Such was the treatment which Hawkwood and history received at the hands of an anonymous author in the year 1687. The volume in question, of which there are two copies in the British Museum, is, in fact, a coarsely printed black-letter tract; the paper such as even a modern grocer would turn up his nose at; and the woodcuts violating every propriety, regardless at once of perspective and humanity.
The volume however which Mrs. Pepys read to her husband is worse in every respect. There is a copy in the Guildhall Library; and I have to thank the most courteous of librarians, Mr. Allchin, for the opportunity I have enjoyed of perusing it. Perhaps the second edition, of which I have spoken above, was prepared expressly for the benefit of the youthful mind. The first is certainly bad enough to pollute the minds of all who read or listened to the reader. I will only add, that the illustrating artist has been so hard put to it, that he frequently makes one design represent two different events, the scenes of which are wide apart. He might have alleged one thing in favour of his so doing; namely, that the illustration in question quite as truthfully represented one scene with the actors therein, as it did the other. Of this there can be no doubt; and I may further add, in behalf of the pictorial illustrations, that they assuredly did not offend against the second commandment, for there is nothing in them that is a likeness of anything in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; and if it be an old joke to say so, it is, at all events, better than any of the jokes to be found in the volume which Mrs. Pepys read with complacency to that wicked little man, her redoubtable husband.
The true story of John Hawkwood needs no romance to lend it brightness, or season it with wonders. It has marvels enough of its own; and these, redolent of romance, are, in fact, sober and incontrovertible truth.
If Essex has been famous for calves, it has also had its share of heroes; heroes (if one may say so) in evil as in good; with its very villages producing them, and that in the humblest localities. If Frinton rejoices because of Cornelius and Tilbury, the poison swallowers, Sible Hedingham is glad because of John Hawkwood, the tailor and soldier.
In the village last-named, and in the reign of Edward the Second, there lived a tanner called Gilbert Hawkwood. His vocation not being a profitable one, he resolved that it should not be followed by his son. The latter, instead of tanning hides of brutes, was taught the mystery of covering those of men. In simple, honest English, he was apprenticed to a tailor; and did not at all like it.
Cornhill was at that time the stage whereon tailors most did congregate; and as troops were constantly passing that way, to and from the vicinity of the tower, John Hawkwood, wherever he met with them, sighed as he contrasted their jolly swash-buckler sort of air with his own melancholy look, gait, and calling. The King, Edward the Third, was then waging a most unjust war with France, and needed soldiers to champion his bad cause. Hawkwood recked little of the merits of the quarrel, but when a roving party of heroes pressed him to join, he met them more than half-way; and never was he more jubilant than when he changed his ’prentice muffin-cap for a peaked morrion, his dark rags for a gay suit, and a sword and a shield were the implements of his work, instead of a needle and thimble.
Now young Hawkwood was not a lad to be satisfied with being simply a “man-at-arms.” Michel, in the French play, when he recounts how he was pressed into the service, says, “Mon Général me nomma soldat; mais ma nomination n’a pas eu de suite.” The boy from Sible Hedingham was made of other stuff than that which could make him be content with singing, like the pleasant gentleman in the ‘Dame Blanche,’—“Ah! quel plaisir d’être soldat!” He was resolved to lead as well as serve; and he served well, to give him the better chance of leading. It is the only policy that permanently succeeds.
Officers were not dainty in those days, either of speech or anything else. Difficult as they were to satisfy, Hawkwood accomplished it. The man who laid on his blows with such good heart, and thwacked the foe so lustily and to excellent purpose, albeit in anything but an excellent cause, was a man whose sword was sure to carve out fortune for him. Accordingly, he soon passed from poor private to plumed captain. His purse was not much the better filled because of his brighter corslet and his new feathers; and as the foe he had to encounter was as badly furnished as himself, he got abundance of honour, but few pistoles. The King beheld him mowing down adversaries, as though he had been expressly engaged by Death to gather in his harvest. On the battle-field, the royal Edward dubbed the tailor knight. “Thou art the bravest knight,” said he, “in all the army.” “Umph!” murmured the cavalier of the needle, “and the poorest too!”
But he had what to a brave man was better than bezants, dearer than dollars, and above marks and moidores,—he had praise from the Black Prince. That chivalric personage was perfectly ecstatic at witnessing the deeds which Hawkwood enacted on the bloody, but glorious, day at Poitiers. The praise enriched him as though it had been pistoles. What baron, standing in need of a gentleman cut-throat, would hesitate to engage, at any cost (it was only promising and breaking a pledge), a man with a sharp sword and a stout arm, who had a verbal character from such a master as he whose sword is now rusting in peace above the time-honoured tomb at Canterbury?
Hawkwood needed some such testimony. The Peace of Bretigny had been ratified in 1360; and they who before had not had leisure to be ill, were all becoming seriously indisposed for want of action. As employment did not come, they made it for themselves. If kings could be stupendous scamps, why not commoner men? They waited long enough, as they thought, for hire for their swords, till at last they put the latter to private use. A band was formed, and called “Les Tards Venus,”—the “Come-at-Lasts,”—as if apologetically and modestly expressive of their patience. Some people would have been the better pleased had the self-styled tardy gentlemen been content to “wait a little longer.” The more learned members of the society, perhaps the chaplains, called the band the “Magna Comitiva,” or “Great Band.” A greater band of brigands certainly never existed, the chaplains included!