Ruins and Old Trees, Associated with Memorable Events in English History

by Mary Roberts

The altar has long since been broken, and the place wherein the memorial tent, with its pall of fair white silk, was stationed, is roofless now. Instead of tapers burning round, and emblazoned banners waving over, springs up a solitary nut-tree—the Nut-tree of Rosamond’s grave. It bears a profusion of nuts, but without kernels, empty as the deceptive pleasures of this world’s pageants.[4]

And silent too, sad, vacant, and unpeopled, is the mound on which once stood the castle of William Longespé, poor Rosamond’s eldest son. It was a drear and treeless elevation, rising over the wide extent of downs, that were seen spreading far as the eye could reach; yet there were glad hearts within, young children and cheerful voices, the lady Ela and William Longespé, with their visitors and dependants, and those who came and went, making that stately castle to seem a royal residence.

William Longespé was distinguished for his chivalry and feats of arms, the lady Ela for her mild and benignant virtues. They had married in early life, and her estates and honours, according to the customs of the feudal ages, had served to enoble a brave and deserving youth, who had no other patrimony than his sword. Ela was born among the beautiful shades of Amesbury, whither her mother had retired before her birth. It was called the ladies’ bower, and was appended to the castle of Salisbury, as that of Woodstock to Oxford castle, and there her young days passed among trees and flowers, till, as years passed on, she became the delight and ornament of her father’s court. Earl William stood high in favour with King Richard. He carried the dove-surmounted verge, or rod, before that monarch at his coronation; and to him was confided the responsible office of keeping the king’s charter, for licensing tournaments throughout the country.[5] His titular castle frowned over the stern ramparts of Sarisbyrig, where no stream was heard to murmur, nor the song of birds came remotely on the ear, except the joyous warble of the soaring lark, or the simple unvaried note of the whinchat, seeking its insect food among the thyme hills. But instead of woods and streams, the castle was surrounded with extensive downs, covered with short herbage, and in the space where two valleys obliquely intersected each other, was one of the five fields, or steads, for the holding of feats of arms. The field was full in view of the majestic fortress of old Sarum, and although it seemed as a dip, or rather hollow in the elevated downs, it afforded ample space for the combatants and spectators, and those who stood on the highest point of what—had seats been cut in the broad slope—might have been termed an amphitheatre, looked down on the rich and smiling banks of the Avon and the Nadder, with the venerable towers of Wilton Abbey.[6] Here then, were often witnessed the proudest exhibitions of chivalric enterprise, and often did the little Ela gaze with awe and wonder from the windows of her father’s castle, on knight and banners, and all the pomp and pageantry of those heroic games.

Scarcely, however, had Ela attained her eighth year, when the Earl of Salisbury having died, after a short illness, she became the orphan heiress of his princely patrimony, and an exile; for scarcely had the banners, and the scutcheons, and the mutes passed by, and all the pomp of death went after him to his last resting-place, than the little Ela suddenly disappeared, and was nowhere to be found. Some said that her mother sought her sorrowing; others, that she gave but little heed, and that while knights and servants rode the country over, asking questions of all they met, and exploring every brake and hollow on the ample downs; returning ever and anon, either with some hope of finding the lost child, or else to consult with her lady mother concerning the next course to pursue; she alone seemed as if indifferent to the matter. The countess had large possessions in Normandy or Champaign, and it was at length conjectured that the orphan had been sent to her relations, lest King Richard should avail himself of his feudal right, to marry her according to his will. But such was not the case, though true in part, as respected her distant home. Ela had three uncles, of whom the eldest was next heir to the great possessions of the deceased earl. No historic light gleams on the biography of these kinsmen, excepting that being younger brothers, without patrimony, and unmarried, they retired into the monastery of Bradenstoke.[7] Yet tradition tells, that when the elder brother heard of Ela’s fatherless condition, he threw aside his cowl, and assumed the cuirass. It might have been, that often in the silence and the solitude of that old abbey, when passing its dimly-lighted cloisters, dark thoughts had worked within him; that scowling on his books and beads, he had contrasted his condition as a poor and obscure monk, with the grandeur and the vast possessions of the earldom of Salisbury. The pope absolved him from vows of poverty, for thus it is recorded in the traditions of the place, and forth he came, a claimant to the honours and the wealth of that illustrious house. Tradition lingers among old walls and deserted hearths; there may be nothing for history to glean, but her lowlier sister loves to keep alive the feeble glimmering of her lone lamp, in places from whence all other light is gone.

Rightly, therefore, did the anxious and affectionate mother of young Ela seek to remove her daughter from the reach of one whose ambitious and turbulent disposition might have prompted him to crime. But the days in which she lived were those of stirring incidents. A train of gallant troubadours gave life and animation to the court of lion-hearted Richard, and the mysterious disappearance of the orphan heiress was with them a theme of frequent conjecture and resolve. An English knight, of the name of William Talbot, inspired, it would seem, by the romantic adventures of the minstrel Blondel, resolved to find out the place of her concealment. He went forth attired as a pilgrim, with his staff and cockle-shell, and having landed on the coast of Normandy, he wandered to and fro, for the space of two years,[8] as if in quest of the shrine at which he sought to pay his vows. There were shrines in the depth of solitary forests, and to such he bent his way, others in populous towns, and before them he would duly kneel, asking questions of those he met, and warily seeking to discover where the lost one was concealed. At length, so the poet tells, he saw a maiden, whose English accent and fair hair denoted her foreign birth, come forth with her companions from a castle on the coast. Talbot concealed himself behind a rock, and listened while the maiden, who was gathering shells from off the sand, spoke of the far country whence she came. It seemed to him that she gazed wistfully over the wide sea, and when the dew began to fall, and the bell tolled out from the grey turret, she looked back from beneath the postern, as if to catch a last glimpse of the dim waters. Laying aside his pilgrim dress, he assumed that of a wandering troubadour, and gained admittance to the inmates of the castle. He recounted the deeds of former times, concerning the perils of King Richard, and how the minstrel Blondel, wandering through storm and sunshine, had found the prison of his master. He repeated the wild strain which Blondel had sung before the old fortress, and the answering melody that responded from within; and thus in sentiment, if not in words, for the thoughts are those of the minstrel Peter d’Auvergne, the gallant Talbot made known his errand to the orphan daughter.[9]

Haste, haste thee, haste, my faithful bird,
O’er the tumbling and tossing sea,
Breathe to my love the sighs you have heard,
And her answer respond to me.
O, the fond bird flew from the green hill’s side,
Where blossoming roses blow,
She spread her wing o’er the ocean wide,
While the blue waves danced below.
And the strains which she sang to the evening star,
As it rose o’er the darkling hill,
She pour’d forth again to the lov’d one afar,
By the gush of the flowing rill.

The lady heard in her lonely bower,
As she gazed on the wandering moon;
When her pale beams brightened the old grey tower,
Riding now in her highest noon.
Ah! thou dost not heed my plaintive strain,
For thus the fair bird sang;
I have flown in my haste o’er the stormy main,
From groves where my music rang.
Where my music rang, when the glow-worm’s light
Glimmer’d oft in the darkling glen,
And no sounds were heard ’mid the stilly night,
From the homes, or the haunts of men.
Save from one, who fear’d not the dew nor the damp,
Who told me his true love tale,
As he linger’d alone, by the glow-worm’s lamp,
In the depth of the hawthorn dale.
Methinks e’en now, o’er the dewy grass,
All alone on the moonlit plain,
Will his constant step, ’mid the dim light pass,
To list for my answering strain.
And that answering strain the young knight heard,
As he stole from his castle hall,
For the lady breathed low to the faithful bird,
Words of love from her distant thrall.

Thus sung the troubadour, and the maiden longed to see again the wide downs on which her young eyes had gazed, for she knew not the thraldom that awaited a rich heiress in those days of feudal tyranny. The book of Lacock is silent with regard to the means by which the troubadour contrived to bear her off, concerning her perils by sea or land, or her joyous meeting with her widowed mother. The book tells merely, that King Richard bestowed her hand on his brother Longespé, and with it the vast possessions and the title of the Earl of Salisbury. Longespé was then a youth, just rising into manhood,[10] and happy was it for the orphan heiress that King Richard gave her to one whom she could love. For it happened not unfrequently that great heiresses were married to stern men, either that their lands might enrich the younger sons of royalty, or else to repay services that had been rendered the crown. It is generally conjectured, that Richard designed the Lady Ela for his brother from the period of his father’s death, when the hostile conduct of her uncle occasioned the young child to be sent away. His faithful Talbot sought and found her, most probably by the desire of the king, for he was loyal and experienced, and in none of the minstrel knights whom he admitted as companions to the festive board, did King Richard more unreservedly confide. He was proud, also, to be numbered among the devoted friends of the youthful Longespé, and in after years his name occurs among the witnesses to several charters given by the earl.[11] Whether, therefore, he was a friend of Longespé from his days of boyhood, or whether he had earned that friendship by his services in recovering the lovely Ela, certain it is, that neither his friendship nor his services were forgotten, and that when Longespé obtained the honours and possessions of the house of Salisbury, Talbot became an inmate of his castle.[12]

Ela returned to her father’s hall, to the old castle of Sarum, from which she had looked in her childhood on the feats of arms that were exhibited in the tournament arena. But those days had passed, for King John, who now filled the throne, cared little for jousts or minstrelsy. His thoughts brooded in sullen mood on the discontents that were abroad, and on the distracted condition of the country. Meanwhile the chivalrous and devoted Longespé accompanied King John, who went from place to place like the wild Arab, staying nowhere, ever restless and inconstant. The Lady Ela occasionally accompanied her husband in his expeditions, but she preferred the order and dignity of her own well-regulated household to the migrations of the court. The earl, too, was often weary of his mode of life, but his affection to his brother made him willing to relinquish his home comforts, and if the king was ever sincerely attached to any human being, it was to the gallant Longespé. There is little doubt but that his affection for the earl induced him to erect a tomb to the memory of his unhappy mother, whose remains had been removed from the place of their interment; it was tastefully embossed with fine brass, and had an inscription around the edge.[13] When the differences that existed between the monarch and his barons arose to a fearful height, and the month of June witnessed the proud triumph of the rebel chiefs, and the acquisition of Magna Charta, on the field of Runnimede, the brother stood unshaken in his fidelity. Many had transferred their allegiance from the king to the prevailing party, and John was reduced by an imperious necessity to a reluctant and insincere concession; but the banners of the Earl of Salisbury[14] floated in the camp of his royal kinsman, together with those of the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, and Warren. The country was quiet for a season, but at length disturbances broke out again. It was no longer safe to venture unattended, by an armed force, beyond the precincts of the castle, and the “most dear friend and brother” of the wayward monarch, shared in the disasters of his reign. At one time a prisoner,[15] at another deputed to place garrisons in the castles of Windsor, Hertford, and Berkhampstead, and to cut off supplies from the city of London, where the insurgents had fixed themselves. At length, hardened by the scenes of misery to which he had been accustomed, his kindlier feelings seemed to be totally obscured. Marching at the head of troops, with the fierce Falcasius de Breant, the earl imbibed his spirit, and shared in his enormities. Before them was often a smiling and well-peopled country, behind them a desolate wilderness,[16] and while the earl and Falcasius were thus mercilessly occupied, the king’s arms spread equal desolation in other parts, till at length the castles of Mountsorrel, in Leicestershire, and that of Robert de Ros, in Yorkshire, alone remained to the insurgent barons. To this succeeded the coming over of the French king, in order to assist the barons, the seeming defection of the earl, the death of John, and the coronation of young Henry. The country was again at peace, and Longespé returned to his home and family. With the passing away of battle scenes, seemed to have passed also the fierce spirit of the earl. We hear of him as a kind husband and indulgent father, as a bounteous master, and one who loved to promote good works. The gentle influence of Lady Ela apparently recalled him to the mood of better days, as the associating with De Breant had urged him to deeds of rapine and injustice. The beautiful cathedral of Salisbury was founded by him, and thither came, at his request, the bishop of the diocese, with a few earls and barons, and a vast concourse of people from all parts, on the day appointed for laying the first stone. Divine service having been performed in the ancient edifice, the bishop put off his shoes, and walked in procession with his clergy to the site of the new foundation, singing the litany as they went. The bishop then addressed the people, and taking a stone in his hand, he placed it in the name of Pope Honorius, and afterwards another, for the Archbishop of Canterbury. The fourth was laid by the Earl of Salisbury, the fifth by the Countess Ela, “a truly praise-worthy woman,” as wrote William de Wanda, afterwards Dean of Sarum, “because she was filled with the fear of the Lord.” Other stones were added by a few noblemen, archdeacons, and canons of the church of Sarum, amidst the acclamations of the assembled multitude, many of whom wept for joy, and gladly contributed according to their ability. A negociation was then pending with the Welch at Tewkesbury, or the company would have been much larger, but most of the nobility who passed that way on their return, requested leave to add each a stone, and some bound themselves to make contributions for the next seven years.[17]

To this succeeded the stern and stirring incidents of war, for King Henry’s brother, having recently received the honour of knighthood, with the earldoms of Cornwall and Poictou, it was resolved that he should commence his military career on the plains of Gascony, under the guidance of his uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, and Philip de Albeney.[18] Forth, then, they went, with sixty knights and their attendants, and an army of French and English, and again were homes despoiled, and castles set on fire, and fields and vineyards trodden down by hostile steps, till, having achieved the purpose of their predatory warfare, the earl and his companions embarked for England. But the nights were dark, and October winds, gathering strength and fierceness from the early setting in of a long winter, tost their unwieldy ships like cockle-shells on the face of the deep waters. The chieftains despaired of life, as did the bravest of the seamen, and the earl resolved to throw overboard whatever he possessed, either of rings, or gold, or silver, rich vestments, or scutcheoned banners, that as he had entered life unprovided with them, so he might pass in like manner to his eternal home. But a waxen light, of large size and brilliancy, was seen by all on board, suddenly appearing on the summit of the mast, and near it stood a female of surpassing beauty, who preserved that warning light, shining in the midnight darkness, from being extinguished by the wind or rain. Seeing this, the mariners took courage, and when the day began to dawn, the violence of the storm abated, a fresh gale sprung up, and urged the ship onward to the isle of Rhé, about three miles distant from Rochelle. As they neared the coast, an old abbey came in sight, and thither the earl sent messengers on landing, requesting favour and protection, and that he might remain concealed from his enemies till a fair wind should admit of his returning home. To this the abbot gave consent, and received both the earl and his companions with kindness and hospitality. But the island was in charge of Savaric de Maloleone, who served the French king, and kept watch over the adjoining coast, and great peril would have accrued to Earl William, had not two of Maloleone’s retainers gone secretly to the abbey and warned him to remain no longer, telling him, that unless he left the island before the following morning, he would be captured by their comrades, who guarded the island and the straits. Upon this the earl, after presenting them with twenty pounds sterling, hastened to the shore, from which the whole company embarked on a raging sea. They trusted, as the distance was but short, that they should speedily gain the English coast, but in this they were mistaken, and, for three long wintry months, did those ill-fated men struggle with the raging elements, before they arrived within sight of land.[19]

Meanwhile, the Lady Ela hoped from day to day that the earl might yet return, but, still as weeks past on, and the storms of winter gathered strength, she began to fear that his ships had been lost at sea. There were also other wives and mothers, who suffered as intensely as the countess, for among the knights and soldiers that accompanied him on his perilous undertaking, many had families at home, who looked wistfully for their return. But the Lady Ela had trials that especially attended her high rank and large possessions, for although a matron, whose age and dignity might have commanded more respect, she became an object of pursuit to the fortune-hunters of the court. Hubert de Burgh, who stood high in favour with Henry III., sought for his nephew the hand of the widowed countess, and the youth, entering with a kindred spirit into the interested views of his ambitious kinsman, prepared for the undertaking. De Burgh had been twice at Salisbury in attendance on the king during the earl’s perilous voyage,[20] and it is therefore not surprising that the future disposal of the honours and broad lands of the Lady Ela should have become an object of his speculations. Henry III. was said to be much afflicted by the supposed death of the earl, but when De Burgh petitioned that he would permit his inheritance to pass with the Lady Ela into his own family, the king readily gave leave, on condition that the countess could be induced to consent. The justiciary, for such was the office of De Burgh, accordingly dispatched his nephew, on a courser richly caparisoned, with knights and squires sumptuously arrayed, that he might present himself in a distinguished manner before the countess. But the lady scorned his suit; she heeded neither his flattering speeches nor large promises, and she told him, with becoming dignity, that messengers had arrived from her absent husband, bringing the welcome news that he was both safe and well. She added, further, that if indeed the earl was dead, she would in no wise receive the nephew of the Justiciary De Burgh as a second husband. “Therefore,” said she, “you may seek a marriage elsewhere, because you find that you have come hither in vain.” On hearing this, Reimund de Burgh became exceedingly crest-fallen, and, having remounted his gaily trapped courser, he hurried from the castle with his train.[21]