The Robber Baron of Bedford Castle

by A. J. Foster; Edith E. Cuthell

In such a nook, in her own private room, sat Margaret de Ripariis, the lady of Bedford Castle. The view from out of the open window was a pleasant one. Immediately at her feet was the strong wall surrounding the keep itself; its exact position can even now be determined, as we stand on the flat bowling-green which occupies the summit of the mound where the keep once stood. Beyond, the broad stream of the Ouse protected the castle along the whole of the southern front. Across the river, to the right, the Micklegate, or southern portion of the town, clustered round the two churches of St. Mary and St. Peter, Dunstable; and the view from the upper stories of the keep embraced the abbey of Elstow, with its great Norman church, some two miles further to the south, and was only bounded by the blue line of the Ampthill hills.

But charming as was the prospect, the Lady Margaret was not regarding it with any expression of satisfaction. In fact, her thoughts were quite otherwise occupied. A controversy was going on at that moment between herself and her lord and master, and she merely gazed out of the window in order to turn away her eyes from him, for they were full of tears. An unfortunate contrast to the scene within were the calm river and the bright spring sunshine without.

The Lady Margaret had barely reached middle age, but sorrow and care had worn weary lines on a face which, some twenty years before, must have been one of exceeding beauty. When a young girl, she had betrothed herself to William de Beauchamp, Ralph's uncle; but by an overstraining of that feudal law which allowed the king, or any other chief, the power to give his ward in marriage, she had been forced by King John into a distasteful match with Fulke de Breauté. It would have been possible, but difficult, for a strong-willed woman to resist the will and the command of a feudal superior. But in the case of an heiress, such as was Margaret de Ripariis, great pressure was exercised, and many women in those days had to yield against their will and inclination. Fulke de Breauté himself was at that time a young man in the height of favour with King John, who was then engaged in his desperate struggle with his barons, and who eventually rewarded his supporter with the governorship of Bedford, and the hand of the rich heiress.

But on the morning in question in this chapter the redoubtable Fulke was in a somewhat less defiant, and even in a penitent mood. Not, however, that he had as yet made any act of reparation for the terrible deed of pillage and murder committed on St. Vincent's Eve at St. Alban's, and which the ferocious knight had finally crowned by carrying off a crowd of men, women, and children to his stronghold at Bedford.

In those days freebooting barons pounced upon prisoners for the sake of ransom, much as the Greek brigands do now, and we may be sure that the burgesses of St. Alban's had to pay up pretty heavily ere their fellow-townsfolk were restored to them. The chronicler, however, does not relate the fate of these unfortunate creatures thus hurried off to Bedford, but what he does tell us is, that the conscience of Fulke, dead enough probably when that miscreant was awake, had been pricking him as he slept; and "conscience doth make cowards of us all."

De Breauté was suffering mentally from an uneasy night and a very ugly dream. He had seen, the chronicler relates--though how he came by such an intimate knowledge of the knight's dream does not transpire--he had seen a huge stone fall from the summit of the great central tower of St. Alban's Abbey--that tower built of the bricks of the Roman Verulam which we still see rising high above the city--and had felt it fall upon him and crush him to powder.

One cannot but think that Sir Fulke was paying the penalty for a too hearty indulgence in some indigestible dish at the supper-table the evening before. Be that how it may, however, he awoke with a great cry, and told the dream to Lady Margaret. The latter, as much alarmed as her husband, drew from him an account of his late raid, of which the presence of the captives had given her an inkling, and then urged him to go off forthwith to St. Alban's, and make reparation at the shrine of the saint.

With the morning light, however, Sir Fulke, himself again, demurred. He began to regret that he had told his wife all. The brief season of superstitious fear had passed away, and his usual condition of ferocity and self-will supervening, he was endeavouring, and not unsuccessfully, to master the better feeling that had arisen within him.

The Lady Margaret had, under the seemingly fortuitous circumstances of her husband's brief penitence, ventured to bring forward a matter she had at heart. It was now the season of Lent. In the famous Benedictine Nunnery of Elstow, close to Bedford, Martin de Pateshulle, Archdeacon of Northampton, and the uncle of Aliva, was holding a series of special devotional services for women, or what we should now call a retreat, which was attended by many of the ladies of the county. Margaret, sick at heart with her life at Bedford Castle, and weary of the blasphemies and the sacrilege of her husband, was most anxious to escape, if only for a time, into the seclusion of religious life.

The old chaplain of the castle, the pious and venerable priest, who had taught Ralph de Beauchamp his hic, hæc, hoc, had long since been gathered to his rest. Indeed, had he still been alive, he could scarcely have continued in his office under the new régime. So chaplain at this time there was none in Bedford Castle. He must, indeed, have been a strange priest who would have been acceptable to Fulke and his crew.