Chapter 10: The Prince Avenged.
Paul Stukely lived to see the foul crime that stained the victor'slaurels on the field of Tewkesbury amply avenged upon the House ofYork in the days that quickly followed.
He himself was carried away by his faithful men-at-arms, who sawthat their cause was finally lost; and when, many weeks later, theraging fever which held him in its grasp abated, and he knew oncemore the faces of those about him, and could ask what had befallenhim, he found that he had been carried away to his own small manor,bestowed upon him by the great Earl of Warwick--which manor,perhaps from its very obscurity and his own, was left quietly inhis hands; for its late owner had fallen upon the field ofTewkesbury, and no claim was ever made which disturbed Paul frompeaceful possession.
When he recovered his senses it was to hear that not only theprince was dead, but his royal father also; that the queen, asMargaret was still called by him, had returned to France; and thatthe cause of the Red Rose was hopelessly extinguished. So Paul,with the hopefulness which is the prerogative of youth, recoveredby degrees from the depression of spirit that the memory of thetragedy of Tewkesbury cast over him, and learned by degrees to takea healthy interest in his little domain, which he ruled wisely andkindly, without meddling in public matters, or taking part in theburning questions of the day. To him Edward always was and alwaysmust be a cruel tyrant and usurper; but as none but princes of theHouse of York were left to claim the succession to the crown, therecould be no possible object in any renewal of strife.
Paul, in his quiet west-country home, watched the progress ofevents, and saw in the tragedies which successively befell thescions of the House of York the vengeance of Heaven for the foulmurder of the young Lancastrian prince.
The Duke of Clarence, who had been one of the first to strike him,fell a victim to the displeasure of the king, his brother, and wassecretly put to death in the Tower. Although Edward himself died anatural death, it was said that vexation at the failure of some ofhis most treasured schemes for the advancement of his children cuthim off in the flower of his age. And a darker fate befell his ownyoung sons than he had inflicted upon the son of the rival monarch:for Edward of Lancaster had died a soldier's death, openly slain bythe sword in the light of day; whilst the murderer's children weredone to death between the stone walls of a prison, and for yearstheir fate was shrouded in terrible mystery.
The next death in that ill-omened race was that of King Richard'sown son, in the tenth year of his age. As Duke of Gloucester, hehad stood by to see the death of young Edward, even if his hand hadnot been raised to strike him. He had then forced into reluctantwedlock with himself the betrothed bride of the murderedprince--the unhappy Lady Anne. He had murdered his brother'schildren to raise himself to the throne, and had committed manyother crimes to maintain himself thereon; and his own son--anotherEdward, Prince of Wales--was doomed to meet a sudden death, calledby the chroniclers of the time "unhappy," as though some strange orpainful circumstance attached to it, in the absence of both hisparents: and lastly, the lonely monarch, wifeless and childless,was called upon to reap the fruits of the bitter hostility anddistrust which his cruel and arbitrary rule had awakened in thebreasts of his own nobles and of his subjects in general.
Paul Stukely, now a married man with children of his own growing upabout him, watched with intense interest the course of publicevents; and when Henry of Richmond--a lineal descendant of Edwardthe Third by his son John of Gaunt--landed for the second time tohead the insurrection against the bloody tyrant, Sir Paul Stukelyand a gallant little following marched amongst the first to joinhis standard, and upon the bloody field of Bosworth, Paul felt thathe saw revenged to the full the tragedy of Tewkesbury.
He was there, close beside Henry Tudor, when the last franticcharge of the wretched monarch in his despair was made, and whenRichard, after unhorsing many amongst Henry's personal attendantsin order to come to a hand-to-hand combat with his foe, witnessedthe secession from his ranks of Sir William Stanley, and fell,crying "Treason, treason!" with his last breath. He who hadobtained his crown by treachery, cruelty, and treason of theblackest kind, was destined to fall a victim to the treachery ofothers. As Paul saw the mangled corpse flung across a horse's backand carried ignominiously from the field, he felt that the God ofheaven did indeed look down and visit with His vengeance those whohad set at nought His laws, and that in the miserable death of thislast son of the House of York the cause of the Red Rose was amplyavenged.
A few years later, in the bright summertide, when the politic ruleof Henry the Seventh was causing the exhausted country to recoverfrom the ravages of the long civil war, Sir Paul Stukely and histwo sons, fine, handsome lads of ten and twelve years old, weremaking a little journey (as we should now call it, though it seemeda long one to the excited and delighted boys) from his pleasantmanor near St. Albans through a part of the county of Essex.
Paul had prospered during these past years. The king had rewardedhis early fealty by a grant of lands and a fine manor near to St.Albans, whither he had removed his wife and family, so as to bewithin easy reach of them at such times as he was summoned by theking to Westminster. The atmosphere of home was dearer to him thanthat of courts, and he was no longer away from his own house thanhis duty to his king obliged him to be. But he had been muchengaged by public duties of late, and the holiday he had promisedhimself had been long in coming. It had been a promise of somestanding to his two elder sons, Edward and Paul, that he would takethem some day to visit the spots which he talked of when theyclimbed upon his knee after his day's work was done to beg for thestory of "the little prince," as they still called him. Paulhimself was eager again to visit those familiar haunts, and see ifany of those who had befriended the homeless wanderer were livingstill, and would recognize the bronzed and prosperous knight oftoday.
And now they were entering a familiar tract; and the father toldhis boys to keep their eyes well open, for the village of MuchWaltham could not be far off and every pathway in this part of theforest had been traversed by him and the prince in the days thathad gone by.
"I hear the sound of hammering," cried the younger Paul in greatexcitement soon. "O father, we must be getting very near! It islike a smith's forge. I am sure it must be Will Ives or his father.Oh, do let us ride on quickly and see!"
The riders pressed onward through the widening forest path, and,sure enough, found themselves quickly in the little clearing whichsurrounded the village of Much Waltham. How well the elder Paulremembered it all! the village church, the smithy, and the lowthatched cottages, the small gardens, now brighter than he had seenthem in the dreary winter months; the whole place wearing an air ofincreased comfort and prosperity.
The flame within the forge burned cheerily, and revealed an activefigure within, hard at work over some glowing metal, which emittedshowers of brilliant sparks. Sir Paul rode forward and paused atthe door with a smile of recognition on his face. The smith cameforward to see if the traveller required any service of him, butwas somewhat taken aback by the greeting he received.
"Well, worthy Will Ives, time has dealt more kindly with you thanwith me, I trow. You are scarce a whit changed from the day,seventeen years back come November, when I first stopped in sorryplight at this forge, with your pretty wife as my companion, to getyour assistance as far as Figeon's Farm. Why, and here is MistressJoan herself; and I warrant that that fine lad is the son of bothof you.
"Good Even to you, fair mistress!--Last time we met we scarcethought that so many years would roll by before I should pay theseparts a visit. But fortune's wheel has many strange turns, and Ihave been dwelling in regions far remote from here. But these ladsof mine have given me no peace until I should bring them on a visitto Much Waltham and Figeon's Farm. I trust that I shall find allthe dwellers there hale and hearty as of yore, and that death haspassed this peaceful place by, whilst he has been so busyelsewhere."
Great was the excitement of the place when it was realized by theinhabitants that this fine knight,
who rode with half-a-dozenmen-at-arms in his company, and two beautiful boys at his side, wasnone other than the Paul Stukely that the men and women of theplace remembered, and the children spoke of as of the hero of someromance dear to their hearts. The news flew like wildfire throughthe village, and old and young came flocking out to see, till theknight was the centre of quite a little crowd, and the excited anddelighted boys were hearing the familiar story again and again fromthe lips of these friendly strangers.
When at length the little cavalcade moved up the gentle slopetoward Figeon's Farm, quite a large bodyguard accompanied it. Joanherself walked proudly beside the knight, who had given his horsein charge to his servant, and was on foot as he trod the familiartrack; and she was listening with flushing and paling cheek to thetale of Tewkesbury, whilst the boys were asking questions ofeverybody in the little crowd, and eagerly pushing on ahead to getthe first sight of the farm that had twice sheltered their fatherin the hour of his need.
The old people were living yet, though infirm and feeble, and moredisposed to spend the day in the armchairs, beside the blazing firein the inglenook, than to stir abroad or carry on any activeoccupation at home. Jack Devenish and his wife, Eva, managed thehouse and farm, and brought up their sturdy and numerous family soas to be a credit to the old name. It was Jack himself who camehurrying out to meet his guests--a rumour of their approach havinggone on before--whilst his smiling wife stood in the door way towelcome in the bronzed knight, whom once she had rescued from suchpitiful plight and from deadly danger.
What a welcome it was that they got from all at Figeon's Farm! andhow delightful to the boys to run all over the house--to see theroom in which their father had slept, the window from which he hadflung the robber who had come to carry away Mistress Joan, and thelittle sliding panel behind which the recess lay that had been soluckily emptied of its treasure before the search party came!
Then, on the next day, there was the Priory to visit, and BrotherLawrence to claim acquaintance with, and a long ride through theforest to be made to visit the cave at Black Notley, where Paul hadonce been dragged a prisoner, and had been so roughly handled bythe robbers. The days were full of excitement and pleasure to thetwo lads, and scarcely less so to Paul himself, save for the faintflavour of melancholy which could not but at times assail him inrecalling the episode of his romantic friendship with Edward,Prince of Wales.
And when they returned home at last to tell their adventures towife and mother, they left behind them in Much Waltham manysubstantial proofs of the gratitude the Stukelys must ever feel forthe protection accorded by its inhabitants in past days to the headof the house; and round the firesides in cottage and farm there wasfor many long years no more favourite story told by the old folksto the eager children than the tale of adventure, peril, anddevotion in the days of the Wars of the Roses, which went by thename, in that place, of "The Story of Paul and the Prince."
Notes.
{1} Lichfield had the right in these days of calling itself a county.
In the Wars of the Roses: A Story for the Young Page 11