Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter. Edgar John George

hospitality. Gold and land were everything. A man born a ceorl might rise to be an earl, and lead armies; while men whose fathers had been princes, if they became poor, sank into contempt, and sometimes descended to the rank of ceorl. The downfall of the Icinglas had not been so humiliating; and at the time of the Conquest they found themselves possessed of a small estate and an unpretending house on the borders of the great forest of Middlesex, where for generations they vegetated, taking no part in political movements or conspiracies, but brooding over their wrongs, real or imaginary, consoling themselves with their hereditary traditions, sneering at the new men by whose lands their little domain was encompassed, and looking very contemptuously from among their trees on that world in which they were precluded from acting a part.

      But once attracted from obscurity by King Henry, the Icinglas underwent a marvellous change. Steady of heart, strong of hand, and with a natural sagacity which contact with the world soon brightened into political intelligence, they were just the men whom the Plantagenet kings delighted to honour, and in all their struggles they served Henry and his son, Richard Cœur de Lion, with courage and fidelity. Nor did their services go unrewarded. On returning from his crusade and his captivity, Richard gave Edric Icingla the hand of Isabel de Moreville, an heiress of that great Norman family which in the twelfth century held baronies on both sides of the Tweed; and the Anglo-Saxon warrior, having fought well for the lion-hearted king on many a field, died bravely under his banner in the last battle in which he encountered Philip Augustus.

      Four sons had blessed the union of Edric Icingla and Isabel de Moreville, and it seemed that fortune was at length inclined to favour that ancient Saxon line. Death, however, claimed three of the sons as its prey while they were yet in childhood, and when Isabel found herself a widow, only the youngest – Oliver by name – survived to cheer her hopes and demand her vigilance. And it soon looked as if the boy had not been born under a lucky star. Early in the reign of King John, when the strong hand was the most convincing argument, Hugh de Moreville, his maternal kinsman, claimed him as a ward, and contrived, as the lad’s guardian, to possess himself of the castles of Chas-Chateil and Mount Moreville, and the many rich manors which his mother had inherited; and so weak was the law in enforcing the claims of the unprotected against barons who recognised no law but the length of their swords, and no other rule of conduct save when under the influence of remorse, that the idea of Hugh de Moreville ever restoring them to the rightful heir was one hardly to be entertained. It was not, however, impossible; and Dame Isabel Icingla, without ceasing to cherish hope of one day seeing justice done to her son, passed her life – solitary and somewhat sad – in the queer old house under whose roof the Icinglas had for generations sat secure while dynasties were changing and political storms were raging around them.

      Very soon after the death of her husband, Dame Isabel took the vow of perpetual widowhood, and assumed the russet gown to indicate to the world that her resolution not to venture again on matrimony was fixed. Her whole interest therefore centred in her son, and her whole attention was given to render him worthy of his name and birth. Not that this lady sympathised strongly with the traditions and sentiments of the family into which she had married. Far from it. She was Norman in everything but the name. Her features, her heart, her prejudices, and her opinions were all such as distinguished the conquering race; and if Oliver Icingla had – to use the homely phrase – “taken after his mother,” he would have presented a very different appearance from that which he did present when introduced to the reader in the streets of ancient London, and he would have expressed very different sentiments from those which he did express in his brief, but not unimportant, conversation with Constantine Fitzarnulph.

      But Oliver was an Icingla in look, and thought, and word, and enthusiastic for the race to which he belonged; but, given to reflection and contemplation, he well knew, young though he was, that all violent attempts to better the condition of the English could only end in failure and ruin, and that the rise of the Anglo-Saxons – if they were to rise – could only be accomplished by patience and by gradual degrees. In the struggle which was impending between a Plantagenet king and the Norman barons, he would never, if free to act on his own impulses and reason, have hesitated to adhere to the crown; and the only mortification which he felt was that he was to be conducted to the Tower as a hostage – perhaps to become a prisoner, and even a victim – when he would have gone thither voluntarily to offer his sword to fight for the crown which had been worn by Alfred the Great and Edward the Holy. Dame Isabel did not, however, take the same view of the question; and when informed that Oliver, so lately freed from captivity, was required as a hostage, she wrung her hands and looked the picture of woe.

      “Alas, alas!” she exclaimed, raising her eyes towards heaven, “what sin have my ancestors committed, that I am required to surrender mine only son into the keeping of a man whose hands are red with the blood of his own nephew?”

      “Fear not for me, lady and mother,” exclaimed Oliver, touched with her grief. “I shall be as secure in the king’s palace as in our own ancient hall, and I doubt not as kindly treated; for, doubtless, King John knows better what a stout warrior is worth than to do aught to forfeit his claim to the service of the sword with which Edric Icingla cut his way to fame and fortune.”

      CHAPTER III

      AN UNBIDDEN GUEST

      OAKMEDE, the home of the Icinglas, was situated fully twelve miles to the north of ancient London; and though Oliver, after passing the Priory of the Knights of St. John, and the great suburban mansion of the De Clares, at Clerkenwell, spurred on his black steed – which, somewhat fancifully, he had named Ayoub, after the father of the Sultan Saladin – the sun had long set, and darkness had overshadowed the earth, ere he drew near to the dwelling of his fathers.

      It was not altogether pleasant to be abroad and unattended under such circumstances, for the robber and the outlaw, then numerous in England, haunted the neighbourhood of the metropolis, as many a benighted wayfarer knew to his cost. But Oliver thought little of danger from robber or outlaw, so much occupied was his mind with the perils he was likely to encounter in his capacity of hostage for Hugh de Moreville, a man whom he doubted and dreaded. Notwithstanding the tone he had assumed in conversing with Constantine Fitzarnulph, Oliver did not relish the prospect that lay before him; and the idea of a long captivity – supposing that to be the worst – desolated his soul. Moreover, the fate of the Welsh hostages to whom Fitzarnulph had alluded recurred to his memory, and he almost felt inclined to fly. Indeed, he could not but perceive that De Moreville would certainly benefit by his death, and that it was the interest of the Norman baron to get rid of a person whose claims to the castle and baronies which he held for the present might one day become irresistible.

      It was with such gloomy thoughts haunting his mind that Oliver Icingla rode homewards over ground hard as iron, for the frost was so keen that in many places the Thames was frozen over. The moon had risen, and was shining through the leafless trees on the grass, as he turned out of what is now the great north road, and dashed into the woodland that skirted the great forest of Middlesex, crossed, not without difficulty, a brook covered with ice slippery as glass, descried lights in the distance, and, riding down a glade that served as an avenue, approached Oakmede. Lights glimmered from the outhouses and the orchard, and an alarm-bell was ringing; for the hinds, as was their custom on that night, were wassailing the fruit-trees with cyder, and wishing them health in the coming year, and the bell was rung to scare away the demons while the process was going on.

      Oakmede, notwithstanding the changes that for a century and a half had been taking place in the architecture and domestic life of England, stood in very much the same condition as it had done at the time of the Conquest, and said little for the taste or the ambition of its owners. It was a rude structure, partly of timber, partly of brick, with several outbuildings and a large courtyard, to which there was access by strong wooden gates – the whole being surrounded with a deep ditch or fosse, fortified with palisades. But such as the place was, the Icinglas had ever been proud to call it their own; and with a degree of satisfaction which he might not have felt if it had been the haughtiest and strongest of feudal castles, like Lewes, or Warwick, or Kenilworth, Oliver halted and wound his horn. After a little delay the drawbridge was lowered, and he rode through the great wooden gate into the courtyard, and dismounted at the door. As he did so he was met by a boy of sixteen, whose dress of scarlet, striped with yellow, was such as to make the squire stare