The Fifth Queen Crowned
and made him think himself not so old a man--he delivered over to the
Earl Marshal forty Scots borderers and cattle thieves that had been
taken that summer. These men he had meant to have handed, pardoned, to
the Scots King when he met him. But the Earl Marshal set up, along the
road into Scotland, from where the stone marks the border, a row of
forty gallows, all high, but some higher than others; for some of the
prisoners were men of condition. And, within sight of a waiting crowd of
Scots that had come down to the boundaries of their land to view the
King of England, Norfolk hanged on these trees the forty men.
And, laughing over their shoulders at this fine harvest of fruit,
gibbering and dangling against the heavens on high, the King and his
host rode back into the Border country. It was pleasant to ride in the
summer weather, and they hunted and rendered justice by the way, and
heard tales of battle that there had been before in the north country.
But there was one man, Thomas Culpepper, in the town of Edinburgh to
whom this return was grievous. He had been in these outlandish parts now
for more than nineteen months. The Scots were odious to him, the town
was odious; he had no stomach for his food, and such clothes as he had
were ragged, for he would wear nothing that had there been woven. He was
even a sort of prisoner. For he had been appointed to wait on the King's
Ambassador to the King of Scots, and the last thing that Throckmorton,
the notable spy, had done before he had left the Court had been to write
to Edinburgh that T. Culpepper, the Queen's cousin, who was a dangerous
man, was to be kept very close and given no leave of absence.
And one thing very much had aided this: for, upon receiving news, or the
rumour of news, that his cousin Katharine Howard--he was her mother's
brother's son--had wedded the King, or had been shown for Queen at
Hampton Court, he had suddenly become seized with such a rage that,
incontinently, he had run his sword through an old fishwife in the
fishmarket where he was who had given him the news, newly come by sea,
thinking that because he was an Englishman this marriage of his King
might gladden him. The fishwife died among her fish, and Culpepper with
his sword fell upon all that were near him in the market, till, his heel
slipping upon a haddock, he fell, and was fallen upon by a great many
men.
He must stay in jail for this till he had compounded with the old
woman's heirs and had paid for a great many cuts and bruises. And Sir
Nicholas Hoby, happening to be in Edinburgh at that time, understood
well what ailed Thomas Culpepper, and that he was mad for love of the
Queen his cousin--for was it not this Culpepper that had brought her to
the court, and, as it was said, had aforetime sold farms to buy her food
and gowns when, her father being a poor man, she was well-nigh starving?
Therefore Sir Nicholas begged alike the Ambassador and the King of Scots
that they would keep this madman clapped up till they were very certain
that the fit was off him. And, what with the charges of blood ransom and
jailing for nine months, Culpepper had no money at all when at last he
was enlarged, but must eat his meals at the Ambassador's table, so that
he could not in any way come away into England till he had written for
more money and had earned a further salary. And that again was a matter
of many months, and later he spent more in drinking and with Scots women
till he persuaded himself that he had forgotten his cousin that was now
a Queen. Moreover, it was made clear to him by those about him that it
was death to leave his post unpermitted.
But, with the coming of the Court up into the north parts, his
impatience grew again, so that he could no longer eat but only drink and
fight. It was rumoured that the Queen was riding with the King, and he
swore a mighty oath that he would beg of her or of the King leave at
last to be gone from that hateful city; and the nearer came the King the
more his ardour grew. So that, when the news came that the King was
turned back, Culpepper could no longer compound it with himself. He had
then a plenty of money, having kept his room for seven days, and the
night before that he had won half a barony at dice from a Scots archer.
But he had no passport into England; therefore, because he was afraid to
ask for one, being certain of a refusal, he blacked his face and hands
with coal and then took refuge on a coble, leaving the port of Leith for
Durham. He had well bribed the master of this ship to take him as one of
his crew. In Durham he stayed neither to wash nor to eat, but, having
bought himself a horse, he rode after the King's progress that was then
two days' journey to the south, and came up with them. He had no wits
left more than to ask of the sutlers at the tail of the host where the
Queen was. They laughed at this apparition upon a haggard horse, and one
of them that was a notable cutpurse took all the gold that he had, only
giving him in exchange the news that the Queen was at Pontefract, from
which place she had never stirred. With a little silver that he had in
another bag he bought himself a provision of food, a store of drink, and
a poor Kern to guide him, running at his saddle-bow.
He saw neither hills nor valleys, neither heather nor ling: he had no
thoughts but only that of finding the Queen his cousin. At times the
tears ran down his begrimed face, at times he waved his sword in the air
and, spurring his horse, he swore great oaths. How he fared, where he
rested, by what roads he went over the hills, that he never knew.
Without a doubt the Kern guided him faithfully.
For the Queen, having news that the King was nearly come within a day's
journey, rode out towards the north to meet him. And as she went along
the road, she saw, upon a hillside not very far away, a man that sat
upon a dead horse, beating it and tugging at its bridle. Beside him
stood a countryman, in a garment of furs and pelts, with rawhide boots.
She had a great many men and ladies riding behind her, and she had come
as far as she was minded to go. So she reined in her horse and sent two
prickers to ask who these men were.
And when she heard that this was a traveller, robbed of all his money
and insensate, and his poor guide who knew nothing of who he might be,
she turned her cavalcade back and commanded that the traveller should be
borne to the castle on a litter of boughs and there attended to and
comforted until again he could take the road. And she made occasion upon
this to comment how ill it was for travellers that the old monasteries
were done away with. For in the old time there were seven monasteries
between there and Durham, wherein poor travellers might lodge. Then, if
a merchant were robbed upon the highways, he could be housed at
convenient stages on his road home, and might afterwards send recompense
to the good fathers or not as he pleased or was able. Now, there was no
harbourage left on all that long road, and, but for the grace of God,
that pitiful traveller might have lain there till the ravens picked out
his eyes.
And some commended the Queen's words and actions, and some few, behind
their hands, laughed at her for her soft heart. And the more Lutheran
sort said that it was God's mercy that the old monasteries were gone;
for they had, they said, been the nests for lowsels, idle wayfarers,
palmers, pilgrims, and the like. And, praise God, since that clearance
fourteen thousand of these had been hanged by the waysides for sturdy
rogues, to the great purging of the land.
II
In the part of Lincolnshire that is a little to the northeastward of
Stamford was a tract of country that had been granted to the monks of St
Radigund's at Dover by William the Conqueror. These monks had drained
this land many centuries before, leaving the superintendence of the work
at first to priors by them appointed, and afterwards, when the dykes,
ditches, and flood walls were all made, to knights and poor gentlemen,
their tenants, who farmed the land and kept up the defences against
inundations, paying scot and lot to a bailiff and water-wardens and
jurats, just as was done on the Romney marshes by the bailiff and jurats
of that level.
And one of these tenants, holding two hundred acres in a simple fee from
St Radigund's for a hundred and fifty years back, had been always a man
of the name of Hall. It was an Edward Hall that Mary Lascelles had
married when she was a maid at the Duchess of Norfolk's. This Edward
Hall was then a squire, a little above the condition of a groom, in the
Duchess's service. His parents dwelled still on the farm which was
called Neot's End, because it was in the angle of the great dyke called
St Neot's and the little sewer where St Radigund's land had its boundary
stone.
But in the troublesome days of the late Privy Seal, Edward Hall had
informed Throckmorton the spy of a conspiracy and rising that was
hatching amongst the Radigund's men a little before the Pilgrimage of
Grace, when all the north parts rose. For the Radigund's men cried out
and murmured amongst themselves that if the Priory was done away with
there would be an end of their easy and comfortable tenancy. Their rents
had been estimated and appointed a great number of years before, when
all goods and the produce of the earth were very low priced. And the
tenants said that if now the King took their lands to himself or gave
them to some great lord, very heavy burdens would be laid upon them and
exacted; whereas in some years under easy priors the monks forgot their
distant territory, and in bad seasons they took no rents at all. And
even under hard and exacting priors the monks could take no more than
their rentals, which were so small. They said, too, that the King and
Thomas Cromwell would make them into heathen Greeks and turn their
children to be Saracens. So these Radigund's men meditated a rising and
conspiracy.
But, because Edward Hall informed Throckmorton of what was agate, a
posse was sent into that country, and most of the men were hanged and
their lands all taken from them. Those that survived from the jailing
betook themselves to the road, and became sturdy beggars, so that many
of them too came to the gallows tree.
Most of the land was granted to the Sieur Throckmorton with the abbey's
buildings and tithe barns. But the Halls' farm and another of near three
hundred acres were granted to Edward Hall. Then it was that Edward Hall
could marry and take his wife, Mary Lascelles, down into Lincolnshire to
Neot's End. But when the Pilgrimage of Grace came, and the great risings
all over Lincolnshire, very early the rioters came to Neot's End, and
they burned the farm and the byres, they killed all the beasts or drove
them off, they trampled down the corn and laid waste the flax fields.
And, between two willow trees along the great dyke, they set a pole, and
from it they hanged Edward Hall over the waters, so that he dried and
was cured like a ham in the smoke from his own stacks.
Then Mary Lascelles' case was a very miserable one; for she had to fend
for the aged father and bedridden mother of Edward Hall, and there were
no beasts left but only a few geese and ducks that the rebels could not
lay their hands on. And the only home that they had was the farmhouse
that was upon Edward Hall's other farm, and that they had let fall
nearly into ruin. And for a long time no men would work for her.
But at last, after the rebellion was pitifully ended, a few hinds came
to her, and she made a shift. And it was better still after Privy Seal
fell, for then came Throckmorton the spy into his lands, and he brought
with him carpenters and masons and joiners to make his house fair, and