“Never would you have seen your monkey again if I had not collared the knave,” he said. “Now, there is my cousin Dick, an honest fellow as ever swung a flail, but with no thought beyond what he can do with fists and staff; no use of his eyes, no putting two and two together. I’ll warrant me by the time he reaches the watch he will have forgotten the words I put into his mouth; and yet they are the very pith of the matter. I’ll e’en go after him.”
He started off, while Bassett and his boy made their way back towards the church, Hugh ill at ease because, while the pommelling of Peter seemed a fine thing, his doom to the whipping-post, though no more than justice, gave him an uneasy feeling. But his father would hear of no going to beg him off, and, indeed, it would have been bootless. Peter’s offence was one for which whipping might be held a merciful punishment—
“And may save him from turning into a cut-purse later on,” added Bassett.
So Agrippa went back to his rafters and met with no more adventures. The fair ran its usual busy course; the friar came often to talk with Stephen Bassett and to give Hugh exercises in reading and writing; while, more rarely, Eleanor and Anne appeared with Mistress Judith—in great excitement the last time because the next day they were to set forth for their home. September was drawing to an end, the weather was rainy, and Bassett began to make inquiries as to parties who would be travelling the same road as himself. Dick-o’-the-Hill was certain that his cousin Mat would find the right people. He had implicit faith in his sagacity, and came with him in triumph one day to announce success. It seemed that a mercer, his wife, and son were going back to London and would be glad of company. And then it came out that Matthew himself was strongly drawn in the same direction.
“A man,” he explained, “is like to have all his wits dulled who sees and hears none but clodhoppers. I feel at times as if I were no sharper than Dickon here. Now in London the citizens are well to the front. There is the Alderman-burgh, with the Law Courts and the King’s Bench, there is the Lord Mayor, there is the King’s Palace at Westminster and the great church of St. Paul’s; much for a man of understanding to see and meditate upon, Master Bassett, and I have half a mind—”
“Have a whole one, man,” cried the carver, heartily; “and I would Dick would come too.”
“Nay, in London I should be no better than an ass between two bundles of hay,” said honest Dick, shaking his head. “But if Mat goes he will bring us back a pack of news, and maybe might see the king himself.”
It did not take much to give a final push to Matthew’s inclination. He had neither wife nor child, and, as he confided to Bassett, his bag of marks would bear a little dipping into. He bought a horse—or rather Dick bought it for him—the carver agreeing to pay him a certain sum for its partial use during their journey to London, and they set out at last, leaving the fair shorn of its glory.
Folk were travelling in all directions; but London was the goal of the greater number, and the little knots of traders with one consent, for fear of cut-purses, kept well within sight of each other. The road was not bad, although a course of wet weather might quickly convert it into a quagmire; and it was easy enough to follow, for one of the king’s precautions against footpads was the clearing away of all brushwood and undergrowth for a space of two hundred feet on each side of the highway as well as round the gates of towns. A great deal of talk passed between the different groups, for fairs were the very centre of news, foreign and English, political and commercial, with a strong under-current of local gossip. The Hansards, Easterlings, and Lombards had brought the latest information about the French claims to Gascony, as well as much trading information from Bruges, which was then the great seat of commerce; the English merchants discussed the king’s wise and politic measures to promote the unity of the kingdom, a cause which Edward had much at heart, as necessary not only for the greatness but the safety of that England for whose good never king toiled more unselfishly.
It was all deeply interesting to Stephen Bassett, who had left his own country many years before, and was amazed at the strides civil liberties had made since that time. Before this the making and the keeping of laws had depended upon the fancies of the reigning king, checked or enlarged as they might be by the barons. It was Edward the First who called his Commons to assist in the making of these laws, who summoned burgesses from the principal towns throughout the kingdom, who required the consent of the people for Acts proposed in Parliament, and enforced the keeping of these laws so powerfully that his greatest lords could no more break them with impunity than the meanest churl. He set up a fixed standard of weights and measures. Up to this time all attempts in this direction had been failures, and the inconvenience must have been great. He tried to encourage the growth of towns, freeing them from petty local restrictions and introducing staples or fixed markets. Under him taxation became more general and more even. He made a survey of the country yet more important than that of Domesday. And if that honourable hold of plighted word was—at any rate until late years—the proud characteristic of an Englishman, this national virtue, which does not come by chance any more than does a personal virtue, is owing in no small degree to the steady and strong example of the great king, who on his tomb left that bidding to his people—“Pactum serva”—keep covenant.