A Forgotten Hero; Or, Not for Him

by Emily Sarah Holt

In the December of this year, Earl Edmund left Berkhamsted for Cornwall, taking with him Vivian, and leaving Ademar behind as the only gentleman in the party. He was going on an errand unpleasant to himself, for the King had committed to his charge a portion of the Gascon army. War and contention were altogether out of his line, yet he had no choice but to obey. He joined his cousin, the Earl of Lancaster, and the Earl of Lincoln, in Cornwall, and together they sailed on the fifteenth of January 1296, from a Cornish port termed Plumhupe in the “Chronicle of Worcester,” but not easy to identify now, unless it be taken as a blunder for Plymouth, and the chronicler be supposed ignorant of its county. With them were twenty-five barons and a thousand knights.

During the absence of the Earl, it struck his cousin, the King—for no other reason can be guessed—that the Earl’s treasury being much better filled than his own, he might reasonably pay his debts out of his cousin’s overflowing coffers. Accordingly he sent to Berkhamsted, much to the dismay of the household, and coolly annexed his cousin’s valuables to the Crown. But Earl Edmund was a man in whose eyes gold was of comparatively small value, partly because he set other things much higher, and partly because he had always had so much of it, that poverty was a trouble which he was scarcely able to realise.

A sad year was 1296 to the royal family of England. The Gascon expedition proved so disastrous, that Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, died of grief and disappointment at Bayonne on the fifth of June; and the Scottish one, though brilliantly successful in a political light, cost no less, for an arrow shot at a venture, at the siege of Berwick, quenched the young life of Richard Plantagenet, the only brother and last near relation of Edmund, Earl of Cornwall. The triumphant capture of the coronation chair and the Stone of Destiny and their removal from Dunstaffnage to England, was contrasted with a terrible famine, which so affected the vines in particular, that there was hardly wine enough left for mass.

In the midst of these sharp contrasts of triumph and sorrow, Earl Edmund returned to England, escorting his widowed cousin Queen Blanche, and following the coffin of the Earl of Lancaster. They found the King earnestly engaged in effecting a contract of marriage between the young Prince Edward and a daughter of Guy, Count of Flanders, and binding himself to march to Guy’s assistance against the King of France.

Ah, had it been God’s will that the wife destined for Edward the Second should have been the pure, high-minded, heroic Philippine of Flanders, instead of the she-wolf of France, what a different history he would have had!

For among all the princesses of the thirteenth century one of the fairest souls is this Flemish maiden, who literally laid down her life in ransom for her father. It was not Prince Edward’s fault that Philippine was not Queen of England. It was the fault of the ambitious policy alike of King Edward and the King of France, and perhaps still more of his Navarrese Queen. They did not know that they were sacrificing not only Philippine, but Edward. Would they have cared much about it if they had done?

The regalia of Scotland were solemnly offered at the shrine of Saint Edward on the 17th of June. Earl Edmund was present at the ceremony, and after it, “weary with the storms of earth,” he went home to court repose at Berkhamsted.

It was the day after he came home, a soft, warm June day. Clarice and Heliet were playing with Rosie, now a bright, lively little child of five years old. In rushing away from Heliet, who was pretending to catch her, Rosie, to the dismay of all parties, ran straight against her father, who had just reached the top of the spiral staircase which led to their own rooms. Vivian, never very amiable when his course was impeded, either by a physical or a moral hindrance, impatiently pushed the child on one side. It was the wrong side. Rosie struggled to recover her balance for one moment, during which her father’s hand might have grasped her, had he been quick to do it; her mother had not time to reach her. Then, with an inarticulate cry for help, she went down the well of the staircase.

Past Heliet’s exclamation of horror came a sharp ringing shriek—“O Vivian! Rosie!” and darting by her astounded husband, down the stairs fled Clarice, with a celerity that she would have thought impossible an hour before.

Vivian’s state of mind was a mixture of selfishness and horror. He had not intended to hurt the child, merely to get her out of his way; but when selfishness and remorse struggle together, the worse of the two usually comes to the front. Vivian’s first articulate answer was a growl at his wife.