IVANHOE AND GUY MANNERING
_Before we have reached the second page of what Anthony Trollope called "the most favorite novel in the English language," the Commander of the Knights Templars and his followers have reined up their horses outside the old hall of Rotherwood, and a loud blast from the horn convinces us that they won't wait very long for an invitation to enter. And there is Rowena, for whom the Disinherited Knight shall fight against all comers. We hold our breaths as he rides full-tilt at the Norman Knight and strikes him full on the visor of his helmet, throwing horse and rider to the ground. Here are Isaac the Jew and Rebecca his beautiful daughter; and Wamba the jester, disguised as a monk, is rescuing Cedric—
Does any boy or girl need to know more of what Ivanhoe is about?
No one who begins to read Guy Mannering will wish to put it down until he has finished it._
IVANHOE
Retold by Sir Edward Sullivan
At the time when King Richard, of the Lion Heart, was absent from his country, and a prisoner in the power of the perfidious and cruel Duke of Austria, there lived in England a highborn Saxon, named Cedric. He was one of the few native princes who still continued to occupy the home of his fathers; but, like many more of the conquered English people, he had felt the tyranny and oppressive insolence of the haughty Norman barons. He was a man of great personal strength, possessed of a hasty and choleric temper, but he had shrewdly refrained from showing any open hostility to the successors of the Conqueror; and so contrived to maintain his ancient state in his mansion at Rotherwood, while many others in a similar situation had been compelled to give up their homes and properties to the supporters of the Norman invader.
He had an only son, Wilfred by name, with whom he had quarrelled; and the young man, finding himself disinherited, had adopted the profession of a champion of the Cross, and sailed away to Palestine with the army of the Crusaders.
One evening, in the autumn of the year, Cedric was about to sit down to supper in the old hall at Rotherwood, when the blast of a horn was heard at his gate. In a few minutes after, a warder announced that the Prior Aymer, of Jorvaulx, and the good knight Brian de Bois-Guilbert, commander of the valiant order of Knights Templars, with a small retinue, requested hospitality and lodging for the night, being on their way to a tournament which was to be held not far from Ashby-de-la-Zouche.
"Normans both," muttered Cedric; "but they are welcome to the hospitality of Rotherwood. Admit them."