Chapter Nine.
An obdurate heretic.
“Great your strength, if great your need.”
Henry Kirke White.
In the evening of the same day, the council sent a physician to report on the prisoner’s health. Not gentle Master Simon, but a stern, iron-handed, iron-hearted man, from whom Margery and Alice shrank instinctively. The physician reported that the Lady Marnell had undoubtedly been very ill, but was now better, and ailed nothing but weakness; he accordingly recommended that the examination should take place, but that the prisoner, in consideration of her extreme debility, should be indulged with a seat. Master Simon tried hard to obtain a little further postponement; but this time the powerful Abbot was against him, and he gained nothing by his motion. So, on the morning of the 17th, Margery rose from her sick-bed to appear before the council. Lord Marnell, who had lately shown her extraordinary kindness, as though with the view of undoing, so far as lay in his power, the evil which his rash, though well-meant conduct had originally created, assisted his wife into her litter, and rode beside it during the short journey. On arriving at the door, where they found a steep flight of steps to mount, Lord Marnell would not allow Margery to try her strength, but carried her up in his arms. He knew, and so did she, that she would need all the strength she could muster for the trial which was to come. The council-chamber was hung with red cloth, and the benches appropriated to spectators were filled to overflowing. For one moment Margery shrank back at the sight of so many strange faces; and a faint tinge of colour mounted to her pale cheek as Lord Marnell led her forward to her chair. In the president’s seat was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and on his left hand Abbot Bilson. Several abbots, priors, and other legal and ecclesiastical dignitaries, made up the remainder of the council.
For eight weary hours, with very short intervals for refreshment, they kept that fragile prisoner before them, and all the time she never quailed, nor evaded any of their questions. Twice Master Simon interfered, and begged that wine might be given her, or he would not answer for her further recovery; and once she herself asked for a glass of water, and for a few minutes seemed about to faint.
Abbot Bilson came out in his true colours at this examination. He was no longer the mild, persuasive teacher; he now showed himself the unforgiving revenger. The Archbishop pressed the prisoner hard with questions, many of them irrevelant to the indictment; and most of the other members of the Council put queries to her.
They inquired, amongst other things, if she believed that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the bread and wine became the very body and blood of Christ.
“Nay, certes,” was Margery’s answer. “For if Christ, being in life, could hold His own body, and give the same unto His disciples, then were it no true human body, for a natural and true body cannot be in two several places at the self-same moment of time. Moreover, if the bread of the host be verily the body of Christ, then did He eat His own body, and that is contrary to very reason.”
“The mysteries of the faith be above reason,” said Arundel.
“Of a truth, and farther above it, maybe, than we wit; but in no wise contrary thereunto.”
“Believe you in Purgatory?”
“The Church teacheth the same, and I say not that it may not be true; but I find it not in the book.”
“Pray you unto the blessed Virgin Saint Mary, the holy angels, and the saints?”
“Soothly, no: it is not in the book. ‘Whateuer thing ye axen the Fadir in my name, I schal do that thing,’ saith Christ: but I hear not a word of ‘whatever thing ye shall ask Saint Michael, or Saint Anne.’”
“Account you confession unto priests to be right or evil?”
“It may be right—I wis not; but I saw it not in the book. I pray you, reverend fathers, if any other part of God His book do name these things, and give leave for the same, that you show it unto me, and thereupon I will believe them, but no else.”
The above is, of course, a mere sample of the innumerable questions which were put to the prisoner. Towards the close of the day, the Archbishop and abbots consulted together for a few minutes; and then Arundel turned to the accused.
“Margery Marnell, Baroness Marnell of Lymington, the Court demands of you whether you will put your name to this paper, and hold to all things therein contained?”
“Let me read the paper, my Lord Archbishop, and then I will give you an answer.”
The Archbishop did not wish her to read the paper; but Margery steadily declined to sign anything in the dark. At length the council permitted it to be read to her. It contained a promise to abjure all Lollard doctrines, and to perform a severe penance, such as the council should lay on her, for the scandal which she had caused to the Church. Margery at once refused to sign anything of the kind. The Archbishop warned her that in that case she must be prepared to submit to the capital sentence.
“Ye may sentence me,” she said, in her clear voice, always distinct, however feeble, “to what ye will. I fear you not. I wis ye have power to kill my body, but my soul never shall ye have power to touch. That is Christ’s, who witteth full well how to keep it; and to His blessed hands, not yours, I commit myself, body and soul.”
The Archbishop then passed sentence. The Court found Margery, Baroness Marnell of Lymington, guilty of all crimes whereof she stood indicted, and sentenced her to death by burning, in the open place called Tower Hill, on the 6th day of March next ensuing.
The prisoner bowed her head when the sentence had been pronounced, and then said as she rose, and stretched out her hand to Lord Marnell, who came forward and supported her, “I greatly fear, reverend fathers, that your day is yet to come, when you shall receive sentence from a Court whence there is no appeal, and shall be doomed to a dreader fire!”
When Lord Marnell had assisted his wife back into her dungeon, and laid her gently on the bed, he turned and shook his fist at the wall.
“If I, Ralph Marnell of Lymington, had thee here, Abbot Thomas Bilson—”
“Thou wouldst forgive him, my good Lord,” faintly said Margery.
“Who? I? Forgive him? What a woman art thou, Madge! Nay—by the bones of Saint Matthew, I would break every bone in his body! Forsooth, Madge, those knaves the Archbishop and the Abbot have played me a scurvy trick, and gone many times further than I looked for, when I called them into this business. But it is so always, as I have heard,—thy chirurgeon and thy confessor, if they once bear the hand in thy matters, will never let thee go till they have choked thee. I fear I shall have hard labour to get thee out of this scrape. I will do all I can, be thou sure, but thou wist that I am not in favour with the new King as I was with King Richard, whose soul God rest! Madge, wilt forgive me, wife?”
“With a very good will, my Lord,” said Margery. “I wis well that thou wottedst not all that thou didst.”
“Not I, by Saint James of Compostella!” exclaimed Lord Marnell. “Were the good King Richard alive and reigning, I would soon let both the Archbishop and the Abbot feel the place too hot for to hold them. But I can do nothing with Harry of Bolingbroke, looking, too, that he hateth the Lollards as he hateth the devil—and a deal more, I trow, for I count that that prince and he be old friends,” added Lord Marnell, with an air of great disgust.
Margery smiled gravely. She felt sorry for her husband, who she saw was very miserable himself at the unexpected result of his conduct; but she did not allow herself for an instant to hope that he could save her.
“Mine own good Lord,” she said, “I pray you torment not yourself in assaying my relief, neither in thinking that you be the cause of my trouble; for I forgive you as freely as Christ hath forgiven me, and I count that is free enough.”
Lord Marnell stood leaning against the wall, and looking at Margery, who lay outside the bed.
“Of a truth, wife, I conceive thee not. Thou art here in the Tower dungeon, and thou lookest for no good outcoming, and lo! thou art calm and peaceful as if thou wert on King Henry’s throne! What means it, Madge?”
“I trow I am much happier here than I should be on King Henry’s throne!” answered Margery, with a smile. “Christ is with me, good husband, and where Christ is, is peace. ‘Pees I leeue to ghou, my pees I ghyue to ghou; not as the world ghyueth I ghyue to ghou’ (John xiv. 27). ‘These thingis I haue spoken to ghou, that ghe haue pees in me. In the world ghe schulen haue disese; but triste ghe, I haue ouercome the world?’” (John xvi. 33.)
When Lord Marnell quitted Margery that evening, he hastened to Court, and attempted to gain the ear of the King. Since the deposition of his friend and master, King Richard, he had never appeared there. He was consequently a stranger to the pages and porters, who tried to get rid of him as politely as they could. At length Lord Marnell caught sight of the Earl of Surrey, who with some hesitation consented to introduce him into the privy chamber. Henry listened to Lord Marnell only until he comprehended the nature of his plea; then met him with a frown and an angry—
“Pardon a Lollard? Never!”
“Please it, your Grace, your noble predecessor, King Richard, though no Lollard, would have granted me at once, in consideration of my long and faithful service unto him.”
“I am not Richard of Bordeaux, but Henry of Bolingbroke!” was the haughty answer, as the King turned round abruptly, and quitted Lord Marnell.
“By our Lady of Walsingham, I wis full well that” replied the latter, sotto voce.
As Lord Marnell quitted the palace, he met in the corridor with the Prince of Wales, (Afterwards Henry V) who stopped and saluted him, and Lord Marnell at once begged for his intercession with his father. The Prince readily promised it, but on learning particulars, the son’s brow darkened as the father’s had done. He was very sorry, but he really could not ask the King’s pardon for a Lollard. Lord Marnell would have given his whole fortune to undo his own work of the last eighteen months. He had never dreamed that Abbot Bilson would have summoned the archbishop to his aid, nor that Margery would have stood half as firmly as she had done. He only knew her as a fragile, gentle, submissive girl, and never expected to find in her material for the heroine or the martyr. Lord Marnell tried to procure the mediation of everybody about the Court; but all, while expressing great sympathy with him, declined to risk their own necks. Even the King’s sons said they dared not comply with his request. Prince Thomas (afterwards Henry V) was extremely kind—very much grieved that he could not help him; but Prince Humphrey (Duke of Gloucester) turned scornfully from him, and Prince John (the great Duke of Bedford) coldly bade him take heed to his own safety. The Earl of Somerset, the King’s half-brother, shook his head, and said he was already suspected by the King to be a Lollard himself, and such an application from him would probably seal his own doom. Lord Marnell applied to the Queen (Jeanne of Navarre, the second wife of Henry IV); but she seemed most afraid of all to whom he had spoken, lest she should incur the King’s anger, and possibly endanger herself.
The interval between the day of the examination and that appointed for the execution passed drearily to all parties. Lord Marnell, notwithstanding all these repulses, exerted himself unremittingly to procure a commutation of the sentence, at least to beheading; but in vain. The King was inexorable. If the Lady Marnell had chosen to ally herself with Lollards, she well knew what she was doing, and must abide the consequences. Vainly did Lord Marnell represent how young and inexperienced she was; in vain did he urge that the Act which made the Lollards amenable to capital punishment had been passed since her indictment, and only a few weeks before. Henry was not naturally disposed to hear his pleasure called in question; and Abbot Bilson had had possession of the royal ear already.
When Alice returned from Marnell Place on the evening of the 26th of February, Margery saw, by the expression of her face, that she had heard something which shocked her. She asked what it was.
“You mind, good my Lady, the day that you went with Master Pynson to hear a sermon in Bostock Church?”
“I trow I shall not lightly forget it,” was Margery’s answer.
“Master Sastre was a-preaching, was he not?”
“Ay. Wherefore?”
“My Lady, he suffered death this forenoon by burning.”
“Master Sastre! Who told thee?”
“Christopher it was that told me,—and yon evil man—for sure, though he be a holy priest, yet is he an evil man, or would he never else have so dealt with your Ladyship—yon evil man, Abbot Bilson was there, and did sore press Master Sastre for to have confessed his error; but Master Sastre did maintain the same to the end.”
Margery turned away her head. The venerable image of Sastre rose up before her, as he learned forward over the pulpit to say those last earnest words.
“Ah, dear old teacher!” she whispered to herself. “Thou wilt not have long to look among the multitude in the white apparel, for one face which was upturned to thee that day!”