Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

by Mary Lowell Putnam

He learns, upon inquiry, that the Lollards are people who hold opinions disagreeable to the king and to the great generally. For they pretend to understand the doctrines of the Christian religion after a manner of their own; and it is thought this interpretation, if disseminated among the common people, would cause serious inconvenience to their superiors. In order to prevent the spread of these dangerous doctrines, open and notorious professors of them are shut up in prison. Yet, notwithstanding the severities which await the adherents of this sect, such is the hard-heartedness of its leaders, that, when they can manage to elude justice for a time, they use unceasing efforts to persuade others to their ruin. There are among them some men of eloquence, and their success in making converts has been so great that the prisons are filled with men of the better condition, who look for no other release than death; while, in the dungeons below them, people of the common sort are heaped upon each other, perishing miserably of fevers engendered by damp and hunger.

In spite of this unfavorable account of the Lollards, the African is glad when he hears that the only one of them he knows anything about has escaped from prison,—for the second or third time, it seems.

The words of the fugitive have sunk deep into the heart of the Mandingo. But the distant hope, that the Christians may in time grow up to their religion, cannot revive the delight which, when he first became acquainted with its doctrines, he felt in the thought that this divine revelation was to be carried to Africa. What teachers are those who themselves know not what they teach! His heart is heavy, when he sees how the Christians triumph over the fall of Ceuta. Their foot once set on African soil, their imagination embraces the whole continent. He sees the eyes of the narrators and the listeners alternately gleam and darken with cupidity and envy over the story of the successful assault, and of the immense booty won by the victors, who "seem to have gathered in a single city the spoil of the universe." He is not reassured by the admiration bestowed on the craft of the Portuguese, who contrived to keep their intended prey lulled in a false security until they were ready to fall upon it. They sent out two galleys, splendidly equipped and decorated, to convey a pretended embassy to another place. The envoys, according to private instructions, stopped on the way at Ceuta, as if for rest and refreshment, and, while receiving its hospitality, found opportunity to examine its defences and spy out its weak points. The King of Portugal himself, arriving near the devoted place with the fleet that brought its ruin, deigned to accept civilities and kind offices from the Infidels, in order the better to conceal his designs until the moment came for disclosing them with effect. The Mandingo recalls with less pleasure than heretofore the kind words of the Infant Henry and his brother. When he hears that the terrible first Alphonso of Portugal has made himself visible in a church at Coimbra, urging his descendants to follow up their successes, he shudders with foreboding.

We will not follow our explorer through all his voyages and experiences. They are numerous and wide. He carries his investigations even to the far North, where Eric of Pomerania wears the triple crown, placed on his head by the great Margaret. His wife is Philippa of England, niece and namesake of the mother of Henry of Portugal. It is, in part, interest in the family of that prince, his first intimate acquaintance in Europe, which leads the African on this distant journey. But he soon finds that neither pleasure nor profit is to be had in the dominions of Eric, an untamed savage, who beats his wife and ruins his subjects. The great men who rule under him are as bad as himself. Some of them have been noted sea-robbers; even the prelates are not ashamed to increase their revenues by the proceeds of piracy. The traveller gives but a glance to the miseries of Sweden, where the people are perishing under Eric's officials, who extort tribute from them by the most frightful tortures, and where women, yoked together, are drawing loaded carts, like oxen.

He returns to England, where he finds preparations making for a solemn sacrifice. He hears, not without emotion, that the victim selected for this occasion is the stately man who once stood with him in front of the great cathedral. He visits the place chosen for the celebration, and sees the pile of wood prepared to feed the fire, over which the victim is to be suspended by an iron chain. He cannot bring himself to witness the sacrifice, but he afterwards hears that it was performed with great pomp in the presence of many illustrious persons. The king himself, it seems, once superintended a similar ceremony in the lifetime of his father, by whom this species of sacrifice had been reinstituted after a very long disuse. It is customary to choose the victim from among the Lollards, as it is thought that the chance of serving on these occasions will contribute to deter people from adopting, or at least from proclaiming, the unsafe opinions of that sect.

The African traveller's last visit is to France. He made an earlier attempt to see that country, but, finding it ravaged by invasion and by civil war, deferred his design to a quieter time. Such a time does not arrive; but he cannot leave one of the most important countries of Europe unseen. On landing in France, he finds the condition of things even worse than he had anticipated. But he resolves to penetrate to Paris, in spite of the dangers of the road. He passes through desolated regions, where only the smoke rising from black heaps gives sign of former villages, and where the remaining trees, serving as gibbets, still bear the trophies of the reciprocal justice which the nobles and gentlemen of the country have been executing on each other.

It is on this journey through France that the Mandingo learns to be truly grateful for having been born in a civilized country. The unfortunate land in which he now finds himself has at its head a young prince who has robbed his own mother and sent her to prison. Such impious guilt cannot, the African feels, fail to draw down the vengeance of Heaven. Accordingly, when he reaches the capital, he finds the inhabitants engaged in an indiscriminate slaughter of their friends and neighbors. It almost seems to a stranger that the city is built on red clay, so soaked are the principal streets with blood. The traveller meets no one sane enough to give an explanation of this state of things. Nor does he require one. It is plain that this people is afflicted with a judicial madness, sent upon it for the crimes of its chiefs. He finds his way to a street where the work seems completed. All is quiet here, except where some wretch still struggles with his last agony, or where one not yet wounded to death is dragging himself stealthily along the ground towards some covert where he may perhaps live through to a safer time. The stranger stoops compassionately to a child that lies on its dead father; but, as he raises it, he feels that the heaviness is not that of sleep, and lays it back on the breast where it belongs. In a neighboring quarter the work is still at its highest. Where he stands, he hears the yell of fury, the sharp cry of terror, the burst of discordant laughter, rise above the clang of weapons and the clamor of threatening and remonstrance; while, under all, the roar of a great city in movement deepens with curse and prayer and groan. And now a woman rushes from a side-street, looks wildly round for refuge, then runs, shrieking, on, until, stumbling over the dead bodies in her way, she is overtaken and silenced forever.

He has made his way out of France, and is planning new journeys, when he receives, through some travelling merchants, a peremptory summons from his father, who has heard such accounts of the barbarous state of Europe that he regrets having given him leave to go out on this dangerous exploring expedition.

Our Mandingo did not meet the tragic fate of Bemoy, to whom the friendship of the whites proved fatal. He returned in safety to his country.