he said, “we will not do so, but will kill the guilty and let the innocent escape. I myself will have some conversation with the justice in the hall; and meanwhile you, my men, hold the doors fast. I will make myself justice today, and you, Adam, shall be my clerk. We will give sentence this day, and God save our new work!”
All his men applauded this speech and promised him obedience, and the whole group of outlaws hurried to surround the hall.
Once again Gamelyn strode into the jail in the midst of his enemies, and was recognised by all. He released Otho, who said gently: “Brother, you have nearly overstayed the time; the sentence has already been given against me that I should be hanged.”
“Brother,” said Gamelyn, “this day shall your and my enemies be hanged: the sheriff, the justice, and the wicked jury.”
Then Gamelyn turned to the judge, who sat as if paralysed in his seat, and said: “Come from the seat of justice: too often you have polluted law’s clear stream with wrongs; too often you have taken reward against the poor; too often help villainy, and given judgment against the innocent!”
The justice sat still, dumb with astonishment, and Gamelyn struck him fiercely, cut his cheek, and threw him over the bar so that his arm broke; and no man dared to withstand the outlaw, for fear of his company standing at the doors. The youth sat down in the judge’s seat, with Otho beside him, and Adam in the clerk’s desk; and he dealt with the false sheriff, the justice, and the unjust jury, and accused them of wrong and attempted murder. In order to keep up the forms of law, he created a jury of his own young men, who brought in a verdict of “Guilty,” and the prisoners were all condemned to death and immediately hanged, though the false sheriff tried to appeal to the brotherly affection of which he had shown so little.
After this daring punishment of their enemies Gamelyn and his brother went to lay their case before King Edward, and he forgave them, in consideration of all the wrongs and injuries Gamelyn had suffered; and before they returned to their distant county the king made Otho the sheriff of the county, and Gamelyn chief forester of all his free forests; his band of outlaws were all pardoned, and the king gave them posts according to their talents. Now Gamelyn and his brother settled down[44] to a happy, peaceful life. Otho, having no son, made Gamelyn his heir, and the latter married a beautiful lady, and lived with her in joy till his life’s end.
Hereward[45] the Wake
When the weak but saintly King Edward the Confessor[46] ruled in England, the land was divided into four parts, of which Mercia and Kent were held by two powerful rivals. The two earls, Leofric of Mercia[47] and Godwin of Kent[48] did not only dislike each other, but also each other’s families, each other’s power and wealth, and their sons were also enemies.
Their wives were as different as their lords. Lady Gytha[49], Godwin’s wife, of the royal family of Denmark, was imperious, arrogant and scheming, the best match there could ever be for her husband the earl, who was so ambitious that he would stick at nothing[50] to win kingly power for his children. But Lady Godiva[51], Leofric’s beloved wife, was, on the contrary, a tender, religious, faithful and loving woman, who had already won an almost saintly reputation when she saved her husband’s oppressed citizens at Coventry[52]. She then pitied the people of that town, who were suffering under her husband’s taxation. Lady Godiva asked her husband again and again to lower the sum of money they had to pay. At last he said he would do it if she agreed to ride naked on a horse through the streets of Coventry. Lady Godiva took him at his word[53], and, having asked all the people to stay indoors and shut their windows, rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. So Leofric had to agree not to oppress his citizens anymore. Fortunately, her sacrifice awoke a nobler spirit in her husband, so he was to play a worthier part in England’s history. She, in turn, sympathized with the religious aspirations of Edward the Confessor, and would gladly have seen one of her sons become a monk, perhaps to win spiritual power over the king and his court.
For this holy vocation she chose her second son, Hereward, a wild, rebellious lad with rather an uncontrollable temper. He was a robust, strongly built youngster, with long golden curls and eyes of different colours, one grey, one blue. In vain[54] Lady Godiva tried to educate him for the monkish life, but he utterly refused to follow her scheme. He did not like studying and had only the most primitive knowledge of the basic subjects, but spent his time in wrestling, boxing, fighting and other exercises. He would not be inspired even with the noble ideal of knighthood, to say nothing of an ecclesiastic career. His wildness and recklessness were only increasing with his years, and often his mother had to stand between him and his father, as Hereward was sometimes bold enough to confront the earl.
When he was sixteen or seventeen he became the terror of Mercia, because he gathered a band of youths as wild and reckless as himself, who chose him for their leader, and obeyed him absolutely, however outrageous were his commands. Earl Leofric understood little of the nature of his second son, and looked upon what he was doing as evidence of a cruel and lawless mind, a threat to the peace of England, while they were, in reality, only the signs of a restless energy boiling against the background of dull life in England of that time.
The disagreements between father and son were very frequent, and Lady Godiva could foresee a bad ending of the argument every time Hereward and his father met; yet she could do nothing to prevent it. None of the men would recognize that the other could be right, and so things went from bad to worse.
Nevertheless, in all Hereward’s deeds there was no wickedness. He hated monks and loved playing tricks upon them, but took his punishment, when it came, also with cheerfulness; he robbed merchants, but then returned all that he had stolen, satisfied with that he had had fun; his band fought other bands, but it was not because of hatred, but more for exercising their strength, and the youths did not keep any offence after the fighting was over. There was, however, one feature in Hereward’s character that was not noble enough: he was jealous of admitting that any man was stronger or more attractive than him. But it cannot be denied that his vanity had solid grounds[55], as he indeed was marked with extraordinary might and beauty.
So, what brought Earl Leofric’s terrible wrath upon his son were not matters of pointless wickedness, but of recklessness and lawless personal violence. Called to attend his father to the King’s court, the youth, who had little respect for anyone who disliked war and fighting, said something with an evident contempt for saintly king, his Norman prelate and the monks. He said it too loudly, and thereby shocked the weakly Edward, who honestly believed that piety to be the whole duty of man. But his wildness abused the king a lot. In his simple, somewhat naive patriotism Hereward hated the Norman favourites who surrounded the Confessor; besides, he was all covered in marks of the personal injuries he received when fighting the Normans in simple boyish fights, and he kept on talking of more injuries which he gave them, until at last his father could endure the disgrace no longer.
During an audience of the king, Leofric formally asked for a permission to outlaw his own son. Edward the Confessor, surprised, but not displeased, felt even sorry as he saw the father’s affection beaten by the judge’s severity. Earl Godwin, Leofric’s greatest rival, was present in the council, too, and he pleaded to forgive the noble lad, whose faults were only those of youth. But that was sufficient to make Leofric more insistent in his petition. The curse of family feud[56], which afterwards made England lie powerless at the foot of William the Conqueror[57], was already felt.