Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England from the Norman conquest to the fall of the Stuarts |
Editha;
THE SWAN - NECKED.
1066. |
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 | Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England |  |
Editha;
THE SWAN - NECKED.
1066.
England was happy yet and free under her Saxon kings.
The unhappy natives of the land, the Britons of old time, long
ago driven back into their impregnable fastnesses among the
Welsh mountains, and the craggy and pathless wilds of Scotland,
still rugged and hirsute with the yet uninvaded masses of
the great Caledonian forest, had subsided into quiet, and disturbed
the lowland plains of fair England no longer; and so
long as they were left free to enjoy their rude pleasures
of the chase and of internal welfare, undisturbed, were content to
be debarred from the rich pastures and fertile corn-fields which
had once owned their sway. The Danes and Norsemen, savage
Jarls and Vikings of the North, had ceased to prey on the
coasts of Northumberland and Yorkshire; the seven kingdoms
of the turbulent and tumultuous Heptarchy, ever distracted by
domestic strife, had subsided into one realm, ruled under laws,
regular, and for the most part mild and equable, by a single
monarch, occupied by one homogeneous and kindred race,
wealthy and prosperous according to the idea of wealth and
prosperity in those days, at peace at home and undisturbed
from without; if not, indeed, very highly civilized, at least
supplied with all the luxuries and comforts which the age knew
or demanded—a happy, free, contented people, with a patriarchal
rights of his people, and the privileges of the nobles as secured
by law.
Such was England, when on the death of Hardicanute, Edward,
afterward called the Confessor, ascended the throne by
the powerful aid of Earl Godwin, and re-established the old
Saxon dynasty on a base which seemed to promise both durability
and peace.
Had this Edward been in any sense a man, it is probable
that the crown of England would have continued in the Saxon
line, that the realm of England would have remained in the
hands of an unmixed race, and that the great dominant people
—most falsely named by an absurd misnomer Anglo-Saxon,
since with the slightest possible coloring of the ancient British
blood, they are the offspring purely of an intermingling of
Saxon and Norman blood; owing to the former their stubborn
pertinacity of will, to the latter their fiery energy, their daring
enterprise and quick intellect—would never have sprung into
existence to hold the balance of power, if not the absoluteness
of sway on each side of the ocean, and in the four quarters of
the globe.
But he was not a man, only a monk—a miserable lay monk
—a husband of Earl Godwin's lovely daughter, yet a fanatical
celibatarian—not fit to be a king—not fit to be a man—not fit
even to be a Saxon monk, when monks were men like Becket.
Jealous of his Saxon nobles, he had recourse to Norman
favorites, and England was already half a Norman province,
and William of Normandy his favorite, until the counter jealousy
of his nobles compelled him again to have recourse to
Godwin, and his gallant sons, Harold, and Gurth, and Leofwin,
who cleared the kingdom of the intrusive Norman courtiers, re-established
the Saxon constitution, and nominally as the ministers
and governors, ruled England happily, well, and lawfully,
in his stead.
Godwin, meantime, had departed this life, full of years and
honors. Edward, the nephew of Edward the Confessor, whom
he had invited over from Hungary, and destined to be his successor,
had departed also, leaving his son, Edgar Atheling, a
minor, heir to his empty expectations and his noble blood.
And now what little intellect there was and spirit in the monk-king
awoke, and he perceived, with that singular clearness of
perception which sometimes seems to visit men, dull before and
obtuse of intellect, when they are dying, that his people now
would willingly adopt the Norman for a ruler, or submit to the
sway of William the Bastard, to whom he had in past days
well nigh promised the succession of his kingdom.
Therefore, of late, Harold, the son of Godwin, the flower of
the whole Saxon race, and, in fact, their ruler, as the king's lieutenant
and vicegerent, came to be looked upon by the whole
Saxon population of the land, as their next Saxon king, in the
to-be hereafter. The jealousies which had disturbed the mind
of Edward had long since passed away; and Harold, whom he
once had looked upon almost with the eyes of popular aversion,
he now regarded almost as his own son. Yet still the Saxon
hostages, Ulfroth, the youngest son of Godwin, and Harold's
brother, and the still younger son of Swega—who, in the time
of his mad distrust of his own countrymen, his unnatural predilection
for the Normans, had been delivered for safe keeping
into the hands of William of Normandy—still lingered melancholy
exiles, far from the white cliffs of their native land. And
now for the first time since their departure, did the aspect of
affairs look propitious for their liberation; and Harold, brother
of the one and uncle of the other, full of proud confidence in
that he might cross the English channel, and, personally visiting
the Norman, bring back the hostages in honor and security to
the dear land of their forefathers. The countenance of the
Confessor fell at the request, and conscious, probably, in his
own heart, of that rash promise made in days long past, and
long repeated to the ambitious William, he manifested a degree
of agitation amounting almost to alarm.
“Harold,” he said, after a long pause of deliberation,
“Harold, my son, since you have made me this request, and
that your noble heart seems set on its accomplishment, it shall
not be my part to do constraint or violence to your affectionate
and patriotic wishes. Go, then, if such be your resolve,
but go without my leave, and contrary to my advice. It is not
that I would not have your brother and your kinsman home,
but that I do distrust the means of their deliverance; and
sure I am, that should you go in person, some terrible disaster
shall befall ourselves and this our country. Well do I know
Duke William; well do I know his spirit, brave, crafty, daring,
deep, ambitious, and designing. You, too, he hates especially;
nor will he grant you anything save at a price that shall draw
down an overwhelming ruin on you who shall pay it, and on
the throne of which you are the glory and the stay. If we
would have these hostages delivered at a less ransom than the
downfall of our Saxon dynasty, the slavery of merry England,
another messenger than thou must seek the wily Norman; be
it, however, as thou wilt, my friend, my kinsman, and my son.”
Oh! sage advice, and admirable counsel! advice how fatally
neglected! counsel how sadly frustrated! Gallant and brave
and young, fraught with a noble sense of his own powers, a
full reliance on his own honorable purposes, untaught as yet in
that hardest lesson of the world's hardest school, distrust of
thought lightly of the wisdom of the old in the self-sufficient
confidence of youth.
Stranger it is, and sadder, that he thought lightly of the
apprehensions, laughed at the doubts, and resisted the tears
of one whom he had sworn to love dearer and better and more
truly than any other living thing on earth, or in Heaven—
whom, as yet, he did love as perfectly as any mortal man may
love who is ambitious—for what is ambition, but the most
refined and sublimated of all selfishness? Editha, the swan-necked,
the fairest, brightest, purest of the Saxon maids of England,—Editha,
playmate of his guileless and happy boyhood—
betrothed of his promising and buoyant youth—mistress—alas!
alas!—though under promise still of honorable wedlock—of
his aspiring and ambitious manhood.
For she too had loved not wisely, but too well; she too had
fallen not an ignoble nor unreluctant victim to man's cupidity,
ambition, selfishness, and treason—and sad penance did she too,
almost lifelong, for that one fatal error, and by most cruel suffering
win its absolution.
“Be sure,” she said, severely weeping with her fond white
arms about his muscular neck, and her luxuriant light brown
tresses floating around them both, clasped in that lingering,
last embrace, like a veil of orient sunlight; “be sure, Harold,
that if you do go on this fatal journey—fatal at once to you,
and me, and England—we never shall meet more on earth,
until we meet ne'er again to sever in the dark grave. Nevertheless,
go you will, and go you must; therefore no tears, no
prayers of mine shall thwart the purpose which they may not
alter, nor shake the spirit which they may not turn from its
set will. The weird that is spaed to every man when he is
born, he must dree it to the end. And my weird is to die for
But it is not our weird ever to be, or here or elsewhere, man
and wife. Go your way, therefore, go your way, and God's
blessings go with you, and be about you; but you and I have
met this time, to meet no more for ever!”
They parted; and on the morrow Harold set forth upon his
journey, as if it were in pursuit of pleasure, surrounded by a
blythe train of gay companions, gallantly mounted, gorgeously
attired, with falcon upon fist and greyhound at heel—gaily
and merrily he set forth on that serene autumnal morning, for
the coast of Sussex. And on the morrow Editha set forth
upon her journey, as if it were to the grave, surrounded by
weeping attendants, clad in the darkest weeds, with veiled
faces, and crucifixes borne before them—sadly and forebodingly
she set forth on that serene autumnal morning, for the sequestered
cloisters of the nunnery of Croyland.
Nor had Harold tarried long in the princely court at Avranches,
ere all the sad prognostications, alike of the aged monarch
and the youthful lady, were made good; for having been induced
first to promise in an unguarded hour to aid William in
obtaining the possession of the English crown, that wily prince
soon enveigled him into swearing to the due performance of
that rash and unholy promise, on relies the most sacred that
could be collected, which were secretly concealed beneath the
altar cloth, and displayed only when the unhallowed oath was
plighted. The pledges on both sides were determined. Alice,
the Norman's daughter, should be the Saxon's promised bride;
Ulfroth, the Saxon's brother, should remain the Norman's hostage
until the crown of Edward should bind the brows of
William.
So Harold set sail immediately for England, leaving the
brother—for whose liberty he came a suitor—ten times more
he had so disloyally forsworn, the bride of heaven, sequestered
in the nunnery of Croyland.
On his first interview with Edward, he related all that had
occurred—even his own involuntary oath! and the old sovereign
trembled and grew pale, but manifested nothing of surprise
or anger.
“I knew it,” he replied, in calm but hollow tones. “I knew
it, and I did forewarn you, how that your visit to the Norman
should bring misery on you and ruin on your country! As I
forewarned you, so has it come to pass. So shall it come to
pass hereafter, till all hath been fulfilled. God only grant that
I live not to see it.”
Nor did he live to see it. But he did live to see Harold,
once forsworn to Editha, forsworn again to Alice. For being
sent to suppress a rebellion in the North, raised by Morear and
Edwin, Earls of Northumberland and grandsons of the great
Duke Leofric, against his own brother Tostig, he openly
took sides with the former, espousing their sister Adelgitha,
and pronouncing against Tostig, who had fled infuriate to his
father-in-law, the Duke of Flanders, soon to raise war against
his native land and its kindred usurper.
For worn out with anxiety and sorrow, the feeble monk-king
passed away, and was gathered to his fathers, leaving an imbecile
heir to his throne of right, in the helpless Edgar Atheling,
and two fierce, capable, and mutually detested rivals, in
Harold, the Saxon, and the Norman William.
Little time had Harold, who stepped as by right, and of
course, into the vacant seat of royalty, to attend now to wife or
friend; for scarcely was he seated on the perilous throne, ere
the same gale filled the sails of two royal armaments, both
hastening to his own shores to dispute his ill-won greatness—
envious Tostig, backed by Harold Hardrada, king of Norway,
with all his wild sea-kings and terrible Berserkers, under the flag
of Norseland—the other from the sunny coasts of Normandy
and the fair Cotentin, filled with the mailed Norman chivalry,
the men who never charged in vain, or couched lance but to
conquer, under the banner consecrated by the pope against the
perjured and the traitor, led by the mighty bastard.
Still it is said that, false to Editha, false to Alice, he was
again false to Adelgitha, and would have recalled his swan-necked
beauty from the cold couch of vowed virginity, to the
genial marriage bed; from the grey cloister to the gorgeous
court, of which she should be the queen. But he met no response,
save the most significant of all—silence.
The sinner had repented and become a saint. The weak
girl had been ripened through the fire of anguish into the
heroic woman.
How Tostig fared with his ally, Harold Hardrada, the gigantic,
the bridge of Staneford witnessed; and the raven banner
borne down the bloody streams of Derwent to the exulting
Ouse, and the Saxon cry of victory! Hurrah for king
Harold!
How William fared with his Norman chivalry, the downs of
Hastings witnessed, and the heights, known to this day, of
Battle, and the consecrated banner high in air, and the
Norman cry of victory, “Dex aide les gentils gens de Normandie.”
It was the morning after the exterminating fight of Hastings.
The banner blessed of the Roman pontiff streamed on the tainted
air, from the same hillock whence the Dragon standard of
the Saxons had shone unconquered to the sun of yester even!
after the tremendous strife and perilous labors of the preceding
day, reposed himself in fearless and untroubled confidence
upon the field of his renown; secure in the possession of the
land which he was destined to transmit to his posterity, for
many a hundred years, by the red title of the sword. To the
defeated Saxons, morning, however, brought but a renewal of
those miseries, which, having yesterday commenced with the
first victory of their Norman lords, were never to conclude or
even to relax, until the complete amalgamation of the rival
races should leave no Normans to torment, no Saxons to endure;
all being merged at last into one general name of English,
and by their union giving origin to the most powerful, and
brave, and intellectual people the world has ever looked upon
since the extinction of Rome's freedom. At the time of which we
are now speaking, nothing was thought of by the victors save how
to rivet more securely on the necks of the unhappy natives,
their yoke of iron—nothing by the poor subjugated Saxons,
but how to escape for the moment the unrelenting massacre,
which was urged, far and wide, by the remorseless conquerors
throughout the devastated country. With the defeat of
Harold's host, all national hope of freedom was at once lost to
England—though to a man the English population were brave
and loyal, and devoted to their country's rights. The want of
leaders—all having perished side by side, on that disastrous
field—of combination, without which myriads are but dust in
the scale against the force of one united handful—rendered
them quite unworthy of any serious fears, and even of consideration
to the bloodthirsty barons of the invading army.
Over the whole expanse of level country, which might be seen
from the slight elevation whereon was pitched the camp of
William, on every side might be described small parties of Norman
mere cattle, the unhappy captives, a few of whom they now
began to spare, not from the slightest sentiment of mercy, but
literally that their arms were weary with the task of slaying,
although their hearts were yet insatiate of blood. It must be
taken now into consideration by those who listen with dismay
and wonder to the accounts of pitiless barbarity, of ruthless,
indiscriminating slaughter on the part of men, whom they have
hitherto been taught to look upon as brave, indeed, as lions in
the field, but not partaking of the lion's nature after the field
was won—not only that the seeds of enmity had long been
sown between those rival people, but that the deadly crop of
hatred had grown up, watered abundantly by tears and blood
of either; and lastly, that the fierce fanaticism of religious persecution
was added to the natural rancor of a war waged for
the ends of conquest or extermination. The Saxon nation,
from the king downward, to the meanest serf who fought
beneath his banner, or buckled on the arms of liberty, were all
involved under the common bar of the pope's interdict!—they
were accursed of God, and handed over by His holy church to
the kind mercies of the secular arm! and, therefore, though
but yesterday they were a powerful and united nation, to-day
they were but a vile horde of scattered outlaws, whom any
man might slay wherever he should find them, whether in
arms or otherwise, amenable for blood neither to any mortal
jurisdiction, nor even to the ultimate tribunal to which all must
submit hereafter, unless deprived of their appeal, like these
poor fugitives, by excommunication from the pale of Christianity.
For thirty miles around the Norman camp, pillars of
smoke by day, continually streaming upward to the polluted
heaven, and the red glare of nightly conflagration, told fatally
the doom of many a happy home! Neither the castle nor the
edge, their females from more barbarous persecution! Neither
the sacred hearth of hospitality, nor the more sacred altars of
God's churches, might protect the miserable fugitives—neither
the mail-shirt of the man-at-arms, nor the monk's frock of
serge, availed against the thrust of such as the land, wherein
those horrors were enacted, has never witnessed since, through
many a following age.
High noon approached, and in the conqueror's tent a gorgeous
feast was spread—the red wine flowed profusely, and
song and minstrelsy arose with their heart-soothing tones, to
which the feeble groans of dying wretches bore a dread burden
from the plain whereon they still lay struggling in their great
agonies, too sorely maimed to live, too strong as yet to die.
But, ever and anon, their wail waxed feebler and less frequent;
for many a plunderer was on foot, licensed to ply his odious
calling in the full light of day, reaping his first, if not his richest
booty, from the dead bodies of their slaughtered foemen.
Ill fared the wretches who lay there, untended by the hand of
love or mercy—“scorched by the death thirst, and writhing
in vain”—but worse fared they who showed a sign of life, to
the relentless robbers of the dead—for then the dagger, falsely
called that of mercy, was the dispenser of immediate immortality.
The conqueror sat at his triumphant board, and barons
drank his health—“First English monarch, of the pure blood
of monarchy.” “King by the right of the sword's edge.”
“Great, glorious, and sublime!”—yet was not his heart softened,
nor was his bitter hate toward the unhappy prince, who
had so often ridden by his side in war, and feasted at the same
board with him in peace, relinquished or abated. Even while
the feast was at the highest, while every heart was jocund and
sublime, a trembling messenger approached, craving, on bended
was already schooled by brief, but hard experience, to style
the devastator of his country.
“Speak out, dog Saxon,” cried the ferocious prince; “but
since thou must speak, see that thy speech be brief, an thou
would'st keep thy tongue uncropped thereafter!”
“Great Duke, and mighty,” replied the trembling envoy, “I
bear you greeting from Elgitha, erewhile the noble wife of
Godwin, the queenly mother of our late monarch—now, as she
bade me style her, the humblest of your suppliants and slaves.
Of your great nobleness and mercy, mighty King, she sues you
that you will grant her the poor leave to search amid the heaps
of those of our Saxon dead, that her three sons may at least
lie in consecrated earth. So may God send you peace and
glory here, and everlasting happiness hereafter!”
“Hear to the Saxon slave!” William exclaimed, turning as
if in wonder towards his nobles, “hear to the Saxon slave, that
dares to speak of consecrated earth, and of interment for the
accursed body of that most perjured, excommunicated liar!
Hence! tell the mother of the dead dog, whom you have dared
to style your King, that for the interdicted and accursed dead,
the sands of the sea-shore are but too good a sepulchre!”
“She bade me proffer, humbly, to your acceptance, the weight
of Harold's body in pure gold,” faintly gasped forth the terrified
and cringing messenger, “so you would grant her that permission.”
“Proffer us gold!—what gold? or whose? Know, villain,
all the gold throughout this conquered realm is ours. Hence,
dog and outcast, hence! nor presume e'er again to come, insulting
us, by proffering, as a boon to our acceptance, that which
we own already, by the most indefeasible and ancient right of
conquest! Said I not well, knights, vavasours, and nobles?”
“Well! well! and nobly,” answered they, one and all.
“The land is ours—and all therein is—their dwellings, their
demesnes, their wealth, whether of gold or silver, or of cattle
—yea! they themselves are ours! themselves, their sons, their
daughters and their wives—our portion and inheritance, to be
our slaves for ever!”
“Begone! you have our answer,” exclaimed the Duke,
spurning him with his foot, “and hark ye, arbalastmen and
archers, if any Saxon more approach us on like errand, see if
his coat of skin be proof against the quarrel of the shaft.”
And once again the feast went on, and louder rang the revelry,
and faster flew the wine-cup round the tumultuous board!
All day the banquet lasted, even till the dews of heaven fell on
that fatal field, watered sufficiently, already, by the rich gore of
many a noble heart. All day the banquet lasted, and far was
it prolonged into the watches of the night, when, rising with
the wine cup in his hand, “Nobles and barons,” cried the Duke,
“friends, comrades, conquerors—bear witness to my vow!
Here, on these heights of Hastings, and more especially upon
yon mound and hillock, where God gave to us our high victory,
and where our last foe fell,—there will I raise an Abbey to His
eternal praise and glory; richly endowed it shall be from the
first fruits of this our land. Battle, it shall be called, to send
the memory of this, the great and singular achievement of our
race, to far posterity,—and, by the splendor of our God, wine
shall be plentier among the monks of Battle, than water in the
noblest and the richest cloister else, search the world over! This
do I swear, so may God aid, who hath thus far assisted us for
our renown, and will not now deny His help, when it be asked
for his own glory!”
The second day dawned on the place of horror, and not a
Saxon had presumed, since the intolerant message of the Duke,
needed, whereon to lay the first stone of the abbey William
had vowed to God. The ground was needed; and, moreover,
the foul steam from the human shambles was pestilential on
the winds of heaven—and now, by trumpet sound and proclamation
through the land, the Saxons were called forth, on pain
of death, to come and seek their dead, lest the health of the
conquerors should suffer from the pollution they themselves had
wrought. Scarce had the blast sounded, and the glad tidings
been announced, once only, ere from their miserable shelters
—where they had herded with the wild beasts of the forest,
from wood, morass, and cavern, happy if there they might escape
the Norman spear—forth crept the relics of that persecuted
race. Old men and matrons, with hoary heads, and
steps that tottered no less from the effect of terror than of age
—maidens and youths, and infants, too happy to obtain permission
to search amid those festering heaps, dabbling their
hands in the corrupt and pestilential gore which filled each
nook and hollow of the dinted soil, so they might bear away,
and water with their tears, and yield to consecrated ground,
the relics of those brave ones once loved so fondly, and now so
bitterly lamented. It was toward the afternoon of that same
day, when a long train was seen approaching, with crucifix,
and cross, and censer; the monks of Waltham Abbey, coming
to offer homage for themselves, and for their tenantry and vassals,
to him whom they acknowledged as their king—expressing
their submission to the high will of the Norman pontiff,
justified, as they said and proved, by the assertion of God's
judgment upon the hill of Hastings.
Highly delighted by this absolute submission, the first he had
received from any English tongue, the conqueror received the
monks with courtesy and favor, granting them high immunities,
tenure of their broad demesnes for ever. Nay, after he had
answered their address, he detained two of their number, men
of intelligence, as with his wonted quickness of perception he
instantly discovered, from whom to derive information as to the
nature of his new-acquired country and newly-conquered subjects.
Osgad and Ailric, the deputed messengers from the respected
principal of their community, had yet a farther and higher
object than to tender their submission to the conqueror. Their
orders were, at all and every risk, to gain permission to consign
the corpse of their late king and founder to the earth, previously
denied to him. But they, for all his courtesy to them, and
kindness, churchmen although they were, dared not so much as
to mention the forbidden name of their unhappy king—nor
was there any hope that any tomb should receive the mangled
relics of the last Saxon King of England, although the corpses
of his brothers, Leofwin and Gurth, had been found on the
hillock whereon the last Saxon blow was stricken, whereon the
last Saxon banner floated—found, recognised, though sorely
mangled, and consigned to the grave with rites of sepulchre so
freely granted as might have proved to those craven priests, that
the wrath of the conqueror was at end, and that the valiant
though fierce Norman was not one to wage war, after the first
burst of wrath had blown over, on the gallant dead.
Tidings at length reached Editha—Editha, the swan-necked,
who, deserted and dishonored when he she loved had a throne
in prospect, had not ceased from her true-hearted adoration,
but in her joyless home still shared her heart in silence between
her memories and her God.
Her envoy won the conqueror's ear, and it is avouched that
a tear dimmed his unblenching eye, when he heard her sad tale
started from his regal throne. “By the splendor of God's
eyes!” he swore, “a true woman! worthy to be the mother of
men!” So her request was granted, and to their wonder and
delight, Osgad and Ailric heard the mandate that they should
seek for, and entomb the poor and fallen clay that so late boasted
itself king.
Throughout the whole of the third day succeeding that unparalleled
defeat, those old men toiled among the naked corpses,
gory and grim, maimed and disfigured, festering in the sun,
weltering in the night dews, infecting the wholesome airs of
heaven with a reek, as from the charnel-house—toiled, if they
might find the object of their veneration. But vain were all
their toils—vain all their searchings, even when they called in
the aid of his most intimate attendants, ay! of the mother that
bore him. Leofwin and Gurth had been recognised with ease,
but not one eye, even of those who had most dearly loved him,
could now distinguish the mutilated features of the king.
But if there was no eye at Hastings, there was a heart at
Croyland that could not be deceived, even by the corruption and
the worm. Forth from her nunnery in Croyland, whence she
had never thought to move again, save to her long last home,
Editha, the swan-necked, came. Nine days had elapsed ere she
should reach the fatal spot, and the appalling horrors of the
search, the awful extent of the pollution, denied the smallest
hope of his discovery. Yet she still expressed her full and
confident conviction that she could recognise that loved one,
so long as but one hair remained upon that head she had once
so dearly cherished.
It was night when she arrived on the fatal field, and by the
light of torches once more they set out on their awful duty.
“Lead me,” she said, “lead me to the spot where the last
blow was stricken, where the last warrior fell.”
And they led to the knoll where Leofwin and Gurth had
been discovered. It was a hideous pile of pestilential carnage,
horses and men, Normans and Saxons, piled on each other,
twenty deep, around a shattered pole, which had been once the
staff of the Saxon's royal banner.
She sprang down from her palfrey, unassisted, and with an
instinct that nothing could deceive went straight to the corpse
of Harold. It had been turned already to and fro, many times,
by those who sought it. His mother had looked on it, and
pronounced it not her son's, but that devoted heart knew it at
once, and broke! Whom rank and wealth and honors had
divided, defeat, ruin, and death made one! and the same grave
contained the cold remains of the swan-necked Editha, and the
last scion of the Saxon kings of England.
Was not she, then, frail sinner as she was, one not the least
heroic of the heroic women of the olden days, and with the
truest woman's truest heroism!
| Persons and pictures from the histories of France and England | |