WT A MIDNIGHT RIDE WITH HENRY THE SECOND. ITH most of us grown-up people, our knowledge of history is rather a potential than a present knowledge. We know how to find something which, generally, will not be the something we especially want to find, in some book, about somebody in history. When I say 'grownup people,' of course I make an exception for the Civil Service Commissioners, and for the young men whom they examine, as these latter generally know a great deal about the names, dates, and facts in history, during the three months previous to their examination, and for some weeks afterwards. They soon, however, lapse into the state of ignorance or forgetfulness of the rest of us grown-up people. It is for this reason that I think it right to prefix some account of the historical personages who take part in the following conversation, and also to describe some of the circumstances in which that conversation is supposed to have taken place. Henry II. is, as far as I can discern, the greatest man who ever sat upon the throne of England. He was learned, eloquent, and, for a Plantagenet, very liberal in his views, a lover of justice, and a man who took a great, I might almost say a furious, interest in all the affairs of his kingdom. His was a most dramatic character. Influenced by every law of prudence, he was subject at the same time to every gust of passion. At times more politic than Philip II. of France, than Louis XI. of France, than Henry VII. of England, and than Ferdinand of Arragon, Henry's soul was swept over and desolated by passions which were unknown to those sovereigns. In his chamber he might have been seen gnawing the straw upon the floor, in the extremity of passion; while at a council or a conference, who so wily, and so self-restrained, as Henry Fitz-Empress? One of the With Henry, on the contrary, the The reader may be surprised at the character attributed to the Earl of Arundel in the following dramatic imaginary conversation. But when the writer was far more familiar than he is at present with the history of Henry II. he had come to the conclusion, or at least formed the fancy, probably on some good grounds, that this earl's character was of the kind described; that he was eloquent, learned, witty, brave, and unambitious. It is certain that he was the most eloquent man of his time in England; that, after Becket's death, he was Henry's most trusted friend; and it does not appear that he ever gained anything for himself, or cared to make a great figure in the world. When Henry attempted and succeeded in the relief of Verneuil, one of the most notable incidents in that king's contest with Philip of France, the Earl of Arundel, although the king was present-a man who could say a few strong words for himself— was entrusted to make the speech to the soldiery, and historians tell us that the speech produced a great and it was never to be known when effect. or where they would pounce down upon some rebellious province of their vast kingly estate, or upon some refractory great vassal of the John of Salisbury was the most learned Englishman of his time. He was foremost in all those branches of knowledge which were then in most repute with scholars: and he was even skilled in the mathematics of that day. He had been Thomas à Becket's chief friend, and one who had contended most for the potency of the miracles wrought at Becket's tomb. It may be considered as an instance of Henry II.'s unbounded forgivingness that John of Salisbury is found to be riding with the king on terms of amity with him. These midnight rides were frequent with the king, whose personal activity was something fearful. Indeed these Plantagenet kings were the greatest travellers of their age: crown. I suppose the following conversation to have taken place after the death of Henry's two elder sons, and that it immediately preceded the conference which he held at Gisors with Philip of France and Richard Cœur de Lion. At this conference the betrayal to him of his son John's treachery slew the great king, who, up to that moment, had believed in the love and fidelity of John. The terms offered by Count Richard's messenger are very nearly those which were most cruelly propounded by Richard to his sovereign and father at this memorable conference at Gisors. Time-about three o'clock in the morning. Place the high road from London to Canterbury. King Henry II. of England. Persons. The Earl of Arundel (his favourite minister) and other nobles. A body guard of a hundred horsemen, most of them knights of King The King, preceded by one horseman, is riding alone in front of the rest. Earl of Arundel. How moodily he rides along, and slowly too, which is not his wont. Father John. The saints be praised for it. I wot not how you men-at-arms like these midnight journeys, but to me it seems wicked waste of that good darkness which gives good Christians some repose. a Earl of Arundel. Aha, father! This is different work from abbot's ambling on bright summer days, to gain an appetite for the refection, which their reverend lordships do not consider to be the least happy event of the day. Father John. Profane gibing, Sir Earl, is that unlawful exercise of tongue in which the Earl of Arundel was ever noted for proficiency. I much misdoubt me if thy gibings have not had a very evil effect upon thy master. Earl of Arundel. Not a whit, not a whit! Our king borrows his thoughts from no man. Would that sometimes he did! And if you have Becket in your thoughts (I forget, I should have said Saint Thomas) I ever strove to keep peace between those two, bidding each note how each was but the counterpart of the other: how the king would have been the most turbulent priest in his dominions had he been priest instead of king; and how the priest, the most unpriest-led king, had he been king instead of priest. But that is the way of the world, that men hate those who are most like themselves. Father John. Wise in thy generation as the serpent-would I could add, great Earl, harmless as the dove. Earl of Arundel. We leave the harmlessness to priests and monks, my good father; and their sublime mildness and innocence have made the Christian world that enlarged dove-cot which it shows itself to be at present. Father John. Thy jeers are pointless, witty Earl. It is the temporal rulers-kings and statesmen-who disturb the world. What peace there is in it belongs to us; and is our doing. Earl of Arundel. I have made a bad choice amongst the paths of life. Indeed we mostly find when we have passed the meridian age of forty, that we have chosen the wrong path. I should have been a monk, and thou a man of arms. I am, as you would say, so little given to peace; and thou must own, Father John, that fighting with spears is such an innocent pastime compared with fighting with pens. Now that poor monk of Reading whom you King Henry. Arundel, Father John, come hither. I am now as a king should be, having, on my right hand, the wisest, and, on my left hand, the most learned, man in my dominions. I would fain have their aid in resolving a question which has much troubled my poor brain throughout this night. Is gratitude a monastic virtue ? Earl of Arundel. I regret that your Highness should have wasted upon such a theme thought which might, perhaps, have been better spent upon affairs of State. I have studied the rules of all the Orders, and I do not find any mention of this insignificant and worldly virtue, gratitude. So learned a sovereign must know that the word 'virtue' is Pagan, wholly Pagan. I can assure your Highness that that particular virtue is not recognisedin any of your monasteries. Father John. Sir Earl, your learning is of a lower hemisphere than that which is to be gained in the service of the Church. We do not know of virtues; your gibe is so far right; but we do know of graces, which include all virtues, though we name them not. If the world were Christian, there would be no such thing as gratitude. Earl of Arundel. It would be a pleasant world to live in, then. Father John. There would be no such thing as gratitude, I say, for all such minor feelings, duties, and affections would be absorbed in Christian love. King Henry. By the splendour of God (as my great-grandfather would have said) but the monk says well. Father John. There is no one who values praise from your highness more than I do; but it would be more welcome to my ears, if unaccompanied by any adjuration. King Henry. By our Lady of Fontevrault, but he has said well though, Arundel. Earl of Arundel. The subject of ingratitude, my liege, has doubtless been well thought over by most monks in our time. Father John. It may be presumptuous; but I think I see what the pregnant question of your Highness aims at; and I would humbly say, that there are sacred duties which supersede all gratitude to earthly personages. King Henry. The hearts of princes, my good father, are not read quite so easily as you would tell your beads. I was not thinking, as you suppose, of my old enemy and your old friend, the newly made saint; and, indeed, I am sure we are friends now. If Becket looks down upon me now, he pities me. We are like two mummers who have played the principal parts in a great world drama. One has been the Emperor, the other the Soldan; and fierce has been the battle between the two opponents; but the mumming is over, and they are brothers again, the chief result of all their labours and their struggles having been to amuse the populace. No: I was not thinking of my once-loved friend and comrade, Becket. No: nor as you suppose, Sir Earl, of my ungrateful children, as children, for when we think what a world it is into which we have brought our children, any conduct on their part to us cannot be held to be ingratitude. I was only thinking of my vassal for Aquitaine and Normandy, of Count Richard of Poitou-not of my son Richard of England. I have supported this vassal against France, against his own vassals, against his brothers: and now a common hatred makes France and Richard such loving friends, far more loving than brothers, that they have slept in the same room, shared the same couch-their nightly prayers, good youths, a litany of curses upon me, I doubt not. Was this ingratitude on Richard's part his exercise of duty to a higher power, Sir Monk? Would I had been a monk, for then I could always have reconciled my conscience to my conduct. These things are enough to make even a wise man foam at the mouth. Earl of Arundel. No, no, my liege, not a wise man. Shall I be permitted to lay before your highness a point of wisdom in which, to my poor thinking, the greatest men, even great kings, have proved to be deficient? King Henry. Certainly, Arundel. Nothing, I know, delights you more than to speak covertly against your king, and to twine your subtle cords of worldly wisdom into a scourge for him. Indeed, what are we kings Ut pueris placeas, et declamatio fias. And then, forsooth, we are set down in their chronicles-blackened or whitened, crows or doves-as their devious fancy guides their errant pens. And few such honest chroniclers there are as the good clerk' of our royal chapel, who, when describing his annals of our race says frankly of his work: Ne tot mançonge, ne tot voir.2 But who shall say, in after times, which is the mançonge and which the voir? You see, Sir Earl, if it pleased us, we could speak in your vein too. Proceed. Earl of Arundel. When Wisdom stings, she always gains the evil name of satire. What I would say, my liege, is this; and I presume to commend my saying to the especial notice of your highness. It is a pure waste of spiritual force to indulge in wrath that leads to nothing, and profits nothing. Wrath, to be of any use, should be spread over a large surface. Whereas there are those who lavishly consume it all at once, to their own detriment, who lose the command of themselves without gaining any command over other people. It is as when a torch is over-steeped with pitch, and it all flares up at once, creating danger for the present, and ensuring darkness for the future. Now your Highness has once already, since the commencement of our journey, called in the Fates and Furies (half-aside-How shall I trim 1 Robert Wace of Jersey. See Mackintosh's History of England, vol. i. p. 173. 'Not all lies, not all truth.' it into courtier phrase?) to avenge your cause, and curse with you; and there will doubtless be one or two more such happy meetings of passion and sorrow before we reach the place of conference, and meet King Philip and Prince Richard; thus wasting your royal health, so dear to all your subjects, and not the least so to one who rides beside you, though he is thought to be a hard man, and an unsparing councillor. Then, when by policy, or stratagem, or arms, the confederates lie at your mercy, who so meek and mild (fitter to be a monk than a monarch, that is if monks were what they ought to be), as King Henry? Now if a good wholesome turmoil of the blood had not been expended all at once, there might have remained sufficient passion to have sustained and directed policy. King Henry. And this is the way in which my clemency is misinterpreted! I scorn to trample upon son or foe (why should I make this difference?) when he is on the ground, and at my mercy. Besides, Sir Earl, I would be loved. I feel you smile, though the scant moonlight does not show it to me. Cold, irresponsive man! You can live without love! I cannot; and I am loved. There is Adelais, dear Adelais; there is Geoffrey, not the one that rebelled against me, but my Geoffrey, my own Geoffrey. Natural sons they call them, and properly; for what, in contrast, often are the others? And John too, John is mine. His gentle mother, my dear wife, has not been able to corrupt his fidelity to me— The Earl of Arundel backs his horse suddenly, plucks Father John by the sleeve, and whispers, For your life do not undeceive him. King Henry. What are you muttering there? Some sarcasm more biting than the rest. It must be bitter indeed if Arundel dares not give it ample utterance. The Earl of Arundel. The good father entirely agrees with me, your highness, and says that good wrath is too precious a thing to be thrown away. King Henry. You conspire against me, you two. For a brief moment you may retire, Father John, and instruct our men-at-arms in monkish lore. You will find you must begin at the beginning with them. (Father John retires.) A good man, and a learned man; but walled-in. Cloistered wisdom! This crusade, Arundel: it sits, like some foul nightmare, a weight of misery upon our soul. We are pledged to it; yes, we are pledged to it; but what a folly-the folly of giants, (a weak race, giants!) gigantic folly. There comes a madness on mankind-in each age an especial madness suited to the time -and even kings must bow to it, I fear. Expend your wit upon it, and not upon your king; and comfort me. The Earl of Arundel. Your highness's jester, Tom-of-the-Moat, a humorous fellow-such a one as I might have been myself had not my wit been spoilt by living too early with princes-has a little fable which he recites to us in the guard room on long evenings sometimes. King Henry. Tell it. The Earl of Arundel. I will, my liege; but pray do not construe it too closely, or give too much meaning to it. Whatever we men of wit say your jester and myselfpeople will make so much out of it, and thus our innocence is sadly misconstrued. King Henry. Proceed: we know all about your innocence. Earl of Arundel. There were seven simple shepherds who kept seven flocks of very simple sheep. Naturally enough, the shepherds fleeced the sheep themselves, and occasionally indulged in a bit of mutton; for what is the use of keeping sheep except you fleece and devour them occasionally? |