The Rival Heirs; being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune

saet - A. D. (Augustine David) Crake

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last
Chronicle of Aescendune, by A. D. Crake
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
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Title: The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune
Author: A. D. Crake
Release Date: September 5, 2004 [EBook #13375]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE RIVAL HEIRS ***
Produced by Martin Robb
THE RIVAL HEIRS:
Being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune;
by Rev. A. D. Crake.
PREFACE.
CHAPTER I. THE ANGLO-SAXON HALL.
CHAPTER II. THE BLACK AND DARK NIGHT.
CHAPTER III. THE WEDDING OF THE HAWK AND THE DOVE.
CHAPTER IV. THE NORMAN PAGES.
CHAPTER V. A FRAY IN THE GREENWOOD.
CHAPTER VI. A REVELATION.
CHAPTER VII. FRUSTRATED.
CHAPTER VIII. VAE VICTIS.
CHAPTER IX. A HUNT IN THE WOODS.CHAPTER X. EVEN THE TIGER LOVES ITS CUB.
CHAPTER XI. ALIVE--OR DEAD?
CHAPTER XII. THE ENIGMA SOLVED.
CHAPTER XIII. "COALS OF FIRE."
CHAPTER XIV. THE GUIDE.
CHAPTER XV. RESTORED TO LIFE.
CHAPTER XVI. RETRIBUTION.
CHAPTER XVII. THE ENGLISH HEIR TAKES POSSESSION.
CHAPTER XVIII. AT THE ABBEY OF ABINGDON.
CHAPTER XIX. AN INTERVIEW WITH THE CONQUEROR.
CHAPTER XX. THE MESSENGER FROM THE CAMP OF REFUGE.
CHAPTER XXI. TWO DOCUMENTS.
CHAPTER XXII. THE CHAPTER HOUSE OF ABINGDON.
CHAPTER XXIII. "GUILTY OR NOT GUILTY."
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CASTLE OF OXFORD.
CHAPTER XXV. IN THE FOREST OF LEBANON.
CHAPTER XXVI. "QUANTUM MUTATUS AB ILLO HECTORE."
CHAPTER XXVII. THE FRIENDS WHO ONCE WERE FOES.
CHAPTER XXVIII. AESCENDUNE ONCE MORE.
PREFACE.
This little volume, now presented to the indulgence of the reader, is the third of a series intended
to illustrate the history and manners of our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, whom a great historian very
appropriately names "The Old English:" it does not claim the merit of deep research, only of an
earnest endeavour to be true to the facts, and in harmony with the tone, of the eventful period of
"The Norman Conquest."
The origin of these tales has been mentioned in the prefaces to the earlier volumes, but may be
briefly repeated for those who have not seen the former "Chronicles." The writer was for many
years the chaplain of a large school, and it was his desire to make the leisure hours of Sunday
bright and happy, in the absence of the sports and pastimes of weekdays.
The expedient which best solved the difficulty was the narration of original tales, embodying themost striking incidents in the history of the Church and of the nation, or descriptive of the lives of
our Christian forefathers under circumstances of difficulty and trial.
One series of these tales, of which the first was Aemilius, a tale of the Decian and Valerian
persecutions, was based on the history of the Early Church; the second series, on early English
history, and entitled "The Chronicles of Aescendune."
The first of these Chronicles described the days of St. Dunstan, and illustrated the story of Edwy
and Elgiva; the second, the later Danish invasions, and the struggle between the Ironside and
Canute; the third is in the hands of the reader.
The leading events in each tale are historical, and the writer has striven most earnestly not to
tamper with the facts of history; he has but attempted to place his youthful readers, to the best of
his power, in the midst of the exciting scenes of earlier days--to make the young of the Victorian
era live in the days when the Danes harried the shires of Old England, or the Anglo-Saxon power
and glory collapsed, for the time, under the iron grasp of the Norman Conqueror.
Sad and terrible were those latter days to the English of every degree, and although we cannot
doubt that the England of the present day is greatly the better for the admixture of Norman blood,
nor forget that the modern English are the descendants of victor and vanquished alike,--yet our
sympathy must be with our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, in their crushing humiliation and bondage.
The forcible words of Thierry, in summing up the results of the Conquest, may well be brought
before the reader. He tells us that we must not imagine a change of government, or the triumph of
one competitor over the other, but the intrusion of a whole people into the bosom of another
people, broken up by the invaders, the scattered community being only admitted into the new
social order as personal property--"ad cripti glebae," to quote the very language of the ancient
acts; so that many, even of princely descent, sank into the ranks of peasants and artificers--nay,
of thralls and bondsmen--compelled to till the land they once owned.
We must imagine, he adds, two nations on the surface of the same country: the Normans, rich
and free from taxes; the English (for the term Saxon is an anachronism), poor, dependent, and
oppressed with burdens; the one living in vast mansions or embattled castles, the other in
thatched cabins or half-ruined huts; the one people idle, happy, doing nought but fight or hunt, the
other, men of sorrow and toil--labourers and mechanics; on the one side, luxury and insolence;
on the other, misery and envy,--not the envy of the poor at the sight of the riches of others, but of
the despoiled in presence of the spoilers.
These countries touched each other in every point, and yet were more distinct than if the sea
rolled between them. Each had its language: in the abbeys and castles they only spoke French;
in the huts and cabins, the old English.
No words can describe the insolence and disdain of the conquerors, which is feebly pictured in
the Etienne de Malville of the present tale. The very name of which the descendants of these
Normans grew proud, and which they adorned by their deeds on many a field of battle--the
English name--was used as a term of the utmost contempt. "Do you think me an Englishman?"
was the inquiry of outraged pride.
Not only Normans, but Frenchmen, Bretons--nay, Continentals of all nations, flocked into
England as into an uninhabited country, slew and took possession.
"Ignoble grooms," says an old chronicler, "did as they pleased with the best and noblest, and left
them nought to wish for but death. These licentious knaves were amazed at themselves; they
went mad with pride and astonishment, at beholding themselves so powerful--at having servants
iricher than their own fathers had been { }." Whatever they willed they deemed permissible to do;
they shed blood at random, tore the bread from the very mouths of the famished people, and took
iieverything--money, goods, lands { }. Such was the fate which befell the once happy Anglo-Saxons.
And it was not till after a hundred and forty years of slavery, that the separation of England from
Normandy, in the days of the cowardly and cruel King John, and the signing of Magna Carta,
gave any real relief to the oppressed; while it was later still, not till after the days of Simon de
Montfort, when resistance to new foreigners had welded Norman and English into one, that the
severed races became really united, as Englishmen alike. Then the greatest of the Plantagenets,
Edward the First, the pupil of the man he slew at Evesham, was proud to call himself an
Englishman--the first truly English king since the days of the hapless Harold; and one of whom, in
spite of the misrepresentations of Scottish historians and novelists, English boys may be justly
proud: his noble legislation was the foundation of that modern English jurisprudence, in which all
are alike in the eyes of the law.
Not long after came the terrible "hundred years war," wherein Englishmen, led by the
descendants of their Norman and French conquerors, retaliated upon Normandy and France the
woes they had themselves endured. Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt avenged Hastings; the siege
of Rouen under Henry the Fifth was a strange Nemesis. During that century the state of France
was almost as sad as that of England during the earlier period; it was but a field for English youth
to learn the arts of warfare at the expense of the wretched inhabitants.
But these events, sad or glorious, as the reader, according to his age, may consider them, were
long subsequent to the date of our tale; they may, however, well be before the mind of the
youthful student as he sighs over the woes of the Conquest.
Two remarks which the writer has made in the prefaces to the former Chronicles he will venture
to repeat, as essential to the subject in each case.
He has not, as is so common with authors who treat of this period, clothed the words of his
speakers in an antique phraseology. He feels sure that men and boys spoke a language as free
and easy in the times in question as our compatriots do now. We cannot present the Anglo-
Saxon or Norman French they really used, and to load the work with words culled from Chaucer
would be simply an anachronism; hence he has freely translated the speech of his characters
into the modern vernacular.
Secondly, he always calls the Anglo-Saxons as they called themselves, "English;" the idea
prevalent some time since, and which even f