IVANHOE.

IN

CHAPTER I.

N that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don,1 there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster.? The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Wharncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley ;3 here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.

Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a

1 A river of the West Riding of Yorkshire County, England.

? The termination" caster" is a remnant of the Latin castra (“ a military camp"), and marks the traces of the early Roman occupation of the island. Other words of similar formation are "Lancaster" and Winchester."

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* Or Wharncliffe, the name of a lodge and wood in the parish of Penniston, Yorkshire. The dragon, a fabulous monster, was killed, so goes the legend, by More of More-Hall, who, clad in spiked armor, secreted himself in a well habituated by the dragon, kicked the monster in the mouth (its only vulnerable part), and so destroyed it.

4 The intestine wars in England from the reign of Henry VI. to that of Henry VII., 1452-86. The name refers to the emblems or badges worn by the contesting parties; that of the House of York being a white rose, and that of the House of Lancaster a red rose.

period towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the mean time subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen,1 and whom the prudence of Henry II.2 had scarce reduced into some degree of subjection to the Crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.

The situation of the inferior gentry, or franklins as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny,* became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves, by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multi

1 King of England, 1135-54; grandson of William the Conqueror.

2 King of England, 1154-89; came to the throne at the age of twentyone; first of the Plantagenet dynasty.

3 In accordance with the feudal system (the land system brought in by the Normans with William the Conqueror), fiefs or land tenures were granted by a lord or baron to his man or vassal, the vassal swearing fealty and doing homage when his fief was conferred.

4 Every estate, under the feudal system, was held by its tenant from the Crown, on condition of military service at the royal will.

plied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbors, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection during the dangers of the times to their own inoffensive conduct and to the laws of the land.

A circumstance which greatly tended to enhance the tyranny of the nobility and the sufferings of the inferior classes arose from the consequences of the Conquest by Duke William of Normandy.1 Four generations had not sufficed to blend the hostile blood of the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, or to unite by common language and mutual interests two hostile races, one of which still felt the elation of triumph, while the other groaned under all the consequences of defeat. The power had been completely placed in the hands of the Norman nobility by the event of the battle of Hastings; and it had been used, as our histories assure us, with no moderate hand. The whole race of Saxon princes and nobles had been extirpated or disinherited, with few or no exceptions; nor were the numbers great who possessed land in the country of their fathers, even as proprietors of the second or of yet inferior classes. The royal policy had long been to weaken by every means, legal or illegal, the strength of a part of the population which was justly considered as nourishing the most inveterate antipathy to their victor. All the monarchs of the Norman race had shown the most marked predilection for their Norman subjects. The laws of the chase, and many others equally unknown to the milder and more free spirit of the Saxon constitution, had been fixed upon the necks of the subjugated inhabitants, to add weight, as it were, to the feudal chains with which they were loaded. At court, and in the castles of the great nobles, where

1 More commonly known as William the Conqueror. He invaded England in 1066; met Harold, the English king, at Hastings, and totally defeated and killed him, thus gaining possession of the country, which he parceled out to his Norman followers in accordance with the feudal system.

the pomp and state of a court were emulated, Norman-French was the only language employed: in courts of law the pleadings and judgments were delivered in the same tongue. In short, French was the language of honor, of chivalry, and even of justice; while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds,1 who knew no other. Still, however, the necessary intercourse between the lords of the soil and those oppressed inferior beings by whom that soil was cultivated occasioned the gradual formation of a dialect compounded betwixt the French and the Anglo-Saxon, in which they could render themselves mutually intelligible to each other; and from this necessity arose by degrees the structure of our present English language, in which the speech of the victors and the vanquished have been so happily blended together, and which has since been so richly improved by importations from the classical languages, and from those spoken by the southern nations of Europe.

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The sun was setting upon one of the rich, grassy glades of that forest which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious greensward. In some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweep

1 Farm hands.

2 The formation of this dialect, or “ Old English” as it is frequently called in English literature, was a slow process of several centuries. Briefly, the chief marks of crystallization were the loss of inflections in the native tongue, and the introduction into it of a French vocabulary.

3 Britain was first invaded by Romans under Cæsar in 55 B.C., and at the close of the first century they had subdued the native Britons as far as the Forth. Until the early part of the fifth century, when the Roman soldiery was withdrawn, the island was under Roman rule; the Romans building roads, fortifying towns, and establishing military posts throughout the country.

ing vistas in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while the imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discolored light that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space in the midst of this glade seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of druidical superstition; 1 for on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough, unhewn stones of large dimensions. Seven stood upright: the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave by its opposition a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet.

2

The human figures which completed this landscape were in number two, partaking, in their dress and appearance, of that wild and rustic character which belonged to the woodlands of the West Riding of Yorkshire at that early period. The eldest of these men had a stern, savage, and wild aspect. His garment was of the simplest form imaginable, being a close jacket with sleeves, composed of the tanned skin of some animal, on which the hair had been originally left, but which had been worn off in so many places that it would have been difficult to distinguish, from the patches that remained, to what creature the fur had be

1 The Druids were priests of religion among the ancient Celts of Gaul, Britain, and Ireland; and their rites were held chiefly in oak groves; the oak, in their religion, typifying the Supreme God, and the mistletoe clinging upon it symbolizing man's dependence. The Druids had charge of matters of religion and morality, and exercised offices of a judicial character, practiced magic and divination, and sacrificed human beings in their worship.

? One of the three divisions of Yorkshire, embracing all the south and west parts of the county.