Thus fell the Saxon prelate, ruthlessly butchered at the very shrine of God—not so much that he was a Romish priest, and an upholder of the rights of Rome, as that he was a Saxon-man, a vindicator of the liberties of England! Yet, though the pope absolved that king whose cruel will had, in truth, done the deed, yet was that deed not unavenged. If the revolt and treachery of all most dear to him, the hatred of his very flesh and blood, the unceasing enmity of his own sons, a miserable old age, and a heart-broken death-bed—if these things may be deemed Heaven’s vengeance upon murder—then, of a surety, that murder was avenged!
THE FATE OF THE BLANCHE NAVIRE.[B]
“The bark that held a prince went down,
The sweeping waves rolled on,
And what was England’s glorious crown
To him who wept a son?”—Hemans.
The earliest dawning of a December’s morning had not yet tinged the eastern sky, when in the port of Barfleur the stirring bustle which precedes an embarkation broke loudly on the ear of all who were on foot at that unseemly hour; nor were these few in number, for all the population of that town—far more considerable than it appears at present, when mightier cities, some rendered so by the gigantic march of commerce, some by the puissant and creative hands of military despotism, have sprung on every side into existence, and overshadowed its antique renown—were hastening through the narrow streets toward the water’s edge. The many-paned, stone-latticed casements gleamed with a thousand lights, casting a cheerful glare over the motley multitude which swarmed before them with all the frolic merriment of an unwonted holyday. All classes and all ranks might there be seen, of every age and sex: barons and lords of high degree, clad in the rich attires of a half-barbarous yet gorgeous age, mounted on splendid horses, and attended by long retinues of armed and liveried vassals; ladies and demoiselles of birth and beauty curbing their Spanish jennets, and casting sidelong looks of love toward the favored knights curveting in the conscious state of proud humility beside their bridle-reins—as clearly visible as at high noon, in the broad radiance of the torches that accompanied their progress; while all around them and behind crowded the humbler throng of mariners and artisans, with here a solemn burgher, proud in his velvet pourpoint and his golden chain, and there a barefoot monk, far prouder in his frock of sackcloth and his knotted girdle; and ever and anon a group of merry maidens, with their high Norman caps and short jupons of parti-colored serge, crowding around the jongleur[C] with his ape and gittern—or pressing on to hear the loftier professor[D] of the gai-science, girded with sword and dagger in token of his gentle blood, and followed by his boy bearing the harp, which then had power to win, not with the low-born and vulgar throng, but with the noble and the fair, high favor for its wandering master!
[B] The title given by the chroniclers to this ill-fated vessel is “The Blanche Nef,” the latter word being the old French for the modern term, which we have substituted. Singularly enough, the ancient word survives as the name of a piece of antique gold plate modelled like a ship, in which the napkins of the royal table are served in the high ceremonials of the court of France.
[C] The juggler of the middle ages, who, like the street-musicians of the present time, were mostly Savoyards by birth, generally carried with them the ape or marmoset, even to this day their companion, and added to their feats of strength and sleight of hand both minstrelsey and music.
[D] The gai-science, so early as the commencement of the century of which we write, had its degrees, its colleges, and its professors, who, though itinerants, and dependent for their subsistence on their instrument and voice, considered war no less their trade than song, esteeming themselves, and moreover admitted by others to be, in the fullest sense, gentlemen.
The courts and thoroughfares of the old town—for it was old even then—by slow degrees grew silent and deserted; and, ere the sun was well above the wave, the multitudes which thronged them had rolled downward to the port, and stood in dense ranks gazing on its calm and sheltered basin. Glorious indeed and lovely was the sight when the first yellow rays streamed over the still waters: they waked the distant summits of the hills behind the town into a sudden life; they kissed the crest of every curling ripple that dimpled with its “innumerable laughter” the azure face of ocean; but, more than all, they seemed to dwell upon two noble barks, which lay, each riding at a single anchor, at a short arrow-shot from the white sands that girt as with a silver frame the liquid mirror of the harbor.
Fashioned by the best skill of that early day, and ornamented with the most lavish splendor, though widely different from the floating castles of modern times, those vessels—the picked cruisers of the British navy—were in their structure no less picturesque than in their decoration royally magnificent. Long, low, and buoyant, they floated lightly as birds upon the surface; their open waists already bristling with the long oars by which, after the fashion of the Roman galley, they were propelled in serene weather; their masts clothed with the wings which seemed in vain to woo the breeze; their elevated sterns and forecastles blazing with tapestries of gold and silver, reflected in long lines of light, scarcely broken by the dancing ripples. The larger of the two bore on her foresail, blazoned in gorgeous heraldry, the arms of England. The second, somewhat smaller, but if anything more elegant in her proportions, and fitted with a nicer taste, although less sumptuous, was painted white from stem to stern; her oars, fifty in number, of the same spotless hue, were barred upon the blades with silver; and on her foresail of white canvass, overlaid with figured damask, were wrought, among a glittering profusion of devices, in characters of silver, the words “La Blanche Navire.” Beyond them, in the outer bay, a dozen ships or more were dimly seen through the mist-wreaths which the wintry sun was gradually scattering—their canvass hanging in festoons from their long yard-arms, and their decks crowded, not with mariners alone, but with the steel-clad forms of men-at-arms and archers, the gallant train of the third Norman who had swayed the destinies of England.