The White Rose of Langley / A Story of the Olden Time

by Emily Sarah Holt

And in the third place, over the calm horizon of Langley had appeared a little cloud, as yet no more than “a man’s hand,” which was destined in its effects to change the whole current of life there. No one about her had in the least realised it as yet; but the Duchess Isabel was dying.

Very gently and slowly, at a rate which alarmed not even her physician, the Lollard Infanta descended to the portals of the grave. She knew herself whither she was going before any other eyes perceived it; and noiselessly she set her house in order. She executed her last will in terms which show that she died a Gospeller, as distinctly as if she had written it at the outset; she left bequests to her friends—“a fret of pearls to her dear daughter, Constance Le Despenser;” she named two of the most eminent Lollards living (Sir Lewis Clifford and Sir Richard Stury) as her executors; she showed that she retained, like the majority of the Lollards, a belief in Purgatory, by one bequest for masses to be sung for her soul; and lastly—a very Protestant item when considered with the rest—she desired to be interred, not by the shrine of any saint or martyr, but “whithersoever her Lord should appoint.”

The priests said that she died “very penitent.” But for what? For her early follies and sins, no doubt she did. But of course they wished it to be understood that it was for her Wycliffite heresies.

It was about the beginning of February, 1393, that the Duchess died. Her husband never awoke fully to his irreparable loss until long after he had lost her. But he held her memory in honour at her burial, with a gentle respect which showed some faint sense of it. The cemetery which he selected for her resting-place was that nearest her home—the Priory Church of Langley. There the dust slept quietly; and the soul which had never nestled down on earth, found its first and final home in Heaven.

It might not unreasonably have been expected that Constance, now left the only woman of her family, would have remembered that there was another family to which she also belonged, and a far-off individual who stood to her in the nominal relation of husband. But it did not please her Ladyship to remember any such thing. She liked queening it in her father’s palace; and she did not like the prospect of yielding precedence to her mother-in-law, which would have been a necessity of her married life. As to the Lord Le Despenser, she was absolutely indifferent to him. Her childish feeling of contempt had not been replaced by any kindlier one. It was not that she disliked him: she cared too little about him even to hate him. When the thought of going to Cardiff crossed her mind, which was not often, it was always associated with the old Lady Le Despenser, not at all with the young Lord.

Now and then the husband and wife met for a few minutes. The Lord Le Despenser had grown into a handsome and most graceful gentleman, of accomplished manners and noble bearing. When they thus met, they greeted each other with formal reverences; the Baron kissed the hand of the Princess; each hoped the other was well; they exchanged a few remarks on the prominent topics of the day, and then took leave with equal ceremony, and saw no more of one another for some months.

The Lady Le Despenser, it must be admitted, was not the woman calculated to attract such a nature as that of Constance. She was a Lollard, by birth no less than by marriage; but in her creed she was an ascetic of the sternest and most unbending type. In her judgment a laugh was indecorum, and smelling a rose was indulgence of the flesh. Her behaviour to her royal daughter-in-law was marked by the utmost outward deference, yet she never failed to leave the impression on Constance’s mind that she regarded her as an outsider and a reprobate. Moreover, the Lady Le Despenser had some singular notions on the subject of love. Fortunately for her children, her heart was larger than her creed, and often overstepped the bounds assigned; but her theory was that human affections should be kept made up in labelled parcels, so much and no more to be allowed in each case. Favouritism was idolatry affectionate words were foolish condescensions to the flesh; while loving caresses savoured altogether of the evil one.

Now Constance liked dearly both to pet and to be petted. She loved, as she hated, intensely. The calm, sedate personal regard, in consideration of the meritorious qualities of the individual in question, which the Lady Le Despenser termed love, was not love at all in the eyes of Constance. The Dowager, moreover, was cool and deliberate; she objected to impulses, and after her calm fashion disliked impulsive people, whom she thought were not to be trusted. And Constance was all impulse. The squeaking of a mouse would have called forth gestures and ejaculations from the one, which the other would have deemed too extreme to be appropriate to an earthquake.

The Lord Le Despenser was the last of his mother’s three sons—the youngest-born, and the only survivor; and she loved him in reality far more than she would have been willing to allow, and to an extent which she would have deemed iniquitous idolatry in any other woman. In character he resembled her but slightly. The narrow-mindedness and obstinacy inherent in her family—for no Burghersh was ever known to see more than one side of any thing—was softened and modified in him into firmness and fidelity. His heart was large enough to hold a deep reservoir of love, but not so wide at its exit as to allow the stream to flow forth in all directions at once. If this be narrow-mindedness, then he was narrow-minded. But he was loyal to the heart’s core, faithful unto death, true in every fibre of his being. “He loved one only, and he clave to her,” and there was room in his heart for none other.

The Dowager had several times hinted to the Duke of York that she considered it high time that Constance should take up her residence at Cardiff, for she was a firm believer in “the eternal fitness of things,” and while too much love was in her eyes deeply reprehensible, a proper quantity of matrimony, at a suitable age, was a highly respectable thing, and a state into which every man and woman ought to enter, with due prudence and decorum. And as a wife married in childhood was usually resigned to her husband at an age some years earlier than Constance had now attained, the Dowager was scandalised by her persistent absence. The Duke, who recognised in his daughter a more self-reliant character than his own, and was therefore afraid of her, had passed over the intimation, accompanied with a request that she would do as she liked about it. That Constance would do as she liked her father well knew; and she did it. She stayed at home, the Queen of Langley, where no oppressive pseudo-maternal atmosphere interfered with her perfect freedom.