Chapter XX: Kenilworth

The successful introduction of Mary Queen of Scots as the central figure of 'The Abbot' resulted, not only in repairing the reputation which had been somewhat damaged by its predecessor, but in suggesting the theme of a new novel which was to achieve a popularity second only to 'Ivanhoe.' The desire to portray, in the form of romance, the great rival of Queen Mary, was perhaps irresistible, particularly in view of the fact that it meant a new opportunity to reach that English audience which had given to 'Ivanhoe' so cordial a reception. Constable, the publisher, was of course delighted to have a new English novel and particularly one in which Queen Elizabeth was to be an important figure. With characteristic presumptuousness he argued that it should be a story of the Armada. Scott, however, had been enchanted in his youth by a ballad of the Scotch poet, Mickle, entitled 'Cumnor Hall,' and particularly by its first stanza:--

The dews of summer night did fall;
The moon, sweet regent of the sky,
Silver'd the walls of Cumnor Hall,
And many an oak that grew thereby.

He insisted, therefore, in spite of his adviser, upon taking the theme of the ballad for his subject and would even have called the novel 'Cumnor Hall.' In deference to Constable, however, he accepted the title, 'Kenilworth,' {273} although John Ballantyne growled a little at a name which he thought suggested 'something worthy of a kennel.'

Here, then, were the determining points of the new novel, namely, a favourite poem concerning the marriage of the Earl of Leicester to a lady whom he kept concealed at Cumnor Hall, the desire to sketch, in a romantic way, the character of Queen Elizabeth, and the opportunity to secure a dramatic climax by confronting the Queen with the wife of her favourite courtier, in the splendid castle of the latter at Kenilworth.

Cumnor is one of those lovely little villages in the Midlands of England where Father Time employs his talents as an artist, softening the outlines of the stone walls and fences with graceful mantles of dark green ivy and imparting richer and deeper shades of brown to the old thatched roofs of the cottages.

We saw few evidences of activity on the part of the inhabitants, and reached the conclusion that Cumnor, in Walter Scott's time, and even in the days of the Earl of Leicester, could not have been very different from its present aspect.

We did not ruin our reputation as travellers by failing to 'wet a cup at the bonny Black Bear,' for that 'excellent inn of the old stamp,' if indeed it ever existed, has disappeared as effectually as its famous landlord, Giles Gosling. Its prototype, bearing the sign of the 'Bear and Ragged Staff,' formerly stood opposite the church, but its bar-room became objectionable to the vicar and, by what a local writer calls 'an impious act of vandalism,' the inn was destroyed.

Cumnor Place has likewise disappeared. The site {274} where it stood appears to be a comparatively small piece of land, near the street, but well covered with large trees. It was not an extensive park with formal walks and avenues, nor was the house itself so large or high as the structure described in the novel. It was a single-story building or series of buildings, forming an enclosure about seventy feet long and fifty feet wide. It was built about 1350 as a country residence for the Abbot of Abingdon and as a sanitarium for the monks. After two centuries its use by the monastery ceased and Cumnor Place passed into the hands of the Court physician, George Owen, who leased it to Anthony Foster. As the servant of Lord Robert Dudley, Foster received into his house the ill-fated Amy Robsart, whom that gentleman had married in 1550. The marriage was not secret, but was celebrated in the presence of the young King, Edward VI, and his Court. It had been arranged by Dudley's father, John, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland, who seems to have had a fondness for match-making, of the kind which promised a profit. He managed to marry his fourth son, Guildford Dudley, to Lady Jane Grey, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII. In the last two years of the reign of Edward VI, Northumberland was virtually the ruler of England. He induced the King to execute a will, disinheriting his two sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, who were the legal heirs to the crown, and naming Lady Jane Grey as his successor. The reign of this unfortunate lady, who never desired the throne, lasted but nine days. The rightful Queen, Mary, was restored by the people, and Northumberland, like his father before him, was beheaded in the Tower. His son, Guildford, with Jane {275} Grey, his wife, suffered the same penalty a year later, as the result of another revolt, in which the lady, at least, had no share.

Robert Dudley came near falling a victim to the same fate as his father and grandfather. He took up arms against Queen Mary, was sent to the Tower and condemned to death. But the Queen pardoned him and made him Master of the Ordnance. On the accession of Elizabeth he became Master of the Horse, and thereafter rose rapidly in the royal favour. Elizabeth made him a Knight of the Garter, bestowed upon him the Castle of Kenilworth, the lordship of Denbigh and other rich lands in Warwickshire and Wales. In 1564 the Queen made him Earl of Leicester, and recommended him (perhaps not seriously) as a possible husband of Mary Queen of Scots. The University of Oxford made him their chancellor and the King of France conferred upon him the order of St. Michael. He reached the culmination of the high honours which Elizabeth and others crowded upon him, in the appointment as Lieutenant-General of the army mustered to meet the Spanish invasion, in the year of the great Armada, 1588.

This was the outward show, and it was brilliant enough; but the Earl was like a worm-eaten apple--fair enough to look upon, but rotten to the core--and his private life was thoroughly contemptible. The marriage to Amy Robsart in 1550 was not a happy one. She was never a countess, for Dudley did not become Earl of Leicester until four years after her death. After the favours of Elizabeth began to be showered upon him, Dudley had good reason for concealing this marriage, for the Queen soon began to show a longing to make him {276} her royal husband. In 1560, two years after the accession of Elizabeth, the dead body of Amy was found at the foot of the stairs at Cumnor. All the servants had gone to a neighbouring fair and apparently Anthony Foster was the only person besides Amy at home on that day. It was given out that Amy had accidentally fallen downstairs and broken her neck. She was ostentatiously buried in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford, though Lord Dudley was not present at the funeral nor did he again visit Cumnor.

More than twenty years later a pamphlet was published, anonymously, under the title 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' in which the Earl was bitterly attacked as an atheist and a traitor as well as a man of infamous character. He was openly accused of the murder of his wife, and there were not wanting many evidences seeming to corroborate this view. It was alleged that efforts to poison her were made, by direction of the Earl. That Leicester was not incapable of such an act is indicated by the circumstances of his own death. The tradition is that he gave his wife (the third one) a bottle of medicine to be used for faintness. The lady kept it, unused, and later, not knowing it to be poison, administered a dose to her husband, with a fatal result. This lady was the widow of Walter, Earl of Essex, with whom the Earl of Leicester was carrying on an intrigue before her husband's death. There was a quarrel and Essex died suddenly, under some suspicion of poison. Leicester's secret marriage with the widow led to serious accusations against him. According to the author of 'Leicester's Commonwealth,' when the Earl fell in love with Lady Douglas Sheffield (who became his second wife), {277} her husband suddenly died under mysterious circumstances. Leicester had in his employ an Italian physician who was a skilful compounder of poisons. It was said that his cunning and skill enabled him to cause a person to die with the symptoms of any disease he might choose, or to administer a poison so that the victim would expire at whatever hour he might appoint. These weird tales no doubt suggested something of the character of the fraudulent alchemist and astrologer, Alasco.

The stair at the foot of which Amy Robsart's body was found was a narrow winding flight, something like a corkscrew. It has been pointed out that Amy would have had considerable difficulty in hurling herself headlong around the twists and turns of such a staircase with enough force to break her neck. Without definite knowledge of the facts, the most reasonable supposition is that Lord Dudley, having a motive for the crime and being a man of unscrupulous character, would not hesitate to order it committed. His grandfather had been the agent of Henry VII in the infamous extortions which gave that sovereign an enormous fortune; his father had not hesitated to risk the lives of his son and an innocent lady to accomplish his own treasonable purposes, besides directly causing the death of the Duke of Somerset, and indirectly bringing about the execution of the Duke's brother, Lord Seymour. It is therefore not unreasonable to suppose that the scion of this ambitious family, who was himself cherishing no less bold a project than his own marriage with the Queen, should willingly give orders to remove the one great obstacle in his path.

The great festivities at Kenilworth occurred in 1575. Amy Robsart had been dead fifteen years. The Earl of {278} Leicester was none the less entangled, however, for he was at the time married to Lady Sheffield, who strongly maintained the validity of the marriage, though it was denied by the Earl and concealed from the Queen. At the same time, also, the intrigue with the Countess of Essex was in progress. From this it will be seen that although Scott departed from the facts of history in bringing poor Amy to Kenilworth, he nevertheless gave a true picture of the Earl of Leicester's embarrassment in the presence of his Queen. Scott softens the black-hearted villainy of the Earl, by making him an unwilling victim of his own ambition, duped into deeds of infamy by the determination of the conscienceless Richard Varney. He admits that he preferred to make the Earl 'rather the dupe of villains than the unprincipled author of their atrocities,' because in the latter capacity, he would have been a character too disgustingly wicked for the purposes of fiction.

According to Scott's account, the unfortunate Amy, after falling completely into the toils of Varney, was carried back to Cumnor Place, and lodged in a tower room at the top of the building. A gallery, arranged by a secret contrivance to be used as a drawbridge, which, when dropped, would cut off all access to the chamber, was the only means of entrance or exit. After Amy had entered the chamber, Varney and Foster withdrew the supports of the bridge in such manner that the slightest weight would cause it to fall. Varney then reached the consummation of his villainy by imitating the whistle of Leicester. Amy, deceived by the signal and eager to meet her Lord, rushed upon the bridge and fell to the deepest vault of the castle. The method of the real {279} Amy's death is not definitely known, but it was probably by no such elaborate invention. She was doubtless strangled in her room and her body carried to the foot of the stairs to suggest an accidental death.

Anthony Foster lies buried in Cumnor Church, which stands on land adjoining the site of Cumnor Place, near the entrance to the village on the road from Oxford. It is one of those stone churches, with square, substantial towers and ivy-clad walls, which add to the charm of the landscape throughout the length and breadth of England, as though she intended thereby to express both the beauty and the solidity of her religion.

The Foster tomb is an elaborate monument of grey marble, within the altar rail, and is easily the most noteworthy feature of the interior of the church. Two engraved brass plates represent the family at prayers, and beneath is a long inscription in Latin, indicating that Anthony Foster was a distinguished gentleman of good birth, skilled in the arts of music and horticulture, a good linguist and renowned for charity, benevolence, and religious fidelity. Looking upon this elaborate memorial, one cannot escape the conviction that Tony Foster was either a greatly maligned saint or the parent of a family of hypocrites. If the intention of those who composed the inscription was to convince the world of his innocence, they could not have been expected to foresee that, for every person who should read and understand the epitaph, ten thousand would be led to a perception of Foster's real character through the pen of a Scottish novelist, but for whom few of us would ever have known the sad story of the Lady of Cumnor Hall.

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As for the Earl of Leicester, a more truthful epitaph exists, not indeed carved upon stone, but preserved in the Collections of Drummond of Hawthornden. It reads:--

Here lies a valiant warrior,
Who never drew a sword;
Here lies a noble courtier,
Who never kept his word;
Here lies the Erle of Leister,
Who govern'd the estates;
Whom the earth could never living love,
And the just Heaven now hates.

The escape of Amy Robsart from Cumnor Place was achieved through the aid of Wayland Smith, a blacksmith, pedler, and strolling juggler, who had picked up from a former master some knowledge of medicine which he employed to good advantage. There was a legend current in Berkshire of a mysterious smith, who lived among the rocks and replaced lost horseshoes for a fee of sixpence, feeling offended if more were offered. Scott used this tale as the basis of his story of Wayland Smith. The idea of having his smithy in a cave may have been suggested by just such a place in Gilmerton, a village on the outskirts of Edinburgh, with which Scott must have been familiar. I had no difficulty in finding it. It is an artificial cavern, with many ramifications, and as the light can enter only from the door at the head of a stone stairway, its farther corners are extremely dark. Near the entrance is a blacksmith's forge. In a small and dark alcove opposite is an oblong stone, evidently intended as a dining-table. A rough shelf or ledge, cut out of the stone partition, served as a bench at meal-times. Any of the dark corners could be {281} used as sleeping-rooms. The cave was probably used by thieves or smugglers as a convenient hiding-place.

Amy's journey from Cumnor Village, four miles west of Oxford, to Kenilworth, in the centre of Warwickshire, was a ride of about fifty miles. Perhaps the Countess's mental condition would not permit her to enjoy it and doubtless the country then was wild and the roads rough; but the route to-day would be a delightful one, especially that part of it which passes through Warwickshire with its 'hedgerows of unmarketable beauty.'

As they approached the old town of Warwick, travelling by circuitous paths to avoid the crowds then journeying to witness the festivities at Kenilworth, Amy and her humble guide, the blacksmith, passed through some of the most beautiful country in England. But they were obliged to avoid what to-day forms the grand climax of interest to the tourist, the magnificent Castle of Warwick. This was the resting-place of Queen Elizabeth on the day preceding her triumphal progress to Kenilworth. In those days it was the seat of Ambrose Dudley, a brother to the Earl of Leicester and the third son of the notorious John Dudley.

There was never a time, say the local antiquaries, back as far as the reign of the celebrated King Arthur, when Warwick did not have its Earls. The most renowned of these was Guy, a great warrior supposed to stand nine feet high, among whose exploits were the killing of 'a Saracen giant, a wild boar, a dun cow, and a green dragon.' After a life devoted to these pleasant diversions, he retired to Guy's Cliffe, a retreat near Warwick, famed for its natural beauty, where he lived as a hermit until his death. The real building of the {282} castle began when the Normans took possession, William the Conqueror granting the vast estate, including the castle and the town, to Henry de Newburgh, the first Earl of Warwick. In the fifteenth century it came into the possession of Richard Neville, the famous 'King-Maker.' Since that time many improvements have been made, especially in the spacious grounds, which now make a splendid park, with well-kept lawns and paths, stately trees, formal gardens with yews fantastically trimmed, and a profusion of flowers.

The entrance road, cut through solid rock, looks as if carved out of soft moss, so thickly does the ivy cling to the walls. Trees of varied foliage overarch the path, and near the entrance the edges are bordered by narrow lines of flowers. At the end of this delightful avenue a sharp turn to the left brought us in front of the great Castle. On the right is Guy's Tower, rising one hundred and twenty-eight feet high and having walls ten feet thick. On the left is Cæsar's Tower, built by the Normans eight hundred years ago and still firm as the rock upon which it stands. The two are joined by an ivy-covered wall in the centre of which is a great gate between two towers. Passing through this gateway we entered the spacious court. Directly opposite is the mound, or keep, almost completely covered from base to summit with trees and shrubs, over the tops of which the towers and battlements peep out. On the right are two unfinished towers, one of them begun by Richard III, the whole side of the quadrangle forming a massive line of ramparts and embattled walls. On the left is the great mansion, occupied for centuries by the Earls of Warwick. The square formed by these huge stone buildings {283} is beautiful in its simplicity--a wide expanse of lawn, its rich velvet green broken only by the white gravel walks. To see the interior of the castle we were compelled to join a party of tourists, and march in solemn procession through the rooms of state, while our guide, an old soldier with a Cockney accent, loquaciously explained that his 'hobject' in telling us about the 'hearls' in this room was to prepare us to appreciate the 'hearls' in the next! This agony over, we departed by the road which leads across the Avon, where we were rewarded by a superb view of the castle from the bridge.

The next day we were at Kenilworth. It requires the exercise of a vivid imagination to walk among the ruins and trace the progress of Scott's story, but we found it a delightful study. We entered by the little wicket gate, next to the mansion known as the Gatehouse, erected by Dudley in 1570 as the chief entrance to the castle. Walking south, across the outer court, we came to the ancient entrance in the southeast angle known as Mortimer's Tower. From this point an embankment stretched to the southeast for about one hundred and fifty yards. It was eighteen yards wide and twenty feet high. Besides serving its original purpose of a dam, to hold back the waters of a great lake covering one hundred and eleven acres, this bank of earth made an admirable tilt-yard. At the extreme end of the embankment was the Gallery Tower, containing a spacious room from which the ladies could witness the tournaments. A wall eight feet high and eighty-five feet long is all that remains of this structure. It was built by Henry III in the thirteenth century and reconstructed {284} by the Earl of Leicester in preparation for the great festivities.

Here Amy presented herself under strange circumstances. As the wife of the great Earl of Leicester, the magnificent castle was her own and all its army of servants, and the vast crowd of sight-seers, could they have recognized their countess, would have bowed in humble reverence and have delighted to execute her slightest wish. But she came unknown and unrespected, not as the honoured Countess, but as 'the bale of woman's gear' belonging to a blacksmith, disguised as a juggler. At the Gallery Tower the two strange companions were halted by a giant porter, and gained admission only by the intercession of the mischievous little imp called Flibbertigibbet. They traversed the length of the tilt-yard, and passing through Mortimer's Tower, came in front of the splendid buildings, all with doors and gates wide open as a sign of unlimited hospitality.

On their right stood the stately Cæsar's Tower, a fine specimen of the military architecture of the Normans, built about 1170 to 1180, and still the best-preserved portion of the ruins. On their left was the great 'Leicester's Building,' erected in honour of the occasion for the accommodation of the Queen. It reached a height of ninety-three feet and was ninety feet long and fifty feet wide. The walls are thin, however, and although the most recent in date of all the important parts of the castle, this structure has crumbled into ruins to such an extent that it can be preserved only by constant attention.

Between Cæsar's Tower and Leicester's Building, and joining the two, Amy and her guide saw a stately edifice, {285} then known as King Henry VIII's Lodgings, because it was used by that monarch on the occasion of his visits to the castle. The portion on the left, immediately adjoining Leicester's Building, was called Dudley's Lobby. No vestige of these structures, which originally formed the eastern side of a magnificent quadrangle, can now be seen.

Passing through an open gateway between Cæsar's Tower and King Henry's Lodgings, the Countess entered the Inner Court. On the right, and in the rear of Cæsar's Tower, she could see the great kitchens, then a busy part of the establishment, but now showing little more than the remains of a huge fireplace and a thick wall from which project a broken arch or two. On the left were the White Hall, now entirely destroyed, and next to it the Presence Chamber, which had a fine oriel window looking into the court. Directly in front Amy could see the 'Great Hall' in which her princely husband had made lavish preparations to entertain the Queen with unprecedented extravagance. It was built in the fourteenth century by John of Gaunt, son of Edward III, who took up his residence at the castle on the death of his father, and spent the remainder of his life in adding to its magnificence. The hall was ninety feet long and forty-five feet wide. The floor has disappeared, but the remains of the pillars and arches which once supported it may still be seen. The Great Hall was lighted by large and very high windows, set in deep recesses, the outlines of which are still well preserved. The remains of two large fireplaces, one on each side, may still be seen. At the southern end was a dais, upon which was the Throne of State, with crimson canopy of {286} richly embroidered velvet. At the opposite end was a minstrel gallery for the musicians. From the centre of the roof hung a chandelier of brass, shaped like an eagle, its spreading wings supporting six human figures, each of which carried a pair of branches containing huge candles. The tables, chairs, cushions, carpets, and silken tapestries were all of the costliest workmanship. It is stated that the Earl of Leicester spent £60,000 upon this lavish entertainment, a sum which, to-day, would be better represented by half a million.

Amy and her escort were not at liberty to view this regal magnificence. They proceeded across the court to a tower at the northwestern angle, which was doubtless intended for a prison, judging from the thickness of the walls and the small size of the rooms. It was called, for this reason, the Strong Tower, though Scott's name for it is Mervyn's Tower. During the Elizabethan festivities it was used for the accommodation of guests. Here we must leave Amy for the present and go back to trace the movements of Elizabeth.

The Queen approached by way of the Gallery Tower, heralded by the roll of drums, the blare of trumpets, the roar of cannon, and the tumultuous shouts of a vast multitude. Two hundred thick waxen torches, each borne by a horseman, cast a glare of light upon the cavalcade. The Queen, mounted upon a milk-white horse and clad in gorgeous raiment, blazing with jewels, was accompanied by the Earl of Leicester, 'glittering like a golden image with jewels and cloth of gold.' He rode a jet-black horse, renowned as one of the most splendid chargers in Europe. Both horse and rider seemed perfectly formed to grace an occasion so glorious. {287} A great procession of the most distinguished noblemen, the ablest statesmen, and the proudest knights of England followed the Queen, together with the ladies of the Court, famed for splendour and beauty and arrayed in garments only a little less magnificent than those of the Queen herself. Passing upon the bridge or dam which stretched between the gallery and Mortimer's Tower, the royal procession paused to witness a gorgeous spectacular performance on the lake. Then, entering the Base Court, they moved through various pageants to the Inner Court, and came at length to the Great Hall, where the Queen was handed to the Throne by the Earl of Leicester.

The Pleasance was an irregular-shaped enclosure, visible to the west from Mervyn's Tower and connecting with a rectangular section on the north known as the garden. The latter had a terrace along the castle wall, ten feet high and twelve feet wide, covered with grass and decorated with obelisks, spheres, and stone bears. At each end was an arbour of trees and fragrant flowers. The garden was intersected by walks or alleys, each of which had, in the middle, a square pilaster, fifteen feet high, surmounted by an orb. In the centre of the garden was a fountain of white marble, its pedestal carved with allegorical subjects and surmounted by two Atlantes, back to back, holding a ball, from which streams of water poured into the basin. At the side of the terrace was a large aviary, well filled with birds.

This was the scene of the dramatic climax toward which the novel trends, where Queen Elizabeth finally confronts Amy Robsart and begins to unravel the whole story of Leicester's duplicity.

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Aside from their associations with the novel, the ruins of Kenilworth seem to exert a strong fascination. It is as though Nature were reasserting herself. A thousand years ago the domain was untouched by the hand of man. Then came kings and conquerors, who replaced the pristine beauty with artificial structures. Stately halls and palaces sprang into existence. Their inner walls were hung with the costliest of silks. Their floors were covered with the richest carpets from the looms of the Orient. Chairs, stools, tables, and bedsteads of elaborate workmanship, gorgeously covered with lace and embroidered with cloth of gold; paintings; musical instruments; curiously wrought plate, of silver and mother-of-pearl; everything, indeed, that the handicraft of the times could fashion and the wealth of its owners could buy, was brought to the castle in mute testimonial of man's conception of beauty. But these things passed. Kings and queens no longer made the castle their home, nor honoured it with even a brief visit. The people seized the government and, jealous lest royalty should again find shelter there, demolished the costly buildings. For the sake of a few pounds of lead, the roofs were torn away and sold. The artificial dam which backed up the waters of the great lake was cut and the waters flowed once more in their natural channels. Nature again assumed control. The formal gardens became a green pasture. The spacious courts which had been worn hard by the iron hoofs of countless steeds became soft again with a covering of deep and velvety grass. The proud war-horses vanished and in their place the gentle sheep appeared. The frightful scars on the face of the ruined buildings were concealed {289} beneath a rich cloak of deep-green ivy. Wall-flowers sprang out of the broken crevices below the arches.

All is peaceful, all is still. Nature has brought to the castle her own conception of beauty, and once more reigns supreme.

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