The Grateful Indian, and Other Stories

by William Henry Giles Kingston

The Shepherd Lord, by Julia Corner, Author of the “Historical Library,” etcetera.

It is now about four hundred years since a great feast was held at Skipton Castle, to celebrate the birth of a son and heir to the noble house of De Clifford. The young lord of the domain had just succeeded to the title and vast possessions of his father, Thomas Lord Clifford, who was killed in the battle of Saint Albans, at the beginning of the civil wars between the rival houses of York and Lancaster, and, by his death, his only son John, then not much more than twenty years of age, became lord of the great manor of Skipton in Yorkshire, and of Brougham Castle, with its wide lands, in Westmoreland, besides other castles and estates in different parts of the Northern Counties. A rich and powerful family were the De Cliffords, descended from Richard of Normandy, the uncle of William the Conqueror, and the first Lord Clifford was the father

of the lady called Fair Rosamond, who lived in the reign of King Henry the Second, and was so beautiful that it is said in some histories of England that the queen was jealous of her, and obliged her to take poison; but this story is now supposed to be untrue, as there is reason to believe that Fair Rosamond became a nun and died in a convent. The De Cliffords held the Barony of Clifford in Herefordshire, and the extensive manor of Skipton in Yorkshire, when the grandson of Rosamond’s father married a rich heiress, who brought him the Barony of Westmoreland, to which Brougham Castle belonged, and after that other lords of the race acquired estates by their marriages, so that the wealth and grandeur of the family had been continually increasing. The wife of the present Lord Clifford, the beautiful and accomplished Lady Margaret, was the only child, consequently the heiress of Henry Bromflete Lord de Vesci, who was also possessed of large estates, one of which was Londesborough in Yorkshire, so that Henry, the hero of this tale, was born heir to great riches and honours, and in his childhood was surrounded with all the magnificence of a royal prince, for his father lived in kingly state, and his mother had her maids of honour, her squires and pages, just like a queen. It was not long after young Henry’s birth that Lord Clifford removed his family from Skipton to Brougham Castle, where two more children were born, a boy who was named Richard, and a girl named Elizabeth. These children had their separate nurses and attendants, as was befitting their high station, and Henry’s chief nurse, whose name was Maud, was as fond of him as if he had been her own child, for he was a very sweet-tempered, affectionate boy, and he loved her better than any one else in the world, except his parents and his little brother and sister.

Lord Clifford was now very seldom at home, being deeply engaged in the wars, but he came sometimes and stayed for a few days or weeks, as it might be, and on these occasions Henry, as soon as he was old enough, used to dine in the Castle hall, where not less than a hundred knights and gentlemen, besides a great number of pages and domestics of all kinds, sat down to dinner all together every day, for such was the custom of those times in great families. The dinner hour was about noon, or even earlier, when everybody belonging to the establishment assembled in the hall, where they took their places at the board according to their rank. At the upper end was a table raised above the rest on a daïs, for the lord of the castle and his family, with any guests of distinction that might happen to be present, and below this was a long oak table extending from it lengthways down the centre of the hall, in the middle of which stood an enormous salt-cellar, as a sort of boundary between such as were of gentle birth, and those of lower degree; the former sitting above, the latter below the salt. The style of living in those days would appear very uncivilised to us in this more refined age, for the dishes were set on the board without any cloth, and the people ate off wooden or pewter plates, and used their fingers instead of forks, while many of the nobles would have their favourite hounds beside them, and feed them from the table; for, as the floor was always thickly strewed with rushes, they did not mind throwing down pieces of meat to their dogs. However there was always great plenty, and such a banquet was thought very grand then; and the young Henry de Clifford, as being the eldest son, was treated with great homage by all his father’s dependents. Often, too, chiefly for his amusement, mummers, jugglers, and tumblers were allowed to exhibit their performances in the hall, for he took great delight in such entertainments, and no indulgence, however costly, was thought too great for De Clifford’s heir, whose pleasure was studied by every member of the numerous household. It was well for him that his wise and excellent mother taught him not to be too proud of his exalted rank, or haughty in his manners to those of humbler grade, but to be courteous and kind to every one, even to the lowest menial, so as to gain the good-will of all; and, as he was a very docile boy, and moreover believed that nobody in the world was so good or so beautiful as his own dear mother, he did not fail to profit by her gentle precepts, and become all that she could wish. Poor boy! he little dreamed then how greatly he would stand in need of a humble spirit, or what a sad reverse of fortune he was destined soon to experience.

His good nurse Maud had left to go to her own home at Skipton, where she married a shepherd belonging to the estate, and after her departure Henry was much more with his mother, who had begun to instruct him in such branches of learning as were considered essential to the education of the young nobility. She taught him to play on the harp and other stringed instruments, to recite verses, sing many of the songs she had herself learned from the minstrels in her father’s halls, and, what was of still more importance, she was about to teach him to read, which was not a common accomplishment in those days, for there were no printed books in England till some time afterwards. Printing was then a new invention, and only practised in Germany at one or two of the principal towns, so that the only means of learning to read was from manuscripts written by the monks, generally on parchment or vellum, and beautifully illuminated with a border round every page, in brilliant colours intermixed with gold. In every monastery some of the monks were always employed in making copies of the manuscripts their libraries contained, and others in illuminating them; but these written books were so expensive that none but very rich people could afford to buy them. Lady Clifford, however, possessed a few of these valuable works, and was intending that her son, who was now in his seventh year, should begin to study them, when a heavy blow fell upon the house of De Clifford; and the noble youth, who was born to be a great and wealthy lord, was reduced to the humble condition of a shepherd’s boy.

Henry was very desirous to know something about the war that kept his father so much from home, and Lady Margaret took great pains to explain to him how it had been occasioned, and why the English people should all be fighting against each other. She told him it was the opinion of many persons that the king, Henry the Sixth, who was then reigning, had no right to the crown, which belonged properly to the Duke of York, who had come over from Ireland and raised an army for the purpose of dethroning the sovereign, and getting himself made king in his stead. She also told him that King Henry, though a very good man, was neither very brave nor very clever, so that he did not take an active part in the war himself, but trusted everything to his queen, Margaret of Anjou, a Frenchwoman, whose bold and daring spirit enabled her to support her husband’s cause.

“But which do you think is right, mother?” said Henry.

“It is a difficult question to answer, my child; your father takes the part of the king, or rather of the queen, for the king is now a prisoner in the hands of his enemies. But the claim of the Duke of York is not without foundation, and those who take his part of course believe him to be in the right. But it is a sad thing, my Henry, that a dispute between two princes should cause so much misery and bloodshed as has already been occasioned by this unhappy quarrel, and it may be a long time yet before peace is restored.”

“Why do they say my father is for Lancaster and the Red Rose?”