By C. E. BISHOP.
VI.—A PICTURESQUE HALF-CENTURY.
A picture of the times of Edward III should be one of strong lights and shades. His fifty years were crowded with events remarkable in their nature and of powerful influence on England, then and thereafter. His wars by land and sea revolutionized the military ideas of Europe; the invincible English infantry rose, and the thunder of the first cannon proclaimed the end of chivalry; the organization of the House of Commons and the enlistment of soldiers for stipend introduced in its full effect the safe policy of “control of the sovereign by the control of his purse.” The foundation of Flemish manufactures in England, and the opening of the New Castle coal trade on the one hand, with the labors of Wickliffe and Chaucer on the other, were alone sufficient to make any reign memorable.
It is a matter of wonder that “philosophers of history” have not made more study of the pregnant events of this reign. It is a matter of greater wonder that writers of romance and the drama have not more utilized its highly-colored scenes; the reigns of John and Richard II, which Shakspere seized as food for his pen, seem tame in the comparison—the more so because Froissart’s minute and picturesque “Chronicles” have preserved a wealth of material of these events ready to the modern adapter’s hand. This variety of strong situations should have half a dozen “pictures” instead of one. Perhaps we can “photograph them down” into a group of seven vignettes for our one “Picture.”
First shows us Edward, the boy of ten years, taken by his mother to her brother’s court at Paris and there made the unwitting tool to work the dethronement and death of his father (Edward II). His mother has sold his hand in marriage to the Count of Hainault’s infant daughter for troops to invade England withal. He becomes nominal king at the age of fifteen, but his mother and her brilliantly bad paramour, Mortimer, are the real rulers of England. His luckless Scotch campaign should be seen, in which his army was wasted and used up without a blow being struck, because the Scotch on their Highland ponies, with a bag of oatmeal dough and a pan-cake griddle at their saddles, needed no base of supplies, and just starved out and tired out the richly equipped English army—Isabella and Mortimer plotting the whole thing to ruin the young king’s popularity and avert the catastrophe which their black prophetic souls but too surely anticipated. For there is Nottingham Castle, the home of the two conspirators. The guards are changed every night and the keys kept under the queen’s pillow; and no nobleman is allowed to bring his retinue nearer than five miles from the walls. Good reason have they to be thus careful and suspicious after their five years of riot and usurpation; but their care avails not. The king is twenty years old and the only man in England capable of delivering her. We can see to this day the underground passage beneath the castle walls, where Edward and his few trusted knights went in and burst open Mortimer’s bed-room, where he was himself plotting the death of Edward. Comes the queen rushing in, en déshabillé, screaming, “Do not hurt my darling Mortimer!” Mortimer goes to the block, nevertheless; and the scene closes with the guilty queen’s agony for the loss of the only love of her unhappy life, her succeeding years of alternate brooding and raving, while all Europe is ringing with the feats of her son and grandson, (the Black Prince), not one ray of which glory penetrated the gloom of her solitary mourning over a lost and guilty passion. Is not this opening picture of the reign sufficiently tragic?
Next we should have the first exhibitions of the equally unholy passion of Edward for foreign conquest. His intrigues in the Netherlands for the invasion of France are a study in early diplomacy. A foremost figure in the scene is the remarkable “Brewer of Ghent,” de Artevelde, whose romantic career and tragic death at the hands of the people he most loved and benefited, because they resented his devotion to Edward, “read like a novel.” Here appear, too, the sturdy burghers of the Netherlands, painted by Motley’s matchless pen:
“Commerce plucks up half drowned Holland by the locks and pours gold into her lap. Fishermen and river raftsmen become ocean adventurers and merchant princes. Flemish weavers become mighty manufacturers. Armies of workmen, fifty thousand strong, tramp through the swarming streets. Silk-makers, clothiers, brewers, become the gossips of kings, lend their royal gossips vast sums and burn the royal notes of hand in fires of cinnamon wood. Wealth brings strength, strength confidence. Learning to handle cross-bow and dagger, the burghers fear less the baronial sword, finding that their own will cut as well, seeing that great armies—flowers of chivalry—can ride away before them fast enough at battles of spears and other encounters.... And so, struggling along their appointed path, making cloth, making money, making treaties with great kingdoms, making war by land and sea, ringing great bells, waving great banners, these insolent, boisterous burghers accomplish their work.”
These burghers took all Edward’s money for fighting and did not fight. From three invasions of France their armies came back with whole skins and full pockets, until Edward was beggared, his crown jewels pawned, his estates mortgaged, and he at last obliged to give hostages to the thrifty Dutchmen for payment of their claims.