, Sir Thomas Brandon, the king's Master of
Horse, who thought it a good opportunity to put his nephew forward
and let him take his chance at winning royal favor. The uncle broached
the subject to the king, with favorable issue, and Charles Brandon,
led by the hand of fate, came to London Court, where that same fate
had in keeping for him events such as seldom fall to the lot of man.
_CHAPTER II_
_How Brandon Came to Court_
When we learned that Brandon was coming to court, every one believed
he would soon gain the king's favor. How much that would amount to
none could tell, as the king's favorites were of many sorts and taken
from all conditions of men. There was Master Wolsey, a butcher's son,
whom he had first made almoner, then chief counselor and Bishop of
Lincoln, soon to be Bishop of York, and Cardinal of the Holy Roman
Church.
From the other extreme of life came young Thomas, Lord Howard, heir to
the Earl of Surrey, and my Lord of Buckingham, premier peer of the
realm. Then sometimes would the king take a yeoman of the guard and
make him his companion in jousts and tournaments, solely because of
his brawn and bone. There were others whom he kept close by him in the
palace because of their wit and the entertainment they furnished; of
which class was I, and, I flatter myself, no mean member.
To begin with, being in no way dependent on the king for money, I
never drew a farthing from the royal treasury. This, you may be sure,
did me no harm, for although the king _sometimes_ delighted to give,
he always hated to pay. There were other good reasons, too, why I
should be a favorite with the king. Without meaning to be vain, I
think I may presume to say, with perfect truth, that my conversation
and manners were far more pleasing and polished than were usual at
that day in England, for I made it a point to spend several weeks each
year in the noble French capital, the home and center of good-breeding
and politeness.
My appointment as Master of the Dance, I am sure, was owing entirely
to my manner. My brother, the baron, who stood high with the king, was
not friendly toward me because my father had seen fit to bequeath me
so good a competency in place of giving it all to the first-born and
leaving me dependent upon the tender mercies of an elder brother. So I
had no help from him nor from any one else. I was quite small of
stature and, therefore, unable to compete, with lance and mace, with
bulkier men; but I would bet with any man, of any size, on any game,
at any place and time, in any amount; and, if I do say it, who perhaps
should not, I basked in the light of many a fair smile which larger
men had sighed for in vain.
I did not know when Brandon first came to London. We had all remained
at Greenwich while the king went up to Westminster to waste his time
with matters of state and quarrel with the Parliament, then sitting,
over the amount of certain subsidies.
Mary, the king's sister, then some eighteen or nineteen years of age,
a perfect bud, just blossoming into a perfect flower, had gone over to
Windsor on a visit to her elder sister, Margaret of Scotland, and the
palace was dull enough. Brandon, it seems, had been presented to Henry
during this time, at Westminster, and had, to some extent at least,
become a favorite before I met him. The first time I saw him was at a
joust given by the king at Westminster, in celebration of the fact
that he had coaxed a good round subsidy out of Parliament.
The queen and her ladies had been invited over, and it was known that
Mary would be down from Windsor and come home with the king and the
court to Greenwich when we should return. So we all went over to
Westminster the night before the jousts, and were up bright and early
next morning to see all that was to be seen.
* * * * *
[Here the editor sees fit to substitute a description of this
tournament taken from the quaint old chronicler, Hall.]
The morow beyng after dynner, at tyme conuenenient, the Quene with
her Ladyes repaired to see the Iustes, the trompettes blewe vp,
and in came many a noble man and Gentleman, rychely appeareiled,
takynge vp thir horses, after whome folowed certayne lordes
appareiled, they and thir horses, in cloth of Golde and russet and
tynsell; Knyghtes in cloth of Golde, and russet Veluet. And a
greate nomber of Gentlemen on fote, in russet satyn and yealow,
and yomen in russet Damaske and yealow, all the nether parte of
euery mans hosen Skarlet, and yealow cappes.
Then came the kynge vnder a Pauilion of golde, and purpul Veluet
embroudered, the compass of the Pauilion about, and valenced with
a flat, gold beaten in wyre, with an Imperiall croune in the top,
of fyne Golde, his bases and trapper of cloth of Golde, fretted
with Damask Golde, the trapper pedant to the tail. A crane and
chafron of stele, in the front of the chafro was a goodly plume
set full of musers or trimbling spangles of golde. After folowed
his three aydes, euery of them vnder a Pauilion of Crymosyn
Damaske & purple. The nomber of Gentlemen and yomen a fote,
appareiled in russet and yealow was clxviii. Then next these
Pauilions came xii chyldren of honor, sitting euery one of them on
a greate courser, rychely trapped, and embroudered in seuerall
deuises and facions, where lacked neither brouderie nor
goldsmythes work, so that euery chyld and horse in deuice and
fascion was contrary to the other, which was goodly to beholde.
Then on the counter parte, entered a Straunger, fyrst on
horsebacke in a long robe of Russet satyne, like a recluse or a
religious, and his horse trapped in the same sewte, without dromme
or noyse of mynstrelsye, puttinge a byll of peticion to the Quene,
the effect whereof was, that if it would please her to license hym
to runne in her presence, he would do it gladly, and if not, then
he would departe as he came. After his request was graunted, then
he put off hys sayd habyte and was armed at all peces with ryche
bases & horse, also rychely trapped, and so did runne his horse to
the tylte end, where dieurs men on fote appareiled in Russet satyn
awaited on him. Thereupon the Heraulds cryed an Oyez! and the
grownd shoke with the trompe of rushynge stedes. Wonder it were to
write of the dedes of Armes which that day toke place, where a man
might haue seen many a horse raysed on highe with galop, turne and
stoppe, maruaylous to behold. C.xiv staves were broke and the
kynge being lusty, he and the straunger toke the prices.
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