TWO LINCOLNSHIRE MEN between them. This gave rise to the most savage riots; and the Dutch settlement at Sandtoft, where it is said that the village is still largely Dutch, was the scene of endless skirmishes, sieges, and attacks. A good insight into the lawlessness of the time is obtained from a book called "The M.S.S. in a Red Box," published by John Lane. The ancestors of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk, whose banishment with Bolingbroke in lieu of trial by combat, is described in the opening scenes of Shakespeare's "Richard II.," had a castle in Norman times near Owston, between Haxey and East-Ferry on the Trent: so that both the would-be combatants were Lincolnshire men.
Bolingbroke in the play is banished
"till twice five summers have enriched our fields,"
and Mowbray's sentence is pronounced by the king in these words:—
"Norfolk, for thee remains a heavier doom,
Which I with some unwillingness pronounce:
The fly-slow hours shall not determinate
The dateless limit of thy dear exile.
The hopeless word of never to return
Breathe I against thee, upon pain of life."
Richard II., I. 3.
Norfolk was banished in 1398, and died in Venice in the following year, and in Act IV., Scene 1 of the play, when Bolingbroke announces that he shall be "repealed":—
"and, though mine enemy, restored again
to all his lands and signories."
The Bishop of Carlisle answers:—
"That honourable day shall ne'er be seen.
Many a time hath banished Norfolk fought
For Jesu Christ; in glorious Christian field,
Streaming the ensign of the Christian cross
Against black Pagans, Turks and Saracens;
And, toil'd with works of war, retired himself
To Italy; and there at Venice gave
His body to that pleasant country's earth,[1]
And his pure soul unto his Captain Christ,
Under whose colours he had fought so long."
- ↑ Nearly five hundred years later his tombstone was discovered in the
pavement of St. Mark's and brought to England.
