Wager of Battle: A Tale of Saxon Slavery in Sherwood Forest

by Henry William Herbert

Even if, by hazard, it did reach the dainty ears of some fair chatelaine, that Osrick or Edmund had undergone the lash for some misdoing or short-coming, she heard of it much as a modern lady would read of the committal of a pickpocket or drunkard to the treadmill, or of a vagrant hussy to pick hemp; wondering why those low creatures would do such wicked things, and sorrowfully musing why such punishments should be necessary—never suspecting the injustice of the law, or doubting the necessity of the punishment.

And eminently thus it was with Guendolen. While in her good aunt's priory, she had ever seen the serfs of the church well looked after, well doing, not overworked, not oppressed, cared for if sick, comforted if sorrowing, well tended in age, a contented if not a happy race, so far as externals only were regarded, and nothing hitherto had led her to look farther than to externals. On her father's princely barony she saw even less of them than she had been accustomed to do at the priory, passing them casually only when in the fields at hay-making or harvest work, or pausing perhaps to observe a rosy-cheeked child in the Saxon quarter, or to notice a cherry-lipped maiden by the village well. But here, too, so far as she did see, she saw them neither squalid nor starved, neither miserable nor maltreated. No acts of tyranny or cruelty reached her ears, perhaps none happened which should reach them; and of the rigorous, oppressive, insolent, and cruel laws which regulated their condition, controlled their progress, prevented their rise in the social scale, fettered and cramped their domestic relations, she knew nothing.

Since her sojourn at Waltheofstow, she had gained more personal acquaintance with her down-trodden Saxon countrymen and countrywomen, and more especially since her accident in the forest, than in all her previous life.

For, in the first place, Sir Philip de Morville, being unmarried and without female relations in his family, had no women of Norman blood employed as attendants or domestics in the castle, the whole work of which was performed by serf girls of various degrees, under the superintendence of an emancipated Saxon dame, who presided over what we should now call the housekeeper's department. Of these girls, Edith, and one or two others, Elgythas, Berthas, and the like, ministered to the Lady's Bower, and having perhaps contracted something of unusual refinement and expression from a nearer attendance on the more courtly race, and especially on the Norman ladies who at times visited the castle, presented, it is certain, unusually favorable specimens of the Saxon peasantry, and had attracted the attention of Guendolen in a greater degree than any Saxons she had previously encountered.

Up to that time, she had regarded them, certainly, on the whole, as a slow, as a somewhat stolid, impassive, and unimpassioned race, less mercurial than her own impetuous, impulsive kindred, and far less liable to strong emotions or keen perceptions, whether of pain or pleasure. The girlish liveliness and gentleness, and even the untaught graces of Edith had, at the first, attracted her; and, as she was thrown a good deal into contact with her, from the fact of her constant attendance on the chambers she occupied, she had become much interested in her, regarding her as one of the happiest, most artless, and innocent little girls she had ever met—one, she imagined, on whom no shadow of grief had ever fallen, and whose humble lot was one of actual contentment, if not of positive enjoyment.

Nor, hitherto, insomuch as actual realities were concerned, was Guendolen much in error. Sir Philip de Morville, as has been stated already, was, according to the times and their tenor, a good and considerate lord. His bailiff was a well-intentioned, strict man, intent on having his master's work done to the last straw, but beyond that neither an oppressor nor a tyrant. Kenric, her distant kinsman and betrothed, was confessedly the best man and most favored servant in the quarter; and his mother, who had grown old in the service of Sir Philip's father, whom she had nursed with simple skill through the effects of many a mimic battle in the lists, or real though scarce more dangerous fray, now superannuated, reigned as much the mistress of her son's hearth as though she had been a free woman, and the cot in which she dwelt her freehold.

Edith herself was the first bower-maiden of the castle, and, safe under the protecting wings of dame Ulrica, the housewife, defied the impertinence of forward pages, the importunate gallantry of esquires, and was cheerfully acknowledged as the best and prettiest lass of the lot, by the old gray-haired seneschal, in his black velvet suit and gold chain of office.

Really, therefore, none of her own immediate family had known any actual wants, or suffered any material hardships or sorrows, through their condition, up to the period at which my tale commences. Their greatest care, perhaps, had arisen from the temper, surly, rude, insolent, and provocative, of Eadwulf the Red, Kenric's brother, who had already, by misconduct, and even actual crime, according to the Norman code, subjected himself to severe penalties, and been reduced, in default of harsher treatment, to the condition of a mere slave, a chattel, saleable like an ox or ass, at the pleasure of their lord.

This, both in its actual sense, as keeping them in constant apprehension of what further distress Eadwulf's future misconduct might bring upon them, and in its moral bearing, as holding them constantly reminded of their own servile condition, had been, thus far, their prime grief and cause of complaint, had they been persons given to complain.

Still, although well-nigh a century had elapsed since the Norman Conquest, and the heir of the Conqueror in the fourth generation was sitting on the throne which that great and politic prince won on the fatal day of Hastings, their condition had not become habitual or easy to those, at least, who had been reduced to slavery from freedom, by the consequences of that disastrous battle. And such was the condition of the family whence sprang Kenric and Edith. The Saxon thane, Waltheof, whose name and that of his abode had descended to the Norman fortalice which had arisen from the ashes of his less aspiring manor, had resisted the Norman invaders so long, with such inveterate and stubborn valor, and, through the devotion of his tenants and followers, with such cost of life, that when he fell in fight, and his possessions were granted to his slayer, all the dwellers on his lands were involved in the common ruin.