BOOKS AND READING
BY HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE
STORIES OF NORMAN ENGLAND
The time was one of struggle and fighting. The nobles were all trying to snatch as much of the country as they could, in order to wring money from its wretched population. Each bold, ungoverned spirit behaved like a beast of the jungle, knowing no restraint, no law but its own desires. The great lords bore nicknames that tell sufficiently what sort of characters they possessed: the Wolf, the Flaming Torch, the Death, the Heavy Hand, were some of these nicknames.
When the people were n’t actually starving, they were usually being killed, or imprisoned, or sold as serfs, or forced into the wars. To escape these woes, many men became outlaws, adding to the danger of the rest, burning, robbing and slaying, fighting among themselves, living a hand-to-mouth existence in the forests that covered a large part of England and Wales.
Exciting, no doubt of that, these wild times! History passes over them with a general indication that they could n’t have been much worse—darkest England, that of the latter half of the eleventh and first half of the twelfth centuries; but full of romantic possibilities, dashing stories, and stirring adventures. And so, good material for the historic novel. Many a quaint old manuscript tells personal tales of those far days, while records and letters and documents relating to the men in the thick of affairs yield many details. From these and other sources the romance writers have taken their facts.
In spite of all the terror and the suffering, life was still tolerable most of the time. Men and women married, and their children grew up, playing and laughing. There were good friends then as now, splendid acts of. courage and self-sacrifice, cheerfulness under difficulties, and a sturdy manhood that showed under the unlikeliest circumstances, with that same determination to be free which eventually brought about Magna Charta, and finally our own great Declaration.
It is all this we want to know about, and which we seek among the stories told of the men and women of that time. Stories that show us how the common people lived, what their homes were like, how they managed to withstand their oppressors, the jobs they worked at, the clothes they wore. England could hardly, as yet, be called a nation, so at enmity were its various parts; but it was being formed, and all this pain and suffering and grim struggling against tyranny had a glory.
William II, the second son of the Conqueror (whose eldest-born remained in Normandy), succeeded him. He was called Rufus, or the Red King, because of the extreme ruddiness of his complexion, which burned brick-red between the flowing blond hair that he wore long. Short and squat, powerful and utterly without even the haziest notions of right and wrong—everything he wanted being right, and whatever opposed him wrong—his one occupation was robbing; though, to be sure, he had a thousand methods for getting the money or land from its real owners, a few of which were dignified by the name of law.
Henry I, who followed Rufus, was called the Fine Scholar, because of a trend toward study remarkable in a royal personage at that time. Things were not so bad under him, but when he died, the long, fierce wars between Matilda and Stephen the Usurper began, desolating England.
You can get a brief glimpse of these rulers and some idea of their characters from the first few stories in Church’s “Stories of English History,” and Charles Morris’s “Historical Tales: English,” both of them excellent reading. They will refresh your memory as to the facts which the books I am going to tell about in this number base their stories upon. Church tells us that Rufus was said to have had but two virtues: one a devotion to his father, the other great personal courage. Once, it is said, while pursuing an enemy on horseback, he came to the sea, and commanded the owner of a small vessel to cross the Channel with him. A fierce storm was raging, and the man feared to attempt the crossing, saying no ship could live in such a sea, that to set out was certain death.
But Rufus shouted to him that go he would.
