Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times

Title: Forest Days: A Romance of Old Times

Author: G. P. R. James

Release date: September 16, 2015 [eBook #49987] Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/49987

Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen from page scans provided by Google Books (the Bavarian State Library)

Transcriber's Notes: 1. Page scan source: Google Books https://books.google.com/books?id=5fZLAAAAcAAJ 2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].

COLLECTION

OF ANCIENT AND MODERN

BRITISH AUTHORS.

VOL. CCCLXXXVI.

FOREST DAYS

A ROMANCE OF OLD TIMES.

PRINTED BY CRAPELET, 9, RUE DE VAUGIRARD.

FOREST DAYS

A ROMANCE OF OLD TIMES.

BY G. P. R. JAMES,

AUTHOR OF "MORLEY ERNSTEIN," "THE ROBBER," ETC.

PARIS,

BAUDRY'S EUROPEAN LIBRARY,

3, QUAI MALAQUAIS, NEAR THE PONT DES ARTS; AND STASSIN ET XAVIER, 9, RUE DU COQ.

SOLD ALSO BY AMYOT, RUE DE LA PAIX; TRUCHY, BOULEVARD DES ITALIENS; BROCKHAUS AND AVENARIUS, RUE RICHELIEU; LEOPOLD MICHELSEN, LEIPZIG; AND BY ALL THE PRINCIPAL BOOKSELLERS ON THE CONTINENT.

1843.

TO

JAMES MILNES HASKILL, ESQ. M P. ETC.

MY DEAR SIR,

In offering you a book, which I fear is little worthy of your acceptance, and a compliment which has become valueless, I cannot help expressing my regret at having no other means of testifying my esteem and respect for one, who has not only always shown a most kindly feeling towards myself and my works, but has ever advocated the true interests of literature. You will, nevertheless, I am sure, receive the tribute not unwillingly, however inadequate it may be to convey my thanks for many an act of kindness, or to express a feeling of high esteem founded on no light basis.

In the volumes I send, you will find many scenes with which you are familiar, both in history and in nature; but one thing, perhaps, will strike you with some surprise. We have been so much accustomed, in ballad and story, to see the hero of the forest, Robin Hood, placed in the days of Richard I., that it will seem, perhaps, somewhat bold in me to depict him as living and acting in the reign of Henry III. But I think, if you will turn to those old historians, with whose writings you are not unfamiliar, you will find that he was, as I have represented, an English yeoman, of a very superior mind, living in the times in which I have placed him, outlawed, in all probability, for his adherence to the popular party of the day, and taking a share in the important struggle between the weak and tyrannical, though accomplished, Henry III., and that great and extraordinary leader, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.

In regard to the conduct of my story, I have nothing to say, but that I wish it were better. I think, however, that it will be found to contain some striking scenes of those times; and I trust that the struggle of feelings, depicted in the third volume, may afford you matter of some interest.

Believe me to be,

My Dear Sir,

With the highest esteem,

Your most faithful servant,

G. P. R. JAMES.

FOREST DAYS.

CHAPTER I.

Merry England!—Oh, merry England! What a difference has there always been between thee and every other land! What a cheerfulness there seems to hang about thy very name! What yeoman-like hilarity is there in all the thoughts of the past! What a spirit of sylvan cheer and rustic hardihood in all the tales of thy old times!

When England was altogether an agricultural land—when a rude plough produced an abundant harvest, and a thin, but hardy and generous peasantry, devoted themselves totally to the cultivation of the earth,—when wide forests waved their green boughs over many of the richest manufacturing districts of Great Britain, and the lair of the fawn and the burrow of the coney were found, where now appear the fabric and the mill, there stood, in a small town, or rather, I should call it, village, some fourteen miles from Pontefract, a neat little inn, well known to all the wayfarers on the road as a comfortable resting place, where they could dine on their journey to or from the larger city.

The house was constructed of wood, and was but of two stories; but let it not be supposed on that account that it was devoid of ornament, for manifold were the quaint carvings and rude pieces of sculpture with which it was decorated, and not small had been the pains which had been bestowed upon mouldings and cornices, and lintels and door-posts by the hand of more than one laborious artisan. Indeed, altogether, it was a very elaborate piece of work, and had probably been originally built for other purposes than that which it now served; for many were the changes which had taken place in that part of the country, as well as over the rest of England, between the days I speak of, and those of a century before.

Any one who examined the house closely, would have seen that it must have been constructed before the year 1180, for there was very strong proof, in the forms of the windows, and the cutting across of several of the beams which traversed the front, that at the period of its erection the use of glazed casements in private houses was not known. At the time I speak of, however, glass had become plentiful in England, and, though cottages were seldom ornamented with anything like a lattice, yet no house with the rank and dignity of an inn, where travellers might stop in rainy and boisterous weather, was now without windows, formed of manifold small lozenge-shaped pieces of glass, like those still frequently employed in churches, only of a smaller size.

The inn was a gay-looking, cheerful place, either in fine weather or in foul; for, as there are some men who, clothe them as you will, have a distinguished and graceful air, so are there some dwellings which look sunshiny and bright, let the aspect of the sky be what it will. The upper story of the house projected beyond the lower, and formed of itself a sort of portico, giving a shelter to two long benches placed beneath it, either from the heat of the summer sun, or the rain of the spring and autumn; and it need not be said that these benches formed the favourite resting place of sundry old men on bright summer evenings; and that many a time, in fine weather, a table would be put out upon the green before the house, the bench offering seats on one side, while settles and stools gave accommodation on the other, to many a merry party round the good roast beef and humming ale.

Before the door of the inn, spread out one of those pleasant open pieces of ground, which generally found room for themselves in every country village in England; on which the sports of the place were held; to which the jockey brought his horse for sale, and tried his paces up and down; on which many a wrestler took a fall, and cudgel-player got a broken head. There too, in their season, were the merry maypole and the dance, the tabor and the pipe. There was many a maiden wooed and won; and there passed along all the three processions of life—the infant to the font, the bride to the altar, the corpse to the grave.

Various were the memories attached to that village green in the hearts of all the neighbourhood; various were the associations which it called up in every bosom and various were the romances, probably much better worth listening to than this that we are going to tell, which that village green could have related. It had all the things pertaining to its character and profession: it had a dry, clear, sandy horse-road running at one side, it had two foot-paths crossing each other in the middle, it had a tall clump of elms on the south side, with a well, and an iron ladle underneath. It had a pond, which was kept clear by a spring at the bottom, welling constantly over at the side next the road, and forming a little rivulet, full of pricklebacks, flowing on towards a small river at some distance. It had its row of trees on the side next to the church, with the priest's house at the corner. The surface was irregular, just sufficiently so to let some of the young people, in any of their merry meetings, get out of sight of their

elders for a minute or two; and the whole was covered with that short, dry, green turf, which is only to be found upon a healthy sandy soil. In short, dear reader, it was as perfect a village green as ever was seen, and I should like very much, if such a thing were possible, to transport you and me to the bench before the inn door on some fine afternoon in the end of the month of June, and there, with a white jug of clear Nottingham ale before us, while the sun sunk down behind the forest, and the sky began to glow with his slant rays, to tell you the tale which is about to follow, marking in your face the signs of interest which you would doubtless show—the hope, the fear, the expectation, perhaps the smile of surprise, perhaps the glistening drop of sympathy—suffering you to interrupt and ask a question here and there, but not too often—forgiving a moment's impatience when the tale was dull, and thanking you in the end for your friendship towards the good and noble who lived and died more than five centuries ago.

In truth, reader, you know not what a pleasure there is—when the mind is clear from care or sorrow, the heart well attuned, the object a good one, and the tale interesting—you know not what a pleasure there is, to sit down and tell a long story to those who are worthy of hearing one.

And now, having made a somewhat wide excursion, and finding it difficult to get back again to the tale by any easy and gradual process, I will even in this place, close the first chapter, which, by your leave, shall serve for a Preface and Introduction both.

CHAPTER II.

It was in the spring of the year, somewhere about the period which good old Chaucer describes in the beginning of his Canterbury Tales,

"Whanne that April with his shoures sote, The droughte of March hath perced to the rote, And bathed every veine in swiche licour, Of whiche vertue engendred is the flow'r:"

it was also towards the decline of the day, and the greater part of the travellers who visited the inn for an hour, on their way homeward from the neighbouring towns, had betaken themselves to the road, in order to get under the shelter of their own roof ere the night fell, when, at one of the tables in the low-pitched parlour—the beams of which must have caused any wayfarer of six feet high to bend his head—might still be seen a man in the garb of a countryman, sitting with a great, black leathern jug before him, and one or two horns round about, besides the one out of which he himself was drinking.

A slice of a brown loaf toasted at the embers, and which he dipped from time to time in his cup, was the only solid food that he seemed inclined to take; and, to say sooth, it probably might not have been very convenient for him to call for any very costly viands—at least, if one might judge by his dress, which, though good, and not very old, was of the poorest and the homeliest kind—plain hodden-grey cloth, of a coarse fabric, with leathern leggings and wooden-soled shoes.

The garb of the countryman, however, was not the only thing worthy of remark in his appearance. His form had that peculiarity which is not usually considered a perfection, and is termed a hump; not that there was exactly, upon either shoulder, one of those large knobs which is sometimes so designated, but there was a general roundness above his bladebones—a sort of domineering effort of his neck to keep down his head—which gave him a clear title to the appellation of hunchback.

In other respects he was not an unseemly man—his legs were stout and well turned, his arms brawny and long, his chest singularly wide for a deformed person, and his grey eyes large, bright and sparkling. His nose was somewhat long and pointed, and was not only a prominent feature, but a very distinguished one in his countenance. It was one of those noses which have a great deal of expression in them. There was a good deal of fun and sly merriment about the corners of his mouth and under his eyelids, but his nose was decidedly the point of the epigram, standing out a sort of sharp apex to a shrewd, merry ferret-like face; and, as high mountains generally catch the sunshine either in the rise or the decline of the day, and glow with the rosy hue of morning before the rest of the country round obtains the rays, so had the light of the vine settled in purple brightness on the highest feature of his face, gradually melting away into a healthy red over the rest of his countenance.

He wore his beard close shaven, as if he had been a priest; but his eyebrows, which were very prominent, and his hair, which hung in three or four detached locks over his sun-burnt brow and upon his aspiring neck, though they had once been as black as a raven's wing, were now very nearly white.

With this face and form sat the peasant at the table, sopping his bread in the contents of his jug, and from time to time looking down into the bottom of the pot with one eye, as if to ascertain how much was left. He stirred not from his seat, nor even turned his head away from the window, though a very pretty girl of some eighteen years of age looked in at him from time to time, and his was a face which announced that the owner thereof had at one time of his life had sweet things to say to all the black eyes he met with.

At length, however, the sound of a trotting horse was heard, and the peasant exclaimed, eagerly—"Here, Kate! Kate!—you merry compound of the woman and the serpent, take away the jack; they're coming now. Away with it, good girl! I mustn't be found drinking wine of Bourdeaux. Give me a tankard of ale, girl. How does the room smell?"

"Like a friar's cell," said the girl, taking up the black jack with a laugh. "Grape juice, well fermented, and a brown toast beside."

"Get thee gone, slut!" cried the peasant, "what dost thou know of friars' cells? Too much, I misdoubt me. Bring the ale, I say—and spill a drop on the floor, to give a new flavour to the room."

"I'll bring thee a sprig of rue, Hardy," said the girl; "it will give out odour enough. Put it in thy posset when thou gett'st home; it will sweeten thy blood, and whiten thy nose."

"Away with thee," cried the man she called Hardy, "or I'll kiss thee before company."

The girl darted away as her companion rose from his seat with an appearance of putting, at least, one part of his threat in execution, and returned a minute after, bearing in her hand the ale he had demanded.

"Spill some—spill some!" cried the peasant. But as she seemed to think such a proceeding, in respect to good liquor, a sin and a shame, the peasant was obliged to bring it about himself in a way which the manners of those days rendered not uncommon.

The girl set down the tankard on the table, and, with her pretty brown fingers still wet with a portion of the ale which had gone over, bestowed a buffet on the side of the peasant's head which made his ear tingle for a moment, and then carefully wiped her mouth with the corner of her apron, as if to remove every vestige of his salute.

As nearly as possible at the same moment that she was thus clearing her lips, the feet of the horse which had been heard coming, stopped at the door of the inn; and loud applications for attendance called the girl away from her coquettish sparring with Hardy, who, resuming his seat, put the tankard of ale to his lips, and did not seem to find it unpalatable, notwithstanding the Bourdeaux by which it had been preceded. At the same time, however, a considerable change took place in his appearance. His neck became more bent, his shoulders were thrown more forward; he untied the points at the back of his doublet, so that it appeared somewhat too loose for his figure; he drew the hair, too, more over his forehead, suffered his cheeks to fall in, and by these and other slight operations he contrived to make himself look fully fifteen years older than he had done the minute before.

While this was going on, there had been all that little bustle and noise at the door of the inn which usually accompanied the reception of a guest in those days, when landlords thought they could not testify sufficient honour and respect to an arriving customer without mingling their gratulations with scoldings of the horse-boys and tapsters, and manifold loud-tongued directions to chamberlains and maids.

At length the good host, with his stout, round person clothed in close-fitting garments, which displayed every weal of fat under his skin, led in a portly well-looking man, of about thirty, or five-and-thirty years of age, bearing the cognizance of some noble house embroidered on his shoulder. He was evidently, to judge by his dress and appearance, one of the favourite servants of some great man, and a stout, frank, hearty, English yeoman he seemed to be; a little consequential withal, and having a decidedly high opinion of his own powers, mental and corporeal, but good-humoured and gay, and as ready to take as to give.

"Not come!" he said, as he entered, talking over his shoulder to the landlord—"not come! That is strange enough. Why, I was kept more than half an hour at Barnsley Green to be the judge of a wrestling match. They would have me, God help us, so I was afraid they would be here before me. Well, give us a stoup of good liquor to discuss the time; I must not say give it of the best—the best is for my lord—but I do not see why the second best should not be for my lord's man; so let us have it quick, before these people come, and use your discretion as to the quality."

The wine that he demanded was soon supplied, and being set upon the table at which the peasant was seated, the lord's man took his place on the other side, and naturally looked for a moment in the face of his table-fellow; while the landlord stood by, with his fat stomach, over-hanging the board, and his eyes fixed upon the countenance of his new guest, to mark therein the approbation of his wine which he anticipated. The lord's man was not slow in proving the goodness of the liquor; but, without employing the horn cup, which the host set down beside the tankard, he lifted the latter to his mouth, drank a good deep draught, took a long sigh, drank again, and then nodded his head to the landlord, with a look expressive of perfect satisfaction.

After a few words between my host and his guest, in which Hardy took no part, but sat with his head bent over his ale, with the look of a man both tired and weakly, the landlord withdrew to his avocations, and the lord's man, fixing his eyes for a moment upon his opposite; neighbour, asked, in a kindly but patronising tone—

"What have you got there, ploughman? Thin ale,—isn't it? Come, take a cup of something better, to cheer thee. These are bad times, ar'n't they? Ay, I never yet met a delver in the earth that did not find fault with God's seasons. Here, drink that; it will make your wheat look ten times greener! Were I a ploughman, I'd water my fields with such showers as this, taken daily down my own throat. We should have no grumbling at bad crops then."

"I grumble not," replied the hunchback, taking the horn, and draining it slowly, sip by sip, "my crops grow green and plentiful. Little's the labour that my land costs in tillage, and yet I get a fat harvest in the season; and moreover, no offence, good sir, but I would rather be my own man and Heaven's, than any other person's."

"Not if you had as good a lord as I have," answered the serving-man, colouring a little, notwithstanding. "One is as free in his house as on Salisbury-plain; it's a pleasure to do his bidding. He's a friend, too, of the peasant and the citizen, and the good De Montfort. He's no foreign minion, but a true Englishman."

"Here's his health, then," said the peasant. "Is your lord down in these parts?"