least homogeneous. "The sums," writes Walsingham, himself a monk at St. Alban's and the abbot's biographer, "the sums which Abbot Thomas spent at Rome would have been incredible, nisi nota fuit omnibus avaritia ejusdem curiæ, had not the avarice of the Papal court been so notorious." Cupidity grew by what it fed on. The fees for St.

Alban's having been paid, a second charge was presented for the vacancy which the abbot had made at Tynemouth. It was without precedent; but the Pope threatened if the claim was resisted to appoint to Tynemouth himself by Provisor. Fusa est immensa pecunia-an immense sum of money had to go before the matter could be settled. But the abbot was firm, and at last, servatus est locus ille a prædationibus Harpyiarum, the priory was rescued from the Harpies' claws. Nothing can show more clearly than these words of Walsingham the real attitude of the Church of England towards its Italian head. The statute of Provisors, which was passed shortly after, to put an end to such exactions, was no more than a formal expression of resentment on the part of the clergy at a system of unendurable extortion.

New brooms sweep clean. Abbot Thomas, like most of his predecessors, began with attempts at reformation. He perhaps succeeded unusually well, for Edward the Third employed him soon after to visit other abbeys which were under crown jurisdiction, ad reformandam religionem poene collapsam in magnis monasteriis-to restore religion, which in the large monasteries had almost fallen to ruin. The abbeys of Abingdon, Battle and Reading were purged of gross scandals. The Abbot of Chester, who was exceptionally vicious, was deposed from office. Reforms, however, when institutions are worn out, are like the patch of new cloth on an old garment. The monks were so little used to discipline that they could not or would not bear it. Of the younger brethren many apostatized, deserted their order, and returned to the world.*

I Note. Some of them went in search of a purer life than could be found in the abbeys, and therefore fiercely repudiated the charge of "Apostasy."

"Full wisely," says one of these runaways,

"Can they preach and say

But as thai preche no thing do thai.

I was frere full many a day,

Therefore the sothe I wot (the truth I know).

But when I saw that thair fyeyng

Acordyd not to thair preching,

Off I cast my frere clothyng,

And wyghtly went my gate;

197

Some became soldiers, betaking themselves ad res bellicas et armorum strepitus. Others (Pope Urban the Sixth being known to be in want of funds) sent money to Rome, ubi cognoscebant omnia fore venelia, and purchased their emancipation and admission among the secular clergy. The abbot, vir magnanimus et cordatus, drifted on as he could through his difficulties. When in extremity, pudit se ante corpus Dominicum vel corpus beati Albani, he threw himself before the wafer or the body of the blessed Alban, and never rose till one or the other had promised to help him. If he could not manage his monks he could at least fight for the abbey's rights and do battle with his dependent knights and tenantry. Never had any abbot been more litigious than Thomas de la Mare. Half his life was spent in lawsuits or distraining for his rents, driving his neighbors' cattle and starving them in his pounds. high-handed ways answered with him; suit after suit he won. Fiery gentlemen swore revenge; they threatened to make the abbot pay for his oppression even if the lead had to be stripped from the abbey roof,-but Thomas de la Mare held on, and the courts at Westminster remained steadily his friends.

His

Under such a ruler the warren rights and fishing rights were upheld in all their stringency. Woe to the stray cow or horse that trespassed on the appropriated meadows once common to the town; woe to the luckless boy who snared a rabbit, or to the youth who sent a cross-bow bolt through a fat buck which had come out in the moonlight to feed. Jealously every sack of wheat was carried to the abbey mills. The stones of the handmills preached from the parlor pavement the story of the townsmen's defeat, and warned them against further resistance.

A few detailed instances of the abbot's proceedings show with painful clearness how

Other leve ne toke I none
Fro ham (them) whan I went,
But toke ham to the devel yehone
The prior and the covent.

"Out of the order thof I be gone,
Apostata ne am I none.
Of twelve months me wanted one,
And odd days nine or ten,

Away to wend I made me boun

Or tyme came of professioun.

I went my way throughout the town

In sight of many men,

And God that with paynes ille

Mankynd bought so dere

Let never man after me have wille

For to make him frere."

little yet was known in English law of the elementary principles of justice.

A claim for eighty shillings was presented against Nicholas Tybbeson, one of the abbey tenants. Tybbeson disputed the debt. The abbot's servants beat him, wounded him, shut him up in a dungeon till he paid the money. Tybbeson sued the abbot for assault and wrongful imprisonment. The abbot pleaded that Tybbeson was his born "bondman," and was therefore not entitled to be heard against his superior lord. The court ruled that the abbot was right. The complaint was dismissed, and the unlucky "villain" was further fined pro falso clamore, for bringing a false accusation.

The rule held throughout. In theory "villains" were entitled to protection from the law. In practice they found none. The abbot pretended that another tenant, John Albyn, of Winslow, a substantial farmer, owed him money. The debt was disputed, the abbot invaded him with a party of archers, broke into his yard, destroyed forty pounds' worth of property, and carried off a bull and twenty COWS. Albyn brought an action against the abbot at the Hertford assizes. The abbot pleaded as before that Albyn was villanus suus; and it was sufficient answer-the plea

was allowed.

Imagine all over England the lords of manors, secular and spiritual, carrying matters at this high rate; the knights and barons, some of them suspected of atheism, dining, drinking, hunting, and amusing themselves-squeezing their tenants at their pleasure, with the law ready-made at their backs ;-the religious houses cruel as the lay lords, yet the members of them seen rollicking at fairs, haunting brothels and ale-houses, fighting, swearing, seducing honest men's wives; the world given over to blackguardism, and the clergy standing in the first rank of Satan's army. It was past bearing. Edward the Third died, watched over in his death-bed by his concubine.* The Black Prince, the best

Alice Perrers. But the story of this lady's relations with Edward the Third has been accepted with too little inquiry. The authority is Walsingham, who describes her as pellex, infanda meretrix, a vile woman who acquired an influence over the king when in his dotage, and heartlessly robbed him of his rings when he was on his death-bed. The scene has formed a favorite subject for moralizing historians, who would have been better employed in examining the circumstances. The witness to the theft was a priest, who, Walsingham says, was the only other person present. But was it a theft? The king was alive and conscious. It may have been a parting gift. Who was the lady? and was she the king's concubine at all?

hope of loyal men, had gone a few months before him. The crown fell to Richard of Bourdeaux, a boy of eleven. The reins fell loose on the horses' necks, and authority was dead. A priest named John Ball, said to be infected with Wickliffe's heresies-infected at any rate with impatience of wrong-dealing, and with visions of the contrat social-had been preaching for twenty years to the peasantry of Kent, on the brotherhood of mankind. Injustice in England has rarely taken the form of repression of free speech. Among us the origin of injustice has been excess of liberty, and the right, real or supposed, of every man to do as he wills with his own. As long as the rich can fill their pockets, they make a conscience of leaving the poor to talk. John Ball had taught liberty, equality and fraternity with little interruption from authority. All mankind have descended from the original gardener and his wife

Whan Adam dalf and Eve span, Wo was thanne a gentleman ?

As nature meant it, those only were noble

Lady Alice Perrers was the daughter of Sir Richard

Perrers, a gentleman of fortune in Hertfordshire. She

was the wife of Lord Windsor, a nobleman attached to Edward's person, who had been a distinguished viceroy in Ireland. Her family had for many years

been involved in angry law-suits with the Abbot of St. Alban's; and long after this affair, which Walsingham her father's heiress, carrying on the controversy with describes so rhetorically, we find her still a great lady, the abbey. She was evidently regarded there with bitter personal hostility, and charges from that quarter require to be scrutinized.

Turning now to other evidence against her, we find from the Rolls of Parliament that she was complained of by the House of Commons as presuming on the king's favor to interfere in the business of the courts of law. Although there is no hint in the Rolls that she was the king's mistress, the complaint has appeared to harmonize so well with Walsingham's charge as at least to confirm it.

The Speaker of the House of Commons, however, who presented the charge (qui hæc universa proposuit), was Peter de la Mare, the abbot's brother or cousin ; and thus again there is a suggestion of personal motive. The particulars when looked into amount to no more than this: Lord Windsor was a favorite with Edward, and an object of jealousy both with other noblemen and with the popular party in Parliament. A hostile commission was to be appointed to inquire into Lord Windsor's conduct in Ireland. Lady Alice, who may have been a favorite with the king also without being a concubine, interceded with him success fully in her husband's defense to prevent his being sac rificed to his enemies.

Edward the Third is one of our great English Sov ereigns. He was 65 at the time when this liaison is supposed to have taken place; and I decline, without better reason, to receive a story as proved which throws a stain of dishonor on his end.

who were good. Those only were slaves who were slaves of sin. "It would never be merry in England till there were no bondmen and no gentlemen," but all shared together as children of their common parent.

Such doctrines found willing hearers. The people followed John Ball in crowds through field and market-place. He would catch them as they came on Sundays from mass in Canterbury Cathedral, and finish the service with a political sermon. Respectable gentlemen denounced him to the archbishop as dangerous to the state. The archbishop sent for him more than once, lectured him on his imprudence, and shut him up for a month or two, but to little purpose. He was urged to hang him, but "had conscience to let him die." In the summer of 1381, the period at which we have now arrived, Ball was for a third time in the archbishop's house of correction. The air was electric. Wickliffe was preaching at Oxford. Chaucer and Gower were in the meridian of their fame. English intellect was in full activity. But no outward signs portended immediate disturbance.

King Richard was then fifteen years old. A heavy tax had been granted by Parliament.

The commons, stripped bare already by priest and baron, were slow to pay, and crown officers had been sent about the country to lay on pressure. Local quarrels breaking out at twenty places at once, kindled into a universal conflagration. Kent, Essex and the eastern counties rose simultaneously to make an end of serfdom.

Sixty thousand men with pikes and pitchforks set out to march on London, to demand redress of grievances. The London mob, they had reason to know, were of the same mind as themselves, and were ready to receive them as friends. Their leaders were a second priest, named Jaques or Jack Straw, and a man described by Walsingham as vir versutus et magno sensu præditus-of strong sense and talent, named Walter or Wat Tyler, "who was indeed a tyler of houses." * Their first step was to break open the archbishop's prison and release Ball, and with these three at their head the insurgents pursued their way.

CHAPTER III.

THF morning, after Miss Derby and Kit had reached the cars, proved to be warm. The fire was suffered to die out in the stove, and the windows were opened that the few lazy travelers might feel the soft October air which always differs from the soft air of spring because it seems to carry with it the strength and vitality of the whole of summer. Whether because of this air or of some subtile influence in her errand, Jenny had an odd sense that everybody but herself was out for a holiday. The road hurried out from the walling streets of brick and marble into pretty glimpses of villas, with Greek fronts and Gothic stables and henneries; and beyond them out again into breezy slopes of stubble-fields, copper-colored, blackened in patches by the early frost; with a blaze here. and there in the dark lines of fence of orange

butterfly-weed or the maroon velvet of the sumach. There were stretches of miles of peach orchards, too, when they had entered Delaware, the late pale green fruit clinging to the leafless boughs, dry and luscious, waiting to be plucked. A farm-house now and then showed itself on a sunny hillside, wide and pleasant and opendoored; a dog asleep on the porch, or fat brown cows huddled down in the muddy, lush meadow by the creek, would look up leisurely as the train went by, and drop their heads drowsily again. The few passengers in the car were peach farmers who had been up to close their accounts with their agents. The leisurely year was before them until the few busy weeks of harvest came again; why should they be in a hurry? The whole world was quiet and bright and still.

"The very sunshine is yellow and does not move," said Jenny, shuffling her feet

impatiently. "When we stop at a station every black and white lounger there is as glad to see you, Kit, as if you were the one friend of their souls, and they had no other business in life but to sit on the fence and watch for you."

"I know them all," quietly.

"Have they no work to do?" sharply. "Can all Delaware afford to go to sleep? She had brought the items in her satchel out of which the next foreign letters were to be constructed; and even as she watched the people about her, she was dotting down notes for her woman's column of the next week. "I left word at the office to telegraph me in case a steamer comes in," she said, with a little importance, conscious of filling a place in the world unknown to Kit or Delaware.

As the still morning widened into stiller noon, however, she put away her notebook. She began to wish she too had gone out on a holiday. Her backbone felt heavy; shooting fibers of pain went through her legs, her arms, over the back of her head. It was only the neuralgia which she had every day; it never relaxed its grip of her; but she took time to think of it now, and of the doctor's warning stories of other newspaper people who had suddenly collapsed and dropped from overwork. When they reached Georgetown, she looked eagerly over the sleeping, sunny hills. One day, in a home among some of them, she too could rest. Kit, turning around as the train stopped, saw the rare bright and tender look again filling her eyes.

see Mr. Goddard's farm

66 Can you from here? she asked.

"I don't know. I have never been there."

She was glad that he had not. Niel had not allowed any one to cross the threshold of his new home. He was waiting for her to come. It would be in keeping with his usual fancies. She felt as if she could taste the delight now of wandering over it step by step with him.

"Audrey," said her cousin, "thought it dead and unmeaning. But she would find that fault with any inland place.'

Miss Swenson has seen the farm then?" "Yes. Mr. Goddard drove her over to look at it as soon as his title was secure." Secure!" she cried in a loud, uncadenced voice. "Unless the Cortrells who have a prior claim should appear, you No doubt," she added presently,

mean.

"Miss Swenson could give him valuable advice in the management of his property."

66

He laughed. Audrey? She's not a capable woman like you, Jenny. She has no opinions. She never advised any body in her life. Not even herself," he added to himself. "Mr. Goddard," with a quizzical amusement in his heavy good-natured face, "professes to have unearthed some marvelous talent in her. But I fancy there's nothing in it."

The remainder of the afternoon was passed almost in silence. Jane, with her hand over her eyes, pretended to sleep. The sun was going down as they approached Lewes. When the clearing and thinning of the sky, and the salt gusts of wind over the low flats showed that they neared the sea, she grew nervous and irritable. She had quite forgotten the kinsfolk she was going to

meet.

The end of her journey was to her only Goddard and this Audrey.

At the next station above Lewes the train stopped for a moment; as it began its leisurely journey again Miss Derby heard a light footstep coming up the car behind her. She started and reddened like a school-girl. "Mr. Goddard-it's Niel coming!" just as a small hand tapped on Kit's hat.

"So Graff, you brought her? I knew you would. That lumbering, honest way of yours conquers the women. No, don't rise, I can stand. Ta ta ta!-well, if you insist-thanks." He sank in his light luxurious way into the seat opposite Jenny; so light and luxurious and dainty that for the glimmer of a moment the dirty plush seat appeared purple and royal. Graff, nodding good-naturedly, went out of the car, feeling snubbed, unreasonably enough, and heavy and earthy from his slow brain to his big feet.

66

And now!"-said Goddard.

He leaned forward, putting the tips of his fingers on her satchel. His little body always seemed weighted too heavily with. his soul, and now his small face was on fire with eagerness. The womanish, sensitive chin trembled. The red, curling hair waved impatiently back from his broad forehead to his neck. The large blue eyes were luminous, fixed on hers. From any other man words of irrepressible passion would have followed such a look.

"I thought you would come and see how I was," said Mr. Goddard. "I know those souls which are like a rock to be built

upon. Some day," thoughtfully, "I mean to place and define the different uses of friends. Those who serve us as the dull earth, and make us sure of our footing; those who give us water once, and no more, and those who lift-lift us!" with a quick glance at the clear sky. "Tu es Petrus, eh, Jenny? You may have the subject-nice little essay for the Atlantic -humorous, under-vein of pathos-or boil it down into a social-topic editorial. But how do you think I am looking? That demon of sleeplessness is routed; you can tell that by my complexion and the white of my eye. It's all owing to this place; no medicine. Nature and Man are asleep here together. You walk through this unalterable, waiting calm day after day, until you fancy that somewhere in the clear, bright air the fountain of life and youth which De Leon sought surely will open before you."

66

"You look as though you had found it," said Jenny, gently. And the sailor clothes-why one would think they had been invented for you, Niel."

"Don't laugh at me," gaily picking at the blue flannel shirt and tarpaulin hat. "I sloughed off the cheviot clothes because they smelled of cigars and wines and printer's ink. Audrey knows nothing of these things, and I don't wish that she should." He paused a moment uncertainly. "Jenny "-leaning forward again, "there was once a younger son who sat all his life in the ashes, and he set off one day to seek his fortune by the sea, and he found

"

"Audrey. I know." Miss Derby looked jaded with her long journey, but she smiled pleasantly. "You shall tell me all about her presently. As to the other part of the fortune-the farm turns out very well, Kit tells me. A snug income, not enough to give you a thorough-bred to ride or Château Lafitte to drink every day, but snug."

66 You've

De Leon's fountain; you need it. Here we are at Lewes." He rose gaily and preceded her to the platform. a carry-all here, Graff? What a careful fellow you are! Just take Miss Derby's trunk and satchel up in it and I'll walk with her. Thanks. Now," drawing her arm in his with an air of thorough enjoyment when they were alone on the grassy road, in the melancholy twilight. Far off the lights of the village burned red in the gray cold; white dunes of sand which to her unpracticed eye appeared interminable, stretched drearily toward the sea, whose sullen roar was rising with the evening wind. Goddard's face, turned slowly from side to side, seemed to gather the meaning of it all.

66

"Do you feel the silence-the infinite rest?" he said. Out on the prairies or the Western cañons there is a calm, but it is different. That is the sleep of Nature before it has been called on for its strength; an infant giant or god in his cradle. But this is a place which has tried all agitation and work, and found it vain. Lewes is an old settlement, full of wealth and sti in the colonial times. Old legends hang about it of a tropical trade with the West Indies, of spicy breezes in the streets where stately ladies in brocade paced to church with a guard of black slaves. Now in its old age it has shaken off such frivolities, and fallen into a perpetual calm Even the railroad, as you see, passes on one side and will not waken it."

They had reached the uneven street now, and were passing between the old solid stone houses, fenced by their double doors and windows against the winter storms; the quaint gardens smothered and hidden by old English ivy and hedges of box. Pale whiffs of smoke rose from the chimneys into the cold evening air; there was no other sign of life; the grass-grown streets, full of signs of long opulence, were abandoned to the damp fog coming up from the sea, and to a houseless dog that ran about without barking.

"How much a year does it bring in, Niel ?"

"How much? Always 'how much?' Oh, Jenny come, let us go look for

progress ?"

66

They don't progress, thank God!" cried Goddard. "There's not a newspaper in the town; their ideas of literature have halted back in the Elizabethan era.