ill-constructed scaffold on which she and her ladies were seated suddenly gave way, and precipitated the young Queen and her fair companions to the ground. Fortunately no one was much hurt, but the King was so furious that he there and then ordered the contractor, as we should call him, and his carpenter to be hanged. On both her knees the good Queen fell before him, stubbornly refusing to rise till the men were pardoned; and so, Froissart tells us, "the people learnt to love her as no Queen was ever loved before or since." The "dear lady" had her sorrows like other mortals. The King gave her cause for jealousy, and set London a-gossiping. The institution of the Order of the Garter proves this. The lady alleged to have dropped that intimate article of dress was Catherine de Grasons, Countess of Salisbury, "a very virtuous godly lady," who frankly told the King "his thoughts were villainous." Alas! the story of the origin of the Garter is most probably a myth. It is quite true that the lady of Salisbury did plead with King Edward for her husband, then a captive of David, the Scotch King, but, let us whisper it discreetly, she never dropped her garter. The Order was revived, not invented, by Edward III., a blue garter and ribbon having been the badge of the Confederated Knights of Richard 1. None the less, Froissart, who was secretary to Queen Philippa, distinctly points to the Countess of Salisbury as the heroine of the revived Order. "Out of his great desire to honour this lady of Salisbury, Edward 111. made a great feast in August 1343. He commanded all his knights and lords to bring their wives, and especially the Earl of Salisbury, whose wife was to bring as many young ladies as she chose. Being all assembled they danced and made merry, and afterwards there was a Chapter or Convocation of the new Order held." On St. George's Day, 1344, Queen Philippa, wearing the robes of the said new Order, and the garter as a bracelet on her left arm, assisted the King to hold the first Chapter of the Garter at Windsor Castle. In olden times ladies, as well as their husbands, wore the robes and Order.1

On the 15th of August 1369, Queen Philippa died in the arms of her husband, of a lingering illness. She had borne him twelve children, of whom eight survived. Two of them, Edward the 1 See Sir Harris Nicholas's History of the Order of the Garter.

Black Prince and John of Gaunt, have won renown in the annals of their country. This charitable woman and admirable queen rests in peace in the Confessor's Chapel in Westminster Abbey, not, however, as she had wished, by her husband's side, but at his feet. Her noble monument is a worthy specimen of the high artistic achievement of the fourteenth century. The death of the Queen seems to have withdrawn from Edward all the good that was in him. His mighty House was drawing to the close of its prosperity, and a sad and lonely end was in store for this great man!

It was in the reign of Edward III. that we find the first definite mention of that dread institution, the Star Chamber; we are informed that "the chancellor, treasurer and justices and others sat in the chambre de estoiles" at Westminster. The history of this fatal Chamber, which derived its name most probably from its decoration of golden stars on a blue ground, would fill a spacious volume. It became in Tudor times a terrible power in the hands of unscrupulous sovereigns, and eventually assumed most of the dark and mysterious features of the Spanish Inquisition. Hudson tells us that "all offences may be here examined in the Star Chamber if the King will and as he wills." Its procedure was not according to the common law: it had no jury; could prosecute on mere rumour; could apply torture, though not capital punishment. The Long Parliament abolished the Star Chamber in 1641, but the ancient hall was for many generations included among the interesting apartments to be visited in old Westminster Palace, until the destruction, by fire, in the first half of the last century, of all that remained of the venerable pile.

The old King-not so old in years as in infirmities and sorrows-survived his queen a little over ten years. The last year of his life brought him the inexpressible grief of watching at the deathbed of his glorious son, the Black Prince, the hero of Crecy and Poictiers, who died June 8, 1376, and was buried with great pomp in Canterbury Cathedral. He left a son, Richard, who succeeded to the throne, and who displays a singular example of atavism, having harked back to his inglorious grandfather Edward 11. It was a bitter disappointment for Edward III. to know, as he knew only too well, in his last hours,

that the golden flower of Plantagenet must be borne, when he himself departed, by this foolish youth.

After the death of the Queen, the failing King fell under the influence of a beautiful but avaricious adventuress, a former woman-in-waiting of the queen, one Alice Perrars. The intrigue must have been begun before Philippa's death, for in her will she leaves presents in money and gold to all her women by name, but there is no allusion to this Alice Perrars. Before the Queen had been dead many weeks, Edward, according to the Fœdera, made a disgraceful grant

"Know all, that we give and concede to our beloved Alicia Perrars, late damsel of the chamber to our dearest consort Philippa deceased, and to her heirs and executors, all the jewels, goods and chattels that the said Queen left in the hands of Euphemia, who was wife to Walter de Heselarton, soldier, and the said Euphemia is to deliver them to the said Alicia on receipt of this our Order."

A year or so before the King's decease we note one last flicker of the splendid pageantry which had marked the early years of his reign. The fair Alice, who, notwithstanding her equivocal position, was very popular, figured at a gorgeous tournament in Smithfield held in her honour. On this occasion she was dignified by the title of "Lady of the Sun." Clad in cloth-of-gold, and blazing with jewels, she drove impudently from the Tower to Smithfield in a chariot drawn by six white horses. The sport was of an unusually tame description, for the spears and lances we are told were blunted so that they could not hurt. "The Lady of the Sun" was attended by a number of ladies of quality, each riding a white palfrey led by a knight in full armour. The whole Court of England joined in this "glorious procession" to the field, "where many gallant feats were performed by the nobility and gentry." The pageant lasted for seven successive days, on every one of which Alice appeared in a new garment, eclipsing its predecessor in beauty and richness. This rapacious woman was in the King's bed-chamber when he expired, on the night of June 21, 1377, and is accused of having actually pulled the rings off the dying monarch's fingers.

IN

CHAPTER XI

LONDON IN CHAUCER'S TIME

N the reign of Edward III., London was already a large and handsome medieval capital. A travelled man would have recognised French influences in its architectural features, though the houses, unlike those of Paris and of the towns of Northern France, which towered to the skies, were rarely more than two or three storeys in height. The chief beauty of the city was its broken and ever-varying sky-line of gable, pinnacle, tower and steeple. As seen from the Southwark side of the Thames, from the point chosen nearly three hundred years later by Wingaerde for his fine sketch, the view of fourteenth-century London, with its irregular masses of buildings, its steeples and towers rising one above the other over the great river, must have been extremely beautiful.

A Florentine banker, Giovanni Frascobaldi, who was in London about the time of Chaucer, declared it to be "una bella e piacevole citta," a beautiful and pleasant city full of noble churches, rich monasteries, fine palaces, and pleasant gardens. He greatly admired the Bridge, and called it "una maraviglia," a marvel, and finer and larger than the famous Ponte Vecchio at Florence. It must, indeed, have been very picturesque with its quaint houses,-in our third Edward's time they did not as yet form a continuous street,-its towers and gateways, and its bustling crowd of all sorts and conditions of men and women. But it must have been a most inconvenient and dangerous specimen of old-world engineering. Under its low arches the current ran so strong that scarce a month passed without some disaster or other to boats attempting to "shoot" the Bridge, as the feat of passing underneath it was popularly termed.

Let us, in our endeavour to obtain a fair idea of London at this period of its history, imagine ourselves of that famed company of nine-and-twenty pilgrims immortalised by Chaucer, and able, thanks to some occult process, to live back seven hundred years. We have arrived, then, at the "gentil hostelrye, highte the Tabard, faste by the Belle," in Southwark, on a day in that fair season of the year when "Zephirus with his sweet breath" has infused new life into Nature, that hath "byn asleep the winter through." We have come, let us say, from some remote Norfolk manor, a journey which has cost us a full week's hard riding. We have enjoyed a good night's rest in the big chamber shared with six or seven other pilgrims, jolly fellows, who seem to care less for the saying of their Paters and Aves than for the relating of a good story, not so much distinguished by delicacy as by wit: a terrible job we have had to keep them quiet, for whereas we pined for slumber, they yearned to spend the night in gossip, telling tales, mocking my Lady Eglantine, the noble Prioress, her mincing ways and her over-fed canine pets; speaking none too civilly of the Wife of Bath, her red hose and her flopping hat, and jeering at the Knight's fine airs, for all that he "loved chivalrye" and

"In Gernade at the sege eek hadde he be

Of Algezir, and riden in Belmarye,

At Lyeys was he, and at Satlaye,
When they were wonne."

The yeoman who was his serving-man declares, "He hath too stingy a turn of mind." "His hose were good, but he was nat gay." Nought, however, but praise have they for the "Squyer," the Knight's stalwart "sonne," who, though only twenty years of age, has fought in "Flaundres, in Artoys, and in Picardye, and borne him well." He, at least, is always "gay"-" singing he was all the day"—and sporting a garment "embroidered like a mede, all full of freyshe flowers, whyte and rede." Of Master Geoffrey Chaucer, who has undertaken to lead the pious party safely through the leafy lanes of Kent and Surrey to St. Thomas's shrine at Canterbury, with "ful devout corage," the pilgrims have only good words to say.

We rise early, then, and leaving the Tabard, after a breakfast