“Mount behind me, then,” said the King, “and I will show you him.”
“But how shall I know him when I see him?”
“Easily enough. You will know him by his remaining covered.”
Soon the King came upon his retinue, all of whom promptly bared their heads. “Now, my friend, where is the King?” asked his Majesty, turning, with a smile, in his saddle.
“There’s only we two covered, and since I know I’m no king, I—O! pardon, your Majesty!” replied the now trembling tinker.
The King laughed. “Now,” said he, “since you have seen how a King looks, you shall also see how he acts,” and then, drawing his sword, he knighted the tinker on the spot; or, in the words of the brave old ballad:
“Come, tell me thy name.” “I am John of the Dale,
A mender of kettles, and fond of good ale.”—
“Then rise up, Sir John, for I’ll honour thee here,—
I make thee a Knight of five hundred a year!”
Well may the mark of exclamation stand there, not only at the general improbability of such a thing, but at the preposterous idea of the niggard James the First being guilty of an act of unreasonable generosity. But one must not question the legend at the “King and Tinker,” where it is devoutly cherished. I have before me a four-page pamphlet, issued at the inn, wherein the ancient ballad is printed at length and surmounted, not very convincingly, by a woodblock in the Bewick manner, showing a number of sportsmen in the costume of George the Third’s time, about, in a most unsportsmanlike way, to ride over the hounds. In the distance is Windsor Castle. It will be conceded that, as an illustration of the King James and the Tinker legend, this is lacking in some of those intimate touches that would make the incident live again.
But the legend and the ballad are much older than the days of James the First. They are, in fact, to be found, on substantially the same lines, in most centuries and many countries, Haroun-al-Raschid is found, in the Arabian Nights, in circumstances not dissimilar: while the story of Henry the Second—or, as some versions have it, Henry the Eighth—and the Miller of Mansfield is another familiar parallel. There again we find the King riding away in the forest from his courtiers, only in that instance it is the Forest of Sherwood. He is given shelter by the miller, and shares a bed with the miller’s son, Dick. Next morning the agitated courtiers discover the King, who knights his host, “Sir John Cockle,” and eventually names him ranger of Sherwood, with a salary of £300.
From romance of this almost fairy-tale kind let us turn to the equally astonishing, but better established, story associated with the once-famed “Pelican” at Speenhamland, on the outskirts of Newbury. The Peerage, which has long appeared to exist almost exclusively for the purpose of scandalising staid folk by the amazing marriages of its members, included in 1744 a Duke of Chandos; Henry Brydges, the second Duke, at that time a widower. He and a friend, dining at the “Pelican” on their way from Bath to London in that year, were interrupted by an unwonted excitement that appeared to be agitating the establishment. Inquiring the cause, they were told that a man was about to sell his wife in the inn yard. “Let us go and see,” quoth the Duke; and they accordingly went forth into the courtyard and saw a handsome, modest-looking young woman enter, in the approved manner, with a halter round her neck, and led by her husband, who is described as a “brutal ostler.”