Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

A shout of indignation arose from the mob on hearing their hero thus bearded, and several of the desperadoes moved as if to lay hands on the bold speaker, but he paid no attention to their cries and gestures. Calling one of his companions to follow, he strode right through the midst, and that with an air so fearless and fierce, that they opened their ranks and made way for him to pass, and carried their hostility no further than uttering a yell and indulging in a little banter as he disappeared.

“Now,” said he, as he took a boat and was rowed towards the Surrey side, “farewell to home and country; and, since fortune so wills, let my lot be among strangers and in a strange land. All over Europe and in Syria swords are flashing bravely, and it will go hard with me if I carve not out a principality with my sword, which has never failed me. Shame upon me that I allowed myself to be fooled by that citizen! and a malison on his presumption in fancying that, after deceiving me, he could use me for his purposes!”

Meanwhile, Fitzarnulph did not allow the excitement of the mob to evaporate. Finding that they were quite in the humour in which he wished them to be, he proposed to go forthwith to Westminster.

“Our first duty,” said he, “is to avenge ourselves on the abbot and his steward; and the best way to avenge ourselves on them is to pull down their houses, whereby they will be made sensible that the citizens of London are not to be affronted with impunity. So let us on. Montjoie, St. Denis! God for us and Lord Louis!”

“To Westminster!” shouted the desperadoes; and, led by Fitzarnulph, the mob descended Ludgate-hill, and pushed through the gates like so many furies.

It was already sunset when Fitzarnulph led the mob from St. Paul’s Churchyard, and darkness was descending ere they reached Westminster. Many of the desperadoes, however, had furnished themselves with torches, and what with the glare of the torches, and the fierce faces of the desperadoes, and the brandishing of weapons and bludgeons, and the shouts, the screeches, the bellowing, and the confusion, the inhabitants might, even had they been less superstitious than they were, have imagined that a host of fiends was upon them.

Great was the alarm, loud the shouts for aid, each man calling on his neighbour, as the startled indwellers suddenly found their houses and hearths exposed to such danger, and at the mercy of such a multitude. But it soon appeared that the mob were, in the first place, intent on vengeance, and went direct to destroy the houses of the abbot and his steward. Warned in time, the abbot fled, trembling for his life, and, getting into his barge, escaped to Lambeth. Determined to defend himself and his property, the steward drew bolt and bar, and armed his household. But a few minutes’ experience told him that resistance was vain, and, escaping with his household by the rear, he left his home to its fate. The riot and uproar then became more terrible every moment; house after house was torn down or given to the flames; and the mob, whooping, and yelling, and braying, as their appetite for destruction was whetted, rushed into outrage after outrage, and enacted such a scene as Westminster had seldom or never witnessed.

And what was Constantine Fitzarnulph doing all this time?

Fitzarnulph, in truth, had other game, as his movements speedily indicated, than the abbot and his steward, and, leaving the mob to destroy and plunder without restraint, he proceeded with a chosen band of twenty desperadoes towards Scotland-yard, and on to a house that stood in a garden on the margin of the river. At first he endeavoured to gain access by gentle means, and loudly knocked at the gate. No answer was returned, and he ordered the desperadoes to break it open. His command was immediately obeyed, and he passed into a courtyard, and knocked vehemently at the door; but, seeing that his knock at the door was as little regarded as his knock at the gate had been, the desperadoes broke it open, and Fitzarnulph, making a signal to the band to remain where they were till summoned by him, entered alone, found several domestics, who fled at his approach, ascended a stair, and, advancing along a corridor, opened a door and entered.

It was a large chamber, furnished after the fashion of the period, brilliantly lighted, and occupied by four women, who, alarmed at the riot and the uproar, and the breaking in of the gate and door, were giving themselves up for lost. One was Beatrix de Moreville, another Dame Waledger, and the other two were Beatrix’s waiting-women. As Fitzarnulph entered, a simultaneous cry of horror and despair burst from their lips, and three of them fell on their knees. De Moreville’s daughter, however, rose to her feet, and stood facing the intruder with an air of haughty defiance which showed that, gentle as was her usual manner she inherited some portion of her sire’s spirit.