CHAPTER II.

THE COMING WAR.

Ha! majesty! how high thy glory towers,
When the rich blood of kings is set on fire.
O! now doth death line his dead chaps with steel,
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs,
And now he feasts, mouthing the flesh of men,
In undetermined difference of kings.

God shall mend my soul,

SHAKSPERE.

You'll make a mutiny among my guests.

IBID.

THE period in which we have introduced some of the dramatis personæ of our story upon the scene, was that portion of John's reign, in which Philip the Fair, of France, espousing the cause of the nephew of the English monarch, laid claim in his behalf to the crown of England, together with the

territories of Ireland, Poictiers, Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, bidding the haughty, vindictive, and unscrupulous John to lay aside the sword :

"That swayed usurpingly these several titles,

And put the same into young Arthur's hand."

It was this somewhat inconsiderate and unweighing demand of the French King, which had caused the sudden rumour of war we have already seen to have reached, by an armed post, the interior of the Isle of Thanet.

The English power was, indeed, on this occasion, like lightning in the eyes of France;" for almost ere the defiance of John had reached the French court, the interruption of his churlish drums, sounding in the vasty fields of France, awoke endeavour for defence. The haughty embassy of Philip had chafed the fierce Norman's blood; and to the threat of war held out, in case John refused to allow the title of Arthur of Bretagne, he carried his own answer, backed by thrice fifteen thousand hearts of England's breed.

It was upon this occasion that John first gave evidence of a spirit and a resolution-a boldness and a celerity which at intervals he displayed in after-life; and which, by reminding the English people of his brother Richard, attached them to his rule. Unfortunately for the man, his passions were stronger than his judgment, and his pleasures were held in greater immediate account than his present reputation or future fame; otherwise there was stuff in him out of which a greater man even than the hero of the lion-heart might have been formed. It is impossible to doubt or to deny that, in addition to his own sins, the sins of his kindred,—as was afterwards the case with Charles 1.—were visited upon him. Direct lineal descent was not so much insisted upon in that age, but the people could not forget that the son of his elder brother Geoffrey existed, and that the monarch to whom they paid homage was an usurper. They now remembered the inhuman manner in which the three brothers, Geoffrey, Richard, and their present King, had rebelled

against their father, the great Henry II., a remembrance which had lain dormant whilst Richard occupied the throne, whose social qualities, whose courtesy, and above all, whose bravery, which was indeed heroic, endeared him to his countrymen.

During the reign of Richard, the land had slept with a sense of comparative security. Although he had reigned ten years, hardly twelve months of which were passed in his native country, such was the prestige of his name, that, spite of the tyranny of Longchamp and the regency of John, England was, to use a common phrase, "well to do." There was that feeling in the breast of every Englishman, which Shakspere has so well expressed from the mouth of one of our characters, the heroic Faulconbridge:

nought shall make us rue,

If England to itself do rest but true."

Now, however, in the reign of John, a dif

ferent epoch had arrived.

All was gloomy fore

boding and threatened insecurity throughout the land. Access even to the stronghold of the barons was not easy, except for occasional tournaments and short revels. Ladies, even of the higher ranks, in that unsafe time, were almost as much confined by the care of fathers, as in the East by the jealousy of husbands. The young knight could but rarely steal a glance at the damsel of his own age, and hence women were regarded with a devotional admiration unknown in modern times.

The news of the coming war, meanwhile, spread like wildfire through the Isle of Thanet. Although communication between town and town was both difficult and dangerous, such was its import to the shores of Thanet, that it flew from mouth to mouth like the fiery cross of later days. The palmer, with his cockled hat and staff, carried it to the monastery and hamlet as he wended his painful way-the minstrel sang it in the baronial hall-the mendicant coupled it with his petition for alms, and, as post after post came tiring on, furnished with