In the course of a fortnight, I prepared for a visit of condolence to the cottage, but, on reaching it, found the inhabitants gone—the place still and empty.
On my return, I stopped at the haunted burial ground—close by the grave of Mary Wildermings was that of the stranger child. The briers and thistles had been carefully cut away, there was no slab and no name over either, but the blue and white violets were planted thickly about both. That they slept well, was all I knew.
From Household Words.
THE SHADOW OF MARGERY PASTON.
A suggestive book, "The Paston Letters; Original Letters, written during the reigns of Henry the Sixth, Edward the Fourth, and Richard the Third:" the private history of a family of rank, some four centuries ago. In this collection of ancient memorials of domestic life, we trace the nature of the contests between themselves of a poor, ambitious, and turbulant aristocracy, when the right of the strong arm was paramount over law; we see the growth of that power which was derived from the profitable exercise of industry; and view the middle classes, amidst the partial oppression and general contempt of the high-born, securing for themselves a firm position and a strong hold, whilst the exclusive claims of feudality were crumbling around them. Here we learn how harsh were many of the domestic relations of parent and child—how public oppression had its counterpart in private tyranny. The love passages of the book are singularly interesting. A humble friend of the Paston family has won the affections of one of its daughters. They are betrothed. The mother insults the "Factor." The brothers despise him. The power of the Church is opposed to the union. Yet the ardent girl is constant—and she triumphs. How she finally emerged from her persecutions is not recorded. But the last letter of the angry mother, which describes these struggles, is thus endorsed:—"A letter to Sir John Paston from his mother, touching the good-will between her daughter Margery P. and Ric. Calle, who were after married together."
The shadows of the young lady and her lover arise before us, and we try to piece out their dim history.
Margery Paston is sitting in the accustomed solitude of the Brown chamber in her mother's dowry house at Norwich. Dame Margaret Paston, her mother, has just returned from spending the Easter of 1469 in her son's ruinous castle of Caister. He holds this castle under a disputed will; and the great duke of Norfolk is preparing to dispossess him of it, not by the feeble writs of the King's Court at Westminster, but by gun and scaling ladder. On the return of the lady she receives unwelcome intelligence. Her chaplin, Sir James Gloys, has intercepted a letter addressed to her daughter. The young lady is the object of constant anxiety and suspicion—watched—persecuted. Up to the age of twelve or fourteen she had seen little of her parents, but had been a welcome inmate in the family of Sir John Fastolf, at Caister; who, in his caresses of the fair girl, indulged the strong affection which old men generally feel towards a playful and endearing child. He had no children of his own, and little Margery was, therefore, a real solace to the ancient warrior. There was another child, a few years older than Margery, who was admitted to play, and to learn out of the same book, with the daughter of the Pastons. This was Richard Calle, the only son of an honest and painstaking man, who acted in the capacity of a steward for Sir John Fastolf, and conducted many of the complicated affairs with which the old knight amused himself in the evening of a busy life—his friends complaining of "the yearly great damage he beareth in disbursing his money about shipping and boats, keeping a house up at Yarmouth to his great harm, and receiveth but chaffer and ware for his corns and his wools, and then must abide a long day to make money."[11]