In the latter part of the fourteenth century, an incident occurred in the family of the Earl of Suffolk, which affords a curious illustration of old manners in England. We shall follow the account of the circumstance, given in a manuscript in the British Museum. Sir Michel Poole, second Earl of Suffolk, had several sons and daughters. First was Mighell, son and heir; then William, second son; and afterwards ten additional olive branches, of diverse names and both sexes—all of whom, however, died, and went down unmarried to the cold tomb. Some fell off like nipped blossoms in their infancy; convents and wars absorbed the rest, till only the eldest two were left of all that numerous family to perpetuate the name of Poole, and raise the fortunes of the race. In due course of time, Sir Mighell married Elizabeth, daughter of the right noble knight, Thomas Duke of Norfolk; and these together had two children, Jane and Katharine, but, alas! no son. Years passed on, and the hope of an heir was at an end; but before that hope was quite laid aside, the tragedy of the house began. Jane, as yet heiress and darling, a round, bright, wilful cherub, beautiful and loving, but mighty in her passionate force, and indomitable in her infant will, beyond all power of control—the one most cared for, Left alone in an upper apartment with her young charge, Maud became weary of confinement, and resolved at all hazards to descend to the great hall, and have her share of the general amusement. Down, accordingly, she went. Jane, of course, accompanied her, and, contrary to orders, was allowed to romp about at pleasure. The day was cold, and the fire burned brightly in the open hearth. Nearer and nearer the little one crept to the blazing logs, watching the sparks fly up in a golden shower when the crackling masses fell to the ground, or when some rough soldier struck them with his mailed hand. No one looked to her while she played by the open hearth, and tried to seize the vivid sparks; once only, a trooper caught her roughly back; but again she stole towards the great blazing logs, and this time she was less fortunate. Suddenly, a cry was heard. Jane's clothes were in flames. Maud extinguished them as she best could. She crushed the burning with her hands in such haste as she might make; but, alas! to what a wreck had the fire reduced the child! Her long fair hair was withered to its roots; her pretty eyes were closed, and the curling lashes scorched to the skin; her pure neck was blackened and blistered; and, a mass of pain and sore, she lay like a dead thing, but for the wailing moans which shewed her sad title yet to a ruined existence. Alas for her that she did not die! Wo, that life was so strong in her now, when, blemished and disfigured for ever, she might not hold its honours or taste its joys!—now, when she must endure a worse thing than death for the sake of her family name! 'Therefore,' says the chronicle, 'she was in a manner loathed of her parents, and kept forth secretly from the common knowledge of the people.' 'The house of Poole must have no charred mummy for its heiress,' said old Dame Katharine; and Sir Mighell and his lady bowed their heads and acquiesced. It was agreed, then, that she should be sent to a house of 'close nuns,' to be made a woman of religion, and so kept out of the sight of all men's eyes. With this view, she was brought up; taught nothing else; suffered to hope for nothing else; suffered to speak of nothing else. But they could not bind her thoughts; and by a strange perversity of will, these went always to the open fields and the unfettered limb, to the vague picturing of freedom, and the dreamy forecast of love. Yet she kept her peace; not daring to tell her mind to any, and nourishing all the more strongly, because in silence, the characteristics which destroyed the charm of a conventual life. When she came to the years of discretion, she was to be professed; but, in accordance with an old custom, before her profession she required to enter the world for a season, that her 'vocation' might be judged of, whether it were true or not, or simply the effect of education on the one hand, and of ignorance on the other; and thus, when she was fifteen years of age, she was dismissed to her father's house for the space of six months' nominal trial, after which time she must return to the convent for ever. Now, Dame Katharine a Poole, Jane's paternal grandmother, was a fierce, proud old woman, whose heart was set on the creation of her son's house, and whose very virtue was her family pride. When she heard of Jane's return to the outer world of men, she hastily rode over to see this ugly, despised thing, and to take her from her father's castle to the grim quiet of her own dungeon-like home, if so be that she was as unlovely as report had spoken her. They met; and for a moment the proud old dame was struck as by death. The seamed and scarred face, the closed eyes—one perfectly sightless, the other well-nigh so—the burnt and withered hair growing in long, ragged patches only, the awkward gait and downcast look; all were like daggers in Dame Katharine's heart; and 'she rebuked her greatly, seeing that she was too loathly for any gentleman who was equal to her in birth.' Poor Jane bore all these coarse reproaches with much outward meekness; but the spirit which they woke up in her was little interpreted by the drooping head and tearful eyes. A fiery demon, breathing rage and vowing revenge, took such meek-seeming as this, and blinded the old grandam to the mischief she was working, until it was too late to repair it. Dame Katharine took the girl home; Sir Mighell and his wife consenting in gratitude to be so well delivered from such a heavy burden. Dame Elizabeth, the girl's mother, truly shed a few tears, quickly dried; and so young Jane parted for ever from her father's house. Like a dead thing, revived by the fresh winds of heaven, Jane's comparative freedom aroused in her the most passionate abhorrence of the life to which she was destined, and the most passionate desire for liberty and affection. With each breath she drew by the open casement, with each glance cast into the depths of the dark woods beyond, rose up the strong instincts of her age, and turned her for ever from the convent gate. In vain the dame insisted; Jane stood firm; and declared that she would still refuse, at the very altar, to take the vow. Yet was she timid in all things but those of love and liberty; and Dame Katharine, by violence and threats, so worked on her fears, that she at last consented, amid grievous tears and bitter reproaches, to be deprived of her name and state, and given forth to the castle people as a poor gentlewoman, godchild to the dame. 'Anything for freedom!' sighed Jane, as she took the oath of secrecy. 'Any deprivation rather than that living tomb of the nun!' It was now the dame's chief care to be rid of her charge. She cast about for suitors, but even the lowest squire shook his head at the offer. At last, she married her grandchild to the son of an honest yeoman of Suffolk, and so sent her forth to take her place in the world as the wife of a common peasant, and the mother of a family of peasants. Such was the fate allotted to Jane a Poole, daughter of the proud Earl of Suffolk! Of her issue, we need say but little. Suffice it to know, that Jane and her ploughman William had four children, three sons and one daughter; of whom William, the second son, married an honest man's daughter, whose name was Alice Gryse, and whose children were living in 1490, when this chronicle was written. Return we now to the puissant lord, Sir Mighell, Earl of Suffolk. He was not long suffered to enjoy his home; indeed, so ardent a soul as his would have eaten its way through his castle walls, as a chrysalis through its silken tomb, if he had been long inactive. If war had not been his duty, he must have made it his crime; if foreign foes had not called upon his valour, too surely would domestic friends have suffered from his disloyalty. Born for the fight, he would have fulfilled his destiny by force if he might not by right. At the battle of Agincourt (1415), he perished along with many other of England's nobles. Sir Mighell having died without a son, his titles and estates went to his brother, Sir William. Dame Elizabeth, widow of Sir Mighell, and her daughter Katharine, shortly afterwards, as was usual in these Meanwhile, and for years afterwards, no one knew anything of Jane, who, though exiled from her rank and family, perhaps enjoyed more real happiness than those who had been guilty of her maltreatment. At length, her husband died, which was a source of grief. Honest William had thought her queer in manners; but he loved her for all that, and was proud of her, as the daughter of a poor gentleman. He blessed her on his death-bed; and she remained a widow for his sake. Many yeomen wished to marry her, but she refused them all. This went on for many years—long after Sir William a Poole had become fourth Earl of Suffolk, and had had children born to him; long after Alice Gryse had become Jane's daughter-in-law, and made her more than once a grandmother too; and then the whole of this strange story became known. Jane had kept her vow of secrecy with perfect fidelity; never had she breathed a syllable to her husband or children as to the family to which she belonged. It was only, late in life, through confession she made to a priest, that who and what she had been was revealed. Shocked with the depravity of her unnatural parents, this pious and learned doctor, says the chronicle, 'commanded her to publish this account to her children and their issues, that they might know of what race they came, if so be, by the great mercy of Providence, they might claim their own again. And not only to them, but also to make it known to all men, as far as was consistent with her own safety; for he said, that the great power of Almighty God should be published to all the world. For this reason was the chronicle written—that all men might take warning; for no deed of wickedness is done in the dark, which shall not be dragged forth to the light; and no oppression on the innocent shall prosper before the right hand of Eternal Justice.' |