This is so excellent a voucher for him that it is not surprising so universal a favourite stepped into the shoes of his master’s widow. She was rich, and he with a plentiful lack of coin; yet though she had a choice of suitors, including a “tanner, a taylor, and a parson,” she set her heart on Jack with something of the determination which characterized the “Berkshire Lady” already referred to in these pages; and though he was something loth, married him out of hand. We are not told that she regretted it, but probably she did, for the stories have it that she was a gossip and given to staying out late, while Jack stopped at home and went betimes to bed. Once, when she returned at midnight, and knocked at the door, he looked from his window and told her that, as she had stayed out all day for her own delight, she might “lie forth” until the morning for his. “Moved with pity,” as the narrative says, but more likely because her continual knocking kept him awake, he at last went down in his shirt and opened the door, when “Alack, husband,” says she, “what hap have I? My wedding ring was even now in my hand, and I have let it fall about the door; good, sweet John, come forth with the candle and help me seek it.”
He “went forth” accordingly, into the street, and she locked him out! We are not told what happened when he got in again.
He seems to have taken her loss, a little later, calmly enough, for he speedily married again, and although “wondrous wealthie,” he chose a poor girl who lived at Aylesbury. A grand wedding it was when Joan (for that was her name) and Jack were married. Her head, we are assured, was adorned with a “billement of gold, and her hair, as yellow as gold, hanging downe behind her.” In fact, “Her golden hair was hanging down her back,” as the music-hall songster has it; which goes far to prove that the modern penchant for yellow locks has a respectable antiquity, and warrants brunettes in using all the arts of the toilet to redress the errors of Nature.
JACK AS ENTERTAINER
Jack of Newbury entertained Henry the Eighth here, and, wonderful to relate, the floors of the house were covered with broad cloth, instead of the then usual rushes. Also, he equipped a hundred of his workmen, fifty as horsemen, and fifty armed with bows and pikes, “as well armed and better clothed than any,” and went with them to the Scotch war. The “Ballad of the Newberrie Archers” tells us how they distinguished themselves at Flodden Field; but it must be added that it is doubtful whether they ever reached so far; which proves the ballad-maker—the “special correspondent” of that time—to have been more eloquent than truthful. That Jack was the principal man of his trade must be evident from these facts and from the statement that he employed a hundred looms; and a great deal more evident from his having been selected to head the petition of the clothiers for the encouragement of trade with France. He had a pretty taste in sarcasm, too, if his retort upon Wolsey, to whom it had been referred, and who had delayed to answer it, is considered. “If my Lord Chancellor’s father,” said he, “had been no hastier in killing calves than he in despatching of poor men’s suits, I think he would never have worn a mitre.” It is only necessary to remember that Wolsey was the son of a butcher for the sting of this quip to be appreciated.
OLD CLOTH HALL, NEWBURY.
XXVI
In 1531, and again in 1556, Newbury was the scene of martyrdoms; and in 1643 and 1644 the site of two battles between Charles and his Parliament, both almost equally indecisive, and both remarkable for desperate courage on either side.