Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/601

Charles Dickens] . Neat little printed forms were addressed to those corners, beginning with the words: "I give and bequeath."

Will it seem exaggerative to state my belief that the most honest, the most modest, and the least vain-glorious of all the records upon this strange fly-leaf, was a letter from the self-deceived discoverer of the recondite secret "how to live four or five hundred years"? Doubtless it will seem so, yet the statement is not exaggerative by any means, but is made in my serious and sincere conviction. With this, and with a laugh at the rest that shall not be cynical, I turn the Fly-leaf, and go on again.

is not far from Pleshy, and Pleshy is a place not to be lightly passed over by any observant crow, being a Shakespearean place, with the Bard's sign-manual engraved upon every mossy stone of its ruins. In the quiet little Essex village, embedded amid wheat and clover fields, there is a grassy enclosure, and in the midst of that green space rises a high steep mound, with stumps of old walls showing here and there among the turf, and with trees and bushes sprinkling the slopes. That high steep mound, ringed round by a deep ditch, which is crossed by an old bridge with a high stilted arch of old dark red brick, has been trodden by many kings and barons. Pleshy has from time immemorial been a fortress, and set apart for a place of vantage, defiance, or safety. It seems always to have won the soldier's eye, and to have set men rearing walls and digging trenches. It was first the Prætorian centre of a Roman camp, and money of the Legionaries has been found here. The Normans, who had quick eyes for seeing strong places, and quick hands for seizing them, built here in Stephen's troublous reign, when Geoffrey Mandeville, Earl of Essex, reared his keep upon the mound of Pleshy.

Afterwards, there dwelt here the wise, but harsh and severe Duke of Gloucester, the uncle of Richard the Second. Gloucester waged perpetual war on the Duke of Ireland and others of the young king's weak and wicked favourites, imprisoned Sir Simon Burley, a great warrior in Gascony under the Black Prince, and finally, in a rough and despotic way, settled matters by beheading Sir Simon and his friends and fellow minions, Sir Robert Trevilian, Sir Nicholas Bramber, and Sir John Standwich. Richard of Bordeaux, the son of the Black Prince, had begun well; he had quelled Wat Tyler's rebellion in a chivalrous way, by riding boldly among the Kentish bowmen and hammermen in Smithfield. He had led an army into Scotland and burnt Melrose. He had taken up arms against his turbulent and discontented barons, and lastly, striking down many Kerns and Gallow-glasses, in spite of their knives and darts, and reducing to submission the Kings of Meath, Ulster, Leinster, and Connaught, had knighted them in Dublin Cathedral at the Feast of Our Lady in March. But gradually this young Absalom, this "plunger" of those days, grew worse and worse, more wantonly extravagant, more despotic, more like Edward the Second, more surrendered to dissolute and dangerous counsellors, abhorred by prelates, Lords and Commons.

He dreaded the Lord of Pleshy, his stern uncle, for his harsh reproofs, and his open contempt, but still more because it was rumoured that he would soon seize the crown, and reign from the Thames to the Humber. Into Richard's ready ear the wicked Achitophels poured the "leprous distilment of their devilish counsels." One summer afternoon the fine young king, rich in cloth of gold and jingling with golden bells, set out from Eltham with his retinue to visit his stern uncle at Pleshy. The king arrived before sunset; the warm light steeped the royal towers, and the duke, who was rough and soldierly in his habits, was already rising from supper. Food was served again for the king, and the meal over, Richard besought the duke to ride with him to London to give him advice on matters of state. The lure took, the trap fell, the duke was snared. He made himself ready for the thirty miles' evening ride, the king graciously saluted the duchess and her attendants, and they set forth. It was a base deed, and basely wrought. The duke once cajoled from his eyrie had but his numbered days to live. The king rode hard, avoiding Brentwood, and at Stratford he spurred ahead. It was about half-past ten at night, in a lane that led to the Thames, that the king laughingly waved his hand to his uncle, and struck spurs into his horse. That moment the Earl Marshal and his clump of spears rode up and arrested the duke. The duke struggled and shouted to the king. Richard, deaf to mercy, would not even turn his head, but rode on straight to his lodgings in the Tower. The duke the men forced at once into a boat that took him to a vessel lying ready at anchor in the Thames. The Earl Marshal and his pitiless men also embarked, the wind and tide were favourable; they dropped down the river, and arrived late the evening afterwards at Calais, of which place the earl was governor. The next day the king returned to Eltham and sent the Earls of Arundel and Warwick to the Tower. The Dukes of Lancaster and York, astonished at the king's courage, were afraid to act.

The duke, refused leave to visit the town of Calais, felt his death was near, and begged for a priest to calmly confess his sins, and to help him to appeal to God for mercy. His end was very near, as far as Froissart could ascertain; the day after his arrival, he was sitting down to dinner, the tables were laid, and he was already about to wash his hands, when four men rushed from an adjoining chamber and strangled him with a towel. Others, however, assert that Hall, one of the men engaged,