From Household Words.
THE SHADOW OF MARGERY PASTON.
A suggestive book, "The Paston Letters; Original Letters, written during the reigns of Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fourth, and Richard the Third:" the private history of a family of rank, some four centuries ago. In this collection of ancient memorials of domestic life, we trace the nature of the contests between themselves of a poor, ambitious, and turbulant aristocracy, when the right of the strong arm was paramount over law; we see the growth of that power which was derived from the profitable exercise of industry; and view the middle classes, amidst the partial oppression and general contempt of the high-born, securing for themselves a firm position and a strong hold, whilst the exclusive claims of feudality were crumbling around them. Here we learn how harsh were many of the domestic relations of parent and child—how public oppression had its counterpart in private tyranny. The love passages of the book are singularly interesting. A humble friend of the Paston family has won the affections of one of its daughters. They are betrothed. The mother insults the "Factor." The brothers despise him. The power of the Church is opposed to the union. Yet the ardent girl is constant—and she triumphs. How she finally emerged from her persecutions is not recorded. But the last letter of the angry mother, which describes these struggles, is thus endorsed:—"A letter to Sir John Paston from his mother, touching the good-will between her daughter Margery P. and Ric. Calle, who were after married together."
The shadows of the young lady and her lover arise before us, and we try to piece out their dim history.
Margery Paston is sitting in the accustomed solitude of the Brown chamber in her mother's dowry house at Norwich. Dame Margaret Paston, her mother, has just returned from spending the Easter of 1469 in her son's ruinous castle of Caister. He holds this castle under a disputed will; and the great duke of Norfolk is preparing to dispossess him of it, not by the feeble writs of the King's Court at Westminster, but by gun and scaling ladder. On the return of the lady she receives unwelcome intelligence. Her chaplin, Sir James Gloys, has intercepted a letter addressed to her daughter. The young lady is the object of constant anxiety and suspicion—watched—persecuted. Up to the age of twelve or fourteen she had seen little of her parents, but had been a welcome inmate in the family of Sir John Fastolf, at Caister; who, in his caresses of the fair girl, indulged the strong affection which old men generally feel towards a playful and endearing child. He had no children of his own, and little Margery was, therefore, a real solace to the ancient warrior. There was another child, a few years older than Margery, who was admitted to play, and to learn out of the same book, with the daughter of the Pastons. This was Richard Calle, the only son of an honest and painstaking man, who acted in the capacity of a steward for Sir John Fastolf, and conducted many of the complicated affairs with which the old knight amused himself in the evening of a busy life—his friends complaining of "the yearly great damage he beareth in disbursing his money about shipping and boats, keeping a house up at Yarmouth to his great harm, and receiveth but chaffer and ware for his corns and his wools, and then must abide a long day to make money."[11]
Richard Calle has now grown into manhood. He is reputed to have received a goodly inheritance from his father, which he has increased by provident enterprises in trade. When the Pastons wanted money, he was once always to be applied to. But he has presumed to address his play-fellow Margery with the language of affection; and though Sir John Paston had once said that, for his part, Richard Calle might have his dowerless sister and welcome, for he had always been a warm friend of the Pastons; his mother is indignant that a trader should think of marrying into a gentle family; and John of Gelston, the second son, in an hour when the fortunes of the house seemed in the ascendant, has vowed that Richard Calle "should never have my good-will for to make my sister to sell candles and mustard, at Framlingham."[12]
Margery Paston sits in the Brown chamber, with her bright blue eyes dimmed with tears. She is endeavouring to forget her own sorrows by reading a tale of imaginary griefs, which for four hundred years has never been read with a tearless eye. She is at that passage of "The Clerk's Tale" of Chaucer, where Grisildis has her infant daughter taken from her, under pretence that it is to be put to death:——
"But, at the last, to speaken she began,
And meekly she to the serjeant pray'd
(So as he was a worthy gentleman)
That she might kiss her child ere that it deid [died];
And in her barne [lap] this little child she laid
With full sad face, and 'gan the child to bliss,
And lulled it, and after 'gan it kiss."
The door of the chamber is hastily opened, and an old servant stands before Margery with a face of affright. All in that household love the gentle maiden; and so the old man, seeing the tear in her eye, bids her be of good cheer, for though his worshipful mistress is now in a somewhat impatient humor, and demands her instant attendance in the Oaken parlor, she is a good lady at heart, and would soon forgive any slight cause of offence.
Dame Paston has called in two allies to constitute, with herself, the tribunal that is about to sit in judgment on Margery Paston. Dame Agnes Paston, the aged mother of the late heir of Caister, sits at the table with her daughter-in-law and the priest.
Margery enters; and, in a moment, is kneeling at the feet of her mother, with the accustomed reverence of child to parent. "Oh, minion," says the mother, "rise, I beseech you; it is not for such as you to kneel to a poor forlorn widow, left with few worldly goods. Mistress Calle has plenteousness all around her, and has nothing to ask of the world's gear. She has her good house at Framlingham, and her full store at Norwich. Mistress, know you the price of salted hams at this present? Are pickled herrings plenteous? We have some wool in loft, which we should not be unwilling to exchange for worsteds. How say you, Mistress Dry-goods; will you deal, will you chaffer?"
"My mother, what mean you?"
"Oh, minion, you know full well my meaning. You are an alien from your family. You are betrothed to a low trader, with no gentle blood in his veins."
"The good Sir William Paston, Knight, and whilom Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas, would rise from his grave to save a granddaughter of his from inter-marrying with mustard and candle," quoth the ancient lady. "Faugh! a factor!"
"And one whom I shrewdly suspect to be a heretic," says the priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston.
"Oh, my mother, why am I thus persecuted?"
"Persecuted, foosooth!" responds the elder dame; "I took other rule with my daughters; and well do I remember that when Elizabeth Clere, my niece, tried to intercede with me for her wilful cousin Mary, forasmuch as she had been 'beaten once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice in a day, and had her head broken in several places,'[13] I told her that it was for warning and ensample to all forward maidens who dared to think of love or marriage without their parents' guidance. And with the help of my worthy lord, the good Sir William Paston, Knight, and Judge of His Majesty's Court of the Common Pleas—His Majesty Henry the Sixth gave him two robes and a hundred marks yearly; and may God him preserve upon his throne——"
The priest and Mistress Margaret drown the good old lady's somewhat disloyal gratitude (seeing that the House of York is in the ascendant) by judicious clearings of the voice, as they prepare to read the intercepted letter of Richard Calle, with sundry glosses.
"Minion," says the mother, "know you this superscription?"
"It is a letter from my own Richard," cries the delighted girl; "will you give it me?"
"Assuredly not. It convicts you of being a false liar,—or it lies itself. Did you not, with the fear of close custody, and bread and water, and maybe some healing stripes, before your eyes, affirm that there was no contract between the dry-goodsman and yourself?"
"Mother, I own my sin; I did affirm it, but I was wrong, and I am penitent."
"Vile brethel!" exclaims the mother.
"She mentioned it not, even under the seal of confession," adds the priest.
"Yes, once in the week or twice, and sometimes twice a day, and she made an excellent wife, by reason of the frequent beatings, and brought up her children accordant," soliloquises the old lady.
"Daughter, I conjure you to hear what this vile Richard Calle sayeth to you. Tell me that it is false—tell me that he is a bold liar, when he affirmeth that you are contracted, and you shall at once have all freedom and reasonable pleasure; but if not——"
"Mother, I listen."
"Hear, then, what this abominable bill imports. Sir James, please to read."
"'To Mistress Margery Paston:
"'Mine own lady and mistress, and before God very true wife, I, with heart full, very sorrowfully recommend me unto you, as he that cannot be merry, nor nought shall be, till it be otherwise with us than it is yet; for this life that we lead now is neither pleasure to God nor to the world, considering the great band of matrimony that is made betwixt us, and also the great love that hath been, and as I trust yet is, betwixt us, and as on my part never greater. Wherefore I beseech Almighty God comfort us as soon as it pleaseth Him; for us that ought of very right to be most together, are most asunder. Meseemeth it is a thousand years ago that I spake with you——"
Margery here bursts into a passion of tears; and her mother, almost weeping too, ejaculates, "My poor child!" The priest looks at the lady somewhat spitefully, and proceeds:——
"'I had liever than all the good in the world I might be with you. Alas! alas! good lady full little remember they what they do that keep us thus asunder. Four times in the year are they accursed that let matrimony——'"
"Accursed are they?" exclaims the priest. "Ban and anathema against us, my worshipful lady! But there are others, I wot, that the Church holds accursed; and this base mechanical be one of them, if I mistake not. Did I not once hear him say—for the varlet ever had privilege to speak in this house, when his betters held their peace—did I not hear him once say that his father had told him that he had seen the heretic priest, John Waddon, burnt at Framlingham, and that he (shame that such an unbeliever might presume to speak upon matters of the Church!) thought that the knowledge of the truth was not advanced by such terrors, and that those who lit the fires for the Lollards had no sanction in the Gospel of Christ. For mine own part, I well believe that he has seduced our daughter from her obedience by his false and damnable opinions. Mistress Margery, did he never open in your presence the book of that arch heretic, John Wiclif, which is called, 'The Book of the New Law'—the book which, in the Constitution of Archbishop Arundel, was forbidden to be read, under pain of the greater excommunication?"
The maiden answers not. The priest, looking earnestly at Mistress Margaret Paston, asks her if she did not think that there was a possibility of such a devilish corruption having gone forward; and Mistress Margaret, her cheek coloring a deep red, and then having an ashy paleness, speaks no more for good or evil to her daughter, but quails before the priest. He has her secret. There is a treasured volume in that house, which has been carefully locked up for half a century, to be looked upon in the secret hour, when prying eyes are sleeping, and in the hour of tribulation, when careful eyes are waking. With Richard Calle, Mistress Margaret had often spoken of this book; although even to possess it was to risk a charge of "Lollardie," with all its penalties. The priest sees his triumph; and proceeds to make an end of as much of the letter as he chooses to read:——
"'I understand, lady, ye have had as much sorrow for me as any gentlewoman hath had in the world, as would God all that sorrow that ye have had had rested upon me, and that ye had been discharged of it; for I wis, lady, it is to me a death to hear that ye be entreated otherwise than ye ought to be; this is a painful life that we lead. I cannot live thus without it be a great displeasure to God.'"
"He thought not of God's displeasure when he presumed to speak of love to a daughter of the Pastons," says the priest. "A granddaughter of Sir William Paston, one of his Majesty's Justices," mutters the ancient lady. Sir James continues to read the missive:——
"'I suppose they deem we be not ensured together and if they do so I marvel, for then they are not well advised, remembering the plainness that I brake to my mistress at the beginning, and I suppose by you, both; and ye did as ye ought to do of very right; and if ye have done the contrary, as I have been informed ye have done, ye did neither consciencely, nor to the pleasure of God, without ye did it for fear, and for the time, to please such as were at that time about you; and if ye did it for this cause, it was a reasonable cause, considering the great and importable calling upon ye that ye had; and many an untrue tale was made to you of me, which, God know it, I was never guilty of."[14]
"And now, pretty Mistress Margery," says Sir James, "will you affirm that this man sayeth untruly, when he sayeth that you are ensured together? You have before said that you are not so ensured. Will you cast off your mother and your brothers to be the wife of a low factor, and a companion for idle queans and the wives of fat burgesses, instead of wedding some noble knight, who will give you a castle to dwell in, with all worship and authority? Deny the contract; there is guilt in affirming it even if it had been made in a moment of imprudence."
"Sir James Gloys, and you, my honored mother," answers the maiden, "Richard Calle says truly, that I did not consciencely, nor to the pleasure of God, when I concealed our contract for fear, and for the time. We are betrothed; and I rejoice at the handfasting. No pain, no fear, shall ever again lead me to deny it. He is my true husband, and may I ever be to him a reverent and loving wife. For who can I love as I have loved, and do love, Richard Calle,—the companion of my childhood, the instructor of my girlhood: a true man, as brave as if he were the sturdiest of belted knights—as wise as if he were the clerkliest of learned scholars. He has abundance; he is generous. When did a Paston ask Richard Calle for aid that his hand was not open? We may not want his help just now; but if the time arrive, and assuredly it may be not far off, that hand would be again stretched out for succour. Come Richard Calle of gentle or simple, I heed not; he is my own true man, and to him is my faith plighted, for ever and aye."
"Twice in a day, and had her head broke in several places," grumbles the ancient dame.
"Mistress Margery," responds the priest, "you must take your own course. But this is not now a matter for daughter and mother to settle between them. It must before the Lord Bishop. In the name of Holy Church, I prohibit all intercourse by message or letter between Richard Calle and yourself. You must be in strict durance for a short season; and then a higher than us shall decide, contract or no contract. Heaven forfend that I, or any servant of the altar, should let matrimony."
"My child, go to your chamber," whispers the subdued mother.
We see the shadow of Margery Paston, before she quits the Oaken parlor, kneeling for her mother's blessing.
The Michaelmas of 1469 is nearly come. Margery Paston is still in durance at her mother's house. Every art has been tried to make her deny the betrothal. The priest has worked upon the fears of the mother—the daughter has been studiously kept from her presence. But this state of things cannot abide. Dame Margaret thus writes to Sir John Paston: "I greet you well, and send you God's blessing and mine; letting you weet that on Thursday last was, my mother and I were with my Lord of Norwich, and desired him that he would no more do in the matter touching your sister till that ye, and my brother, and others, that were executors to your father, might be here together, for they had the rule of her as well as I; and he said plainly that he had been required so often to examine her, that he might not, nor would, no longer delay it: and charged me, in pain of cursing, that she should not be deferred, but that she should appear before him the next day. And I said plainly that I would neither bring her nor send her. And then he said that he would send for her himself, and charged that she should be at her liberty to come when he sent for her."
On the next day—it is a Friday—Margery Paston is brought into the Bishop's Court. There, surrounded with the panoply of the Church, sits old Walter Lyhart—he that built the roof of the nave, and the screen, of Norwich Cathedral. The maiden trembles, but her spirit remains unbroken. The bishop puts her in remembrance how she was born,—what kin and friends she has—"And ye shall have more, young lady, if ye will be ruled and guided after them. But if ye will not, what rebuke, and loss, and shame will be yours? They will evermore forsake you, for any good, or help, or comfort that ye shall have of them. Be well advised. I have heard say that ye love one that your friends are not well pleased that ye should love. Be advised—be right well advised."
"I am the betrothed wife of Richard Calle. I must cleave to him for better for worse."
"Rehearse to me what you said to him. Let me understand if it makes matrimony?"
"We have plighted our troth—we are handfasted. How can I repeat the words? Richard said——Oh, my lord! spare me, I am bound in my conscience, whatsoever the words were. If the very words make not sure, make it, I beseech you, surer ere I go hence."
And then the bishop dismisses the maiden with many frowns.
Richard Calle is summoned. He briefly tells the time and place where the vows were exchanged. The bishop is bewildered. He scarcely dare hesitate to confirm the marriage. But the subtle priest is at his side, and he whispers the fearful word of "Lollardie." Then the bishop hastily breaks up the court, and says, "That he supposed there should be found other things against him that might cause the letting the marriage; and therefore he would not be too hasty to give sentence."
Margery Paston stands again upon her mother's threshold. The aged servant is weeping as he opens the door: "Oh, my dear young mistress! I am commanded to shut this gate against you." The figure of Sir James Gloys looms darkly in the hall. "Begone, mistress!" he exclaims. "I will go to my grandmother," sobs out the poor girl. "Your grandmother banishes you for ever from her presence," retorts the churlish priest.
It is night. The pride and the purity of the unhappy Margery forbid her to seek the protection of her Richard. She has been watched. Exhausted and heart-broken, she gladly accepts the shelter which Roger Best offers her. That shelter becomes her prison.
Here closes the record. But what a succession of Shadows is called up by the endorsement of the letter which tells of these sorrows: "They were after married together." The contract could not be dissolved.
At one time we see the shadows of Richard and Margery Calle sitting cheerily together in their peaceful home at Framlingham. The intrigues that are carrying on in the Duke of Norfolk's castle, under whose walls they abide, touch them not. They are not called upon to declare either for York or Lancaster.
At another time we fancy John of Gelston, Margery's younger brother, a wandering fugitive after the battle of Barnet, throwing himself upon the despised Factor for refuge and succor. The fortunes of the Pastons are now at the lowest ebb. Norfolk holds Caister. Edward the Fourth has pardoned their revolt—but he will not trust them, or employ them. At length Norfolk dies. Caister is restored to the Pastons—but they are penniless.
We see the shadow of a great feast within those half-ruinous walls. The Factor has procured the means from his friends the Lombards. He now sits upon the dais. Sir John Paston calls him brother. Dame Paston greets him as son. John of Gelston says, "I would that my sister should not sell mustard and candles at Framlingham—and assuredly she shall not. Richard Calle has managed his substance better than we; he can win broad lands enow. Kiss me, sister."
There is one shadow of Margery which rests upon our mind. She sits with her mother in the Oaken parlor at Norwich, reading from a volume, now opened without fear, "Blessed are the peace-makers."