The national era. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1847-1860, 1855-03-22


fortune, or fate, which you will, thought fit to
take the whole matter into its own hands, and
to decide the much-vexed question of the
championship by the misstep of a stumbling
palfrey.
After having ridden all day long ON stout
surs-footed cob, which he had backed for ten
years, without knowing him to make solitary
blunder, marking trees for telling, and laying
out new plantations with his foresters, Sir Yvo
was vending his way toward the castle gates
across the great home park when, a small blind
ditch crossing his path, he put the pony at it in
q canter.
Startled by some deer, which rose up sud
denly out of the long fern, which grew thick
among the oak trees, the pony shyed, set his
forefeet in the middle of the DRAIN and came
down on his head, throwing his heavy rider
heavily on the hard-froze ground.
| A dislocated shoulder was the consequence
and, though it was speedily reduced, and no i'll
consequences followed, the surgeons declared
that it was impossible that the kaight should
support his armor, or WELD sword, within two
months; and thus, perforce, Guendolen had her
way; and it was decided that Aradas should be
admitted to the perilous distinction of main
| tanning the charge, in the wager of battle.
| Strange times! when to be permitted to en-
! gage In conflict, in which there was no alter
| native but victory, or infamy and death, was
| esteemed favor and was sought for, as boon,
not by strong men and soldiers only, but by
delicate and gentle girls, in behalf of their be-
trothed lovers, as a mode of winning los on
earth, and glory everlasting in the heavens.
Yet so it was; and when it was told to Guen-
dolen, that her lover was nominated to that
dreadful enterprise, blush, indeed, mantled
to her cheek, and a thrill ran through all her
quivering frame, and an unbidden tear trembled
in her beautiful clear eye; but the blush, and
the thrill, and the tear, were of pride and ex-
element, not of fear compassion; and the
lady never slept sounder or more sweetly than
on that eventful night, when she learned that,
beyond peradventure, her true love would be
| sleeping, within ten little days, under bloody
and dishonorabe sod, or living, the winner of
those golden spurs and of her own peerless
beauties.
There was, however, a strange mixture of
simple and feSyent faith in those days, with an
infinitely larger amount of coarse and open
wickedness, violence, and vice, than, perhaps,
ever prevailed in any other age. And while
the moral restraint On mems conduct and ac-
tions, arising from sense of future response
bility and retribution, was vastly inferior to
what now exists, owing to the open sale of in
dulgences, absolutions, and dispensations, and
the other abominable corruptions of the Ro-
| mish church, the belief in temporal judgments,
and the present interference Of divine Justice
in the affairs of men, was almost universal.
Infdelity in those days was madness utterly
unknown; and an atheist, materalist or any
phase of what we now call freethinker, would
have been regarded with greater wonder than
| the strangest physical monster. 1t is not too
much to say, that there were not in that day
| twenty men in England, who did not believe in
the real efficacy of the ordeals, whether by wa
ter, hre, or battle in discovering the truth, or
| one in thousand who would not be half de-
feated, before entering the lists, by the belief
| that God was fighting against him, or strength
| ened to victory BIZ the confidence that his cause
was just.
One of these one men in a thousand it was,
however, about to be the fortune of Aradas de
Radcliffe to encounter, in the person of Sir
Foulke dolly; but this he neither knew, nor
| would have thought of twice, had he known it.
However hardened the heart of his adversary
| might be by the petrifying effects of habitual
vice, however dulled his conscience by impuni-
| ty and arrogance and selfrelying contumacy,
| his own was so strongly panoplied in conscious
honesty, so bucklered by confidence in his own
good cause, so puissant by faith in God, that
he 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
tho lady of his love, in whom, to her faith in
divine justice, to her absolute conviction of
dOillys damning guilt, was added that over
weening confidence in her lovers absolute SUI
periority, not only to all other men in general,
but to every other man individually, which was
common 10 love-sck ladies in those days of
romance and chivalry.
Rot &.
there cause to do so, for the days flew; until,
after leaving Kendall Castle, the old fortalice of
4vo de Taillebois, who, coming in with the
Conqueror, had welded the sister of the Earls
Morcar and Edwin, whence they took their de-
parture as so much nearer to their destination,
and travelling four pleasant winter days round
the head of Morecambe bay, they entered the old
town of Lancaster. Sir Yvo de Taillebois was
borne in horse-litter, in consequence of his
| accident, at the head of dozen knights, his
vassal,, all armed cap-a-pie and hundred
| spears of men-at-arms followed, with thrice as
many of the already famous Kendall archers,
| escorting long train of htters conveying the
| lady and her female attendants, and a vet
longer array of sumpter mules and pack horses.
The town was already crowded but for a
| party so distinguished as that of Sir Yvo de
| Taillebois High Sheriff of the Northwestern
| counties, and chief local officer of the crown,
apartments were prepared in the castle, adioin-
ing those of the high justiciary and the timer
ant or, as we should now call them, circuit
judges; while his train easily found 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
magnihcence of scarlet and ermine, emblemat-
&c of judicial purity, but unencumbered by the
hidoous perukes of horse hair which later ages
have devised for the Disagreement of forensic
dignitaries, the high justiciary, Ranuf de Clan
vile, followed by his five associate judges, pro-
ceeded to the superb oak-wainscoted and oak
groined hall, in which it was used to hold the
sittings of "the Kings court" at that time the
highest tribunal in the realm.
Ibis noble apartment which was above a
hundred feet in length by half that width, and
! measured sixty feet from the floor to the spring
OF the open arches, independent of the octagon
lanthorn in the centre, beneath which burned
nearly ton of charcoal, in superb brazier
OF carved bronze, was crowded-ffom the floor to
the light, flying galleries, with all the flower of
the Northern counties, ladies as well as knights
and mobiles, attracted by one of those untracea-
bic but ubiquitous rumors, which so often pre-
cede remarkable events, to the effect that some
| thing of more than ordinary moment was like
ly to occur at the present assize. Among this
| noble assemblage, all of whom rose to their
| feet, with heavy rustic of furred and embroid-
cred robes, and a suppressed murmur of ap-
plause, as the judges entered, conspicuous on
the right-hand side of the nave was Sir Foulke
dolly, attended. by two or three barons and
bannerets of his Immediate train, and not less
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