Ford Ford - The Young Lovell

For all Bishop Sherwood's praising of the security of the times under a beneficent vice-gerent of God, he knew that the Bishop little loved King Henry the Seventh, and the King trusted him so very little that never once would that King send to the Bishop the proper letters of array that should empower him to raise forces along the Borders. Thus the Bishop could raise men only in his own dominions between Tees and Tyne and westward into Cumberland.

The Bishop had made his speech and shewed great courtesy only for the benefit of the Earl of Northumberland, whilst for that Border Warden he felt really little but contempt and some dislike. For this Henry, Earl Percy, Warden of the Eastern Marches and Governor of Berwick Town, had deserted King Richard very treacherously on the field of Bosworth, for all he spoke and posed as a bluff and bloody soldier who should be a trusty companion.

Thus the Bishop feared the Percy, regarding him as a spy of the King's, for King Richard was much beloved in the North and the Bishop of Durham had been one of the only two Bishops that had upheld him at the coronation, which was why his banner of the dun cow upon a field of green sarcenet had then been carried before that King. And after Bosworth where King Richard was slain, the Bishop had fled to France, from which he had only ventured back the August before. There had been many rebellions in the North and they were not yet done with; nevertheless the Bishop feared that the cause of the King Usurper would prevail.

The Earl Percy, on the other hand, distrusted the Bishop, since, unlike the Duke of Gloucester, he knew himself to be hated by gentle and simple in those parts, and more by simple than the others. Many poor men – even all of the countryside – had sworn to murder him, for he was very arrogant and oppressive, inflicting on those starving and disturbed parts, many and weary taxes for the benefit of his lord, King Henry the Seventh, and the wars that he waged in other places. This was a thing contrary to the law and custom of the North. For those parts considered that they had enough on their hands if they protected their own lands and kept the false Scots out of the rest of the realm. Nevertheless, the Lord Percy continued to impose his unjust taxes, taking even the horse from the plough and the meat from the salting pots where there was no money to be had. The Lord Percy knew that he went in great danger of his life, for when, there, a great lord was widely hated of the commonalty his life was worth little. Nay, he was almost certain, one day, to be hewed in pieces by axes or billhooks, since the common people, assembling in a great number would take him one day, when he rode back ill-attended from hunting or a raid.

Thus the Percy desired much to gain friendship of the Bishop and his partisans to save his life. So he shewed him courtesy and spoke in a pious fashion and had invited him, as if it were his due, to ride on this numbering of the men-at-arms in Northumberland, although, since the King had sent the Bishop Palatine no letters of array, it was, strictly speaking, none of the Bishop's business.

The Lord Lovell himself had taken no part at Bosworth Field, and glad enough he was that he had not, for he would have been certain to have been found on the losing side. But he had been sick of a quinsy – a malady to which very stout men are much subject – and, not willing that the Young Lovell should gain new credit at his cost – for he must have gone with his father's men-at-arms, horses and artillery – the Lord Lovell bade his son stay at home and not venture himself against the presumptuous Richmond.

And, looking upon the people there, the fat man chuckled, for there was not one person there who had not lately suffered from one side or the other. The Lord Percy had spent many years in the Tower under Edward IV; Henry VII had taken from the Bishop many of his lands and had made him for a time an exile. His haughty wife had suffered great grief at the death of her best brother whose head came off on Tower Hill to please the Duke of Gloucester, and Edward IV had had Sir Symonde Vesey five years in the Tower and had fined Limousin of Cullerford five hundred pounds after Towton Field. The proud Lady Margaret had lost her father and all his lands after the same battle, the lands going to the Palatinate.

The Lady Margaret and her mother – they were Eures of Wearside – had sheltered in farms and peel towers, lacking often sheets and bed covering, until the mother died, and then the Lady Rohtraut had taken the Lady Margaret, to whom she was an aunt. All these Tyne and Wearside families were sib and rib. The Lady Rohtraut had had the Lady Margaret there as her own daughter and kinswoman, and the Lord Lovell had had nothing against it. For the Eures and Ogles and Cra'sters and Percies and Widdringtons and all those people, even to the haughty Nevilles and Dacres of the North, were a very close clan. He himself had married a Dacre to come nearer it, and it made him all the safer to shelter an Eure woman-child. And then, in his graciousness at coming into the North, and afterwards, after the battle at Kenchie's Burn, the Duke of Gloucester, at first making interest with his brother, King Edward IV., and then of his own motion, had pardoned that Lady the sins of her father, had bidden the Palatinate restore, first the lands on Wearside and then those near Chester le Street, and also, at the last, those near Glororem, in their own part, which were the best she had. And, finally, King Richard had made the Lady Rohtraut her niece's guardian, which was a great thing, for since she was very wealthy, the fines she would pay upon her marriage would make a capital sum.

So they had found the Lady Margaret on their coming back from Rome, wealthy and proud, sewing or riding, hawking, sometimes residing in their Castle and sometimes in her tower of Glororem which was in sight. The young Lovell had lost his heart to her and she hers to him between the flight of her tassel gentle and its return to her glove, so that it looked as if the name of Lovell bade fair to be exalted in those parts, by this marriage too, and if the Lord Lovell had anything against it, it was only that she had not chosen his other son Decies. But there it was, and he must content himself with paring what he could from her gear, and his wife's and young Lovell's while he lived, for he intended to buy Cockley Park Tower of Blubberymires from Lord Ogle of Ogle – and to set the Decies up in it. And his wife had some outlying land at Morpeth that he would make shift to convey to his son, so that Decies would have a goodly small demesne and might hold up his head in that region of the Merlays, Greystocks and Dacres.

His son should have the lands of Blubberymires and part of Morpeth; furnishings for his tower to the worth of near a thousand pounds, jewels worth nine hundred and more, fifty horses and the arms for fifty men, and for his sustenance firstly his particular and feudal rights, market fees, tenths, millings, wood-rights, farmings, rents and lastly such profits of the culture of his lands as it is proper for every gentleman to draw from them. And, considering what he could draw from his own Castle, he thought that the Decies should have such beds, linen, vessels of latten and of silver, chests and carvings in wood, tapestries, utensils, and all other furnishings as should make him have a very proper tower. From his wife's castle at Cramlin, or her houses at Plessey and Killingworth, he could get very little. Upon his marriage and since, he had stripped them very thoroughly, and when he last rode that way, he had seen that at Cramlin, the rafters, ceilings, and even the very roofs had fallen in, so that it had become very fitting harbourage for foxes. And this consideration grimly amused him, to think what his lady wife should find when he was dead and her lands came to her again. For she had not seen them in ten years, and imagined her houses to be in very good fettle, but he had turned the money to other uses. It was upon these things that this lord's thoughts ran, since he had nothing else for their consumption. He was too heavy to mount a horse in those days; he could read no books, and talking troubled him. Even the lewd stories of his son Decies in his cups sent him latterly to sleep; he could get no more much enjoyment from teasing his proud wife by filthy ways and blasphemy, and he hated to be with his daughters or their two husbands. Thus, nothing amused or comforted him any longer save watching contests of ants and spiders, and even these were hard to come by in winter, as it was then in those parts where spring comes ever late.