Chapter I: Introduction

_Runnymede and Lincoln Fair_ was the last story drawing upon the wars and great affairs of English history which its author was destined to write. Like _Cressy and Poictiers_, which is already included in “Everyman’s Library,” and which preceded it by some three years in its original issue, it first ran as a serial through the magazine particularly associated with Edgar--the _Boys’ Own Magazine_; it was first published as a separate book in 1866.

Some further particulars of the brief career of its writer may be added to what has already been told of him in the earlier volume. John George Edgar was the fourth son of the Rev. John Edgar of Hutton in Berwickshire, who was said to be a representative of the ancient family of Edgar of Wedderlie, settled for ages in the parish of Westruther in that county. There seems to be some disagreement as to the date of his birth. The _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for 1864 and Cooper’s _Biographical Dictionary_ give it as 1834, but James Hannay in _Characters and Criticisms_, published in 1865, says that Edgar was born in the year 1827. From Edgar’s literary record and subsequent career one is inclined to believe the latter version the more correct; and to further quote Hannay: “He was educated at Coldstream school under a man of good local reputation, Mr. Richard Henderson, and the Latin he acquired there proved of great value to him afterwards, in reading the old mediæval chronicles. He went to a commercial situation in Liverpool in 1843; and in 1846 left Liverpool for the West Indies, where he remained till 1848. Returning to Liverpool in the last-mentioned year, he resumed his Liverpool duties till 1852, when he settled in London.”

Thenceforward Edgar deserted commerce and devoted himself to literature, and in little more than ten years he wrote some sixteen volumes, intended mainly for the reading and entertainment of boys. He was the first editor of _Every Boy’s Magazine_, and its constant contributor. Nor was that the only periodical to which he contributed; we find his name in other journals, and he occasionally wrote political articles, from a typically conservative point of view; but, as Hannay says, Edgar was always “rather a writer of books than a journalist. He studied his subjects for their own sake, and then made what literary use he could of them; but he was little interested in the general pursuits of the literary world proper, and profoundly indifferent to the arts by which literary advancement is sometimes pursued there. Indeed, his appearance in the modern metropolitan world of wags and cynics and tale-writers had something about it that was not only picturesque but unique. He came in among those clever, amusing, and essentially modern men like one of Scott’s heroes. Profoundly attached to the feudal traditions,--a Tory of the purest Bolingbrokian School, as distinct from the Pittite Tory or modern Conservative, and supporting these doctrines with a fearless and eccentric eloquence, to which his fine person and frank and gallant address gave at once an easy and a stately charm,--he represented in London the Scot of a past age.... He made serious preparation for a book on the barons’ war, in which he was to take the side of the English monarchy, and which would have certainly exhibited admirable knowledge, and talents for investigation and description, that must have commanded an attention which his previous performances had been too modest even to desire to invite.”

Edgar died of congestion of the brain on April 15, 1864, and his remains lie buried in Highgate Cemetery.

That an author of so much power and promise should have had to end there, half-way, at that comparatively early age, is the more to be lamented, because it was due to the physical carelessness which often wrecks men to whom nature has given a splendid constitution. According to Hannay, Edgar presumed too much on his strength: “He thought it would fight him through anything, so after a bout of solitary literary labour, during which he had lived _more suo_ upon tea and tobacco, he was attacked with brain fever. He would not believe it serious, nor would he send for advice till it was too late.”

When Edgar wrote _Runnymede and Lincoln Fair_, he filled a gap in English historical fiction. Scott had left the period untouched, and Shakespeare, as a dramatist, had naturally preferred to dwell on the deeds and characters of individuals, rather than on the political controversies of John and his subjects.

Yet the thirteenth century is one of the most important and interesting periods in English history; but it was not an age of chivalry and romance, and this must be borne in mind when we are obliged to admit that _Runnymede and Lincoln Fair_ does not rank so high as _Cressy and Poictiers_ as a work of fiction. Moreover, there is no contemporary chronicler so vivacious and romantic as Froissart for the novelist to draw upon.

The historical literature of the time of Magna Charta is largely monastic, and Edgar follows pretty closely the chronicles of Roger of Wendover and his editor and continuator, Matthew Paris, who was the greatest of the thirteenth-century chroniclers. But he has drawn on various sources besides, among which are the _Memoriale_ of Walter of Coventry, the annals of Waverly, Dunstable, and other monasteries, the chronicle of Ralph of Coggeshall, a full and important chronicle giving many details. For the description of London which Edgar made use of to such advantage he was indebted to _The Life of Thomas à Becket_ by a twelfth-century writer, William Fitzstephen.

The hero of the tale, Oliver Icingla, in so far as being the descendant of Saxon chiefs, and of the house of De Moreville, gives us the keynote of the period--the amalgamation of the two races, Saxon and Norman, to form an English nation. Towards the close of the twelfth century a new language began to be formed, a blending of Anglo-Saxon and Norman; and by the end of the thirteenth century the last manifest difference of race, the distinctive peculiarities of dress, had passed away. But in character Icingla does not represent this fusion of the races. He does not join the united barons and English people in the struggle for national freedom, but appears as a champion of the royal cause; and later, of England against the foreigners.

One cannot help perceiving, as one reads the story, that the sympathy of the author is chiefly with the crown. Walter Merley is the only Norman noble of the king’s adversaries whom he would have us admire. This is also the tone of Roger of Wendover, who calls the leaders of the barons “the chief promoters of this pestilence.” Yet according to Matthew Paris, who is very fair and just, with all his enthusiasm, the barons were not all rogues. He gives the following incident which Edgar has omitted in connection with the siege of Rochester:--“One day during the siege of Rochester Castle, the king and Sauvery were riding round it to examine the weaker parts of it, when a crossbowman in the service of William d’Albini saw them, and said to his master, ‘Is it your will, my lord, that I should slay the king, with this arrow which I have ready?’ To this William replied, ‘No, no; far be it from us, villain, to cause the death of the Lord’s anointed.’ The crossbowman said, ‘He would not spare you in a like case.’ To which the knight replied, ‘The Lord’s will be done. The Lord disposes events, not he.... This circumstance was afterwards known to the king, who, notwithstanding this, did not wish to spare William when his prisoner, but would have hung him had he been permitted.”

In the opening chapters of his story Edgar gives an idea of the turbulent state of the country just after the battle of Bouvines--the defeat to which, according to the historians, England owes its Magna Charta. The barons had now the upper hand. John was crestfallen, and “concealed his hatred of the barons under a calm countenance,” says Matthew Paris.

When describing the great day of Runnymede, Edgar shows that he did not consider the resistance to royal tyranny to be a constitutional and really national movement. The reader is frequently reminded that the barons were fighting for their own selfish ends.

The period of cruelty and ravage between Runnymede and the battle of Lincoln is enlivened by touches of romance, and exploits such as those of William de Collingham, which remind us of Robin Hood, but all the more interesting because Collingham is a historical character mentioned by the contemporary writers. Roger of Wendover says, “A young man named William, refusing to make his fealty to Louis, collected a company of a thousand crossbowmen, and taking to the woods and forests with which that part of the country[1] abounded, he continued to harass the French during the whole war, and slew many thousands of them.”

[1] Sussex.

Edgar’s description of the sea-fight between Hubert de Burgh and Eustace the Monk is much the same as that given by the chroniclers, but he omits the answer of the nobles who, when Hubert proposed that they should go to meet the French fleet, said: “We are not sailors, pirates, or fishermen, do you go therefore and die.”

So also in his account of Lincoln Fair, and of the rising of Fitzarnulph and the citizens of London, he still keeps close to the old chronicle of Wendover; especially is he in his element on Lincoln Fair day, and able to give full rein to his patriotic fire, the essential point of which, in his case, as in that of the chronicler, was loyalty to the king. But Edgar adds to Roger’s account when he introduces us to Nichola de Camville, whose story is given by Walter of Coventry.

Finally, when the temporary peace was established, Edgar concludes his tale in the conventional way, dear to novel readers in every age, with the rescue of the heroine by the hero, and the “living happy ever after.”

Hannay says of Edgar’s style: “It is not a showy style; but it is singularly clear, masculine, and free from every trace of literary impurity or fashionable affectation.” It is certain that he was at his best when describing boyish adventures or historic events. Beatrix de Moreville’s only essential place in the story is as an object of admiration for Oliver Icingla, thereby causing the former friends, Oliver and Fitzarnulph, to become romance-rivals as well as political opponents. It is not, in truth, of such as Beatrix de Moreville that the great heroines are made. With Wolf, the son of Styr, the author is, on the contrary, much more at home; and he makes us at last as interested as he was himself in the boy who was the loyal servant of his master.

Edgar, with his strong conservative instinct and his feeling for the old chroniclers, had much to aid him in his special service of making history into pure story. If he had gone on to write the major work he had planned on the subject of this last story of his, he might have left a more solid fame behind him. His story will help, as it is, to send other students and writers to review the turbulent reign of that John whom he over-estimated.

L. K. HUGHES.

_April 1908._

The following are the published works of John George Edgar:--

Biography for Boys, 1853; The Boyhood of Great Men, 1853; History
for Boys, 1855; Boy Princes, 1857; The Heroes of England, 1858; The
Wars of the Roses, 1859; The Crusades and the Crusaders, 1860;
Cavaliers and Roundheads, 1861; Sea Kings and Naval Heroes, 1861;
Memorable Events of Modern History, 1862; Danes, Saxons, and
Normans, 1863; Cressy and Poictiers (in Beeton’s _Boys’ Own
Magazine_, 1863), 1865; Historical Anecdotes of Animals, 1865;
Runnymede and Lincoln Fair, 1866.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. A SQUIRE AND A CITIZEN 1

II. THE ICINGLAS 7

III. AN UNBIDDEN GUEST 10

IV. CHRISTMAS 18

V. THE TOWER OF LONDON 22

VI. KING JOHN 25

VII. A MAN OF THE FOREST 31

VIII. THE KING AND THE BARONS 37

IX. A BLOW IN SEASON 43

X. WILLIAM DE COLLINGHAM 49

XI. ANCIENT LONDON 53

XII. THE BARONS IN LONDON 59

XIII. EVACUATION OF THE TOWER 63

XIV. A HEROINE IN DANGER 67

XV. ISABEL OF ANGOULÊME 72

XVI. TAKEN BY SURPRISE 76

XVII. THE WINDSOR OF KING JOHN 83

XVIII. THE DAY OF RUNNYMEDE 87

XIX. CHAS-CHATEIL 91

XX. OLIVER’S CAPTIVITY 96

XXI. DE MOREVILLE’S DAUGHTER 100

XXII. HOW THE KING BIDED HIS TIME 108

XXIII. TURNING TO BAY 115

XXIV. A DESPERATE EXPEDIENT 119

XXV. THE VOWS OF THE HERON 123

XXVI. A PAINFUL INTERVIEW 127

XXVII. THE INVADER AND HIS DUPES 130

XXVIII. STYR THE ANGLO-SAXON AND HIS SON 135

XXIX. HUNTING A WILD BOAR 139

XXX. A GRAND FEAT OF HORSEMANSHIP 143

XXXI. PEDRO THE PAGE 149

XXXII. THE SUBTERRANEAN PASSAGE 154

XXXIII. WARRIORS IN DISGUISE 158

XXXIV. A RIDE FOR LIFE 165

XXXV. THE RUDDY LION RAMPANT 173

XXXVI. END OF KING JOHN 176

XXXVII. THE GREAT EARL OF PEMBROKE 179

XXXVIII. CORONATION OF THE BOY HENRY 182

XXXIX. A CONQUEROR IN IMAGINATION 186

XL. A CAMP OF REFUGE 190

XLI. OLIVER’S DREAM 197

XLII. BURNING OF OAKMEDE 200

XLIII. FOUND DYING 207

XLIV. A MYSTERIOUS EXIT 210

XLV. A FRENCH ARMAMENT 215

XLVI. A SEA-FIGHT 218

XLVII. THE SIEGE OF MOUNT SORREL 221

XLVIII. LINCOLN 225

XLIX. COLLINGHAM’S RAVENS 229

L. THE BATTLE 233

LI. DE MOREVILLE IN BATTLE HARNESS 237

LII. DEFIANT TILL DEATH 242

LIII. AFTER THE BATTLE 245

LIV. AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT 247

LV. SUNSHINE AND CLOUDS 252

LVI. THE WRESTLING-MATCH 255

LVII A MEDIÆVAL RESTAURANT 259

LVIII. WRESTLING FOR THE RAM 263

LIX. A STARTLING SPECTACLE 267

LX. A DEMAGOGUE AND HIS DESPERADOES 271

LXI. AN OFFERING TO THE WINDS 276

RUNNYMEDE AND LINCOLN FAIR

A STORY OF THE GREAT CHARTER