Page:Masque of the Edwards of England (1902).djvu/11

 ye come to the years of your strength. Righteousness and the might of righteousness is a great tree, and its roots are in the silent earth that dreams darkly, warm with the promise of the future and hidden from the eye. Mark him this king.

THE PROLOCUTOR.

This king was a mighty warrior, a wise lawgiver, a sweet lover, of great constancy, great chivalry, great gentleness, and for all these things, yea and even for his bursts of fury, the people loved him. His queen, the good queen Elinor, was as wise & tender as he, for of her it is written how she sucked the poison from his wound when he fought for the sepulchre of Christ in the Holy Land. And when she came to die he vowed to God that he would make the earth blossom with carven crosses of Calvary wheresoever her sweet body rested in the slow march of the hearse from the place of her death in the midlands even to her last resting place on Thorney Island, and of these crosses up to the tomb many stand to this day, & where she lies at rest beneath a wondrous wicker of iron, with rows of prickets for the lights of her reminder, there is carven about her, for she was a lady of piety, of modesty, of pity, the legend, "Mulier pia, modesta, misericors, Anglicorum omnium amatrix."

Even as the crosses of Calvary so were the buildings of this king, the foundations that he laid, the laws that he gave, for he was a great builder, and not of stone alone; for stone perishes, but the laws of wisdom abide. So wise were his dooms that men called him the English Justinian, and we in the Centuries that come after, and all our brethren and cousins in the uttermost parts of the sea, dwell under the shadow of his law, for his law was great for the love in it, hidden as a clove in the shell. He knew how that it was not the will of one man that maketh the wisest of laws, but the longing and the wit of many interpreted by the wisdom of one. Thus came he to be Edward the Lawgiver.

Mark him as he rides; splendid before all people, with the hammer of the Scots at his girdle; and as he rides the folk cheer him for they love him for his great stature as for his great heart; and Longshanks was for him a name of honour, for great men are homely, & great men are humble.

THE PROLOCUTOR.

This king fell. And in the reign of this king was it shown, how though God may choose a king and set him on a throne, give the soul of him birth, and the hand of him power, the brain of him wit, cunning and wisdom, yea all the fine intelligence of all the Plantagenets, yet a people is also of God, a part of God, and they may uncrown him, destroy him and cast him forth if he act unkingly. The second Edward was thus cast forth, and the doom of him was a terrible doom, less in the dying than that he brake his coronation oath.

Ye shall know that the kings of England, and it is a divine privilege they enjoy, are at their coronation wedded to their people with a ring, St. Edward's ring. This affiance, if it be broken, as at one time or other it hath been, brings sorrow, and it brought sorrow to this king.

Ye have heard, too, of the fight wherin with five hundred of his knights he fled before the Scottish host. Long has the tale been told, many the songs that have been sung, of the woe that came to England at the hands of Robert the Bruce, the sorrow of the stricken field.

By the Bannock Burn did these two kings meet, great was the victory of the Scot, pitiless the rout of the English, no power of horse or flower of knighthood could break the locked masses and woven circles of northern spears in that day; shall ye wonder that this King fell?

Yet it was less for the beaten leader than for the broken oath of his crowning that his people cast him off. Crownings are of God, say the English? so also are uncrownings, and when in lieu of pall and dalmatic, alb and tunicle of linen, the sword of mercy and the sword of justice; when in lieu of spurs and crown, of orb and sceptre this king stood at last before his people clad in a plain black gown, it was a voice, the voice that is behind all peoples and all kings that spake to him through the proctor of the parliament of England. "We" said the voice, "do render and give back to you, Edward, once King of England, our homage and fealty; we are quit and discharged thereof in the best manner that law and custom will give, and we now make protestation that we will no longer be in your fealty and allegiance, nor claim to hold anything of you as King, but will account you hereafter as a private person without any manner of royal dignity." Thus spake the voice of the people of England, and the steward of the household stood forth and brake his staff of office as a sign that in this King the kingship was dead, for it is only at the death of a king that the white staff of office is broken.

And yet, for the good and ill of this life is divided as sunlight on the two sides of a green grass blade, there was a strange love in this King, a love mayhap that undid him, for has not one of our great poets if we are to believe the truth of his words not merely as the divine truth of poesy, told of this love? Ye have heard, then, how this King fell.

7