Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

sins were clamouring at the entrance gate, a young girl of the queen's attendants, the Lady Katharine Douglas, put her slender arm through the staple of the door to serve as a bolt, but the frail impediment was snapped asunder like a stick by the strong conspirators. James, unarmed and defenceless, was let down into a vault underneath by his heroic wife, but was discovered and slain, pierced by eight-andtwenty wounds. Nor did the queen escape altogether. She was first stabbed by the disappointed assassins, before they discovered the king in the vault, and afterwards received two wounds in interposing her body between her lord and the bloody knife of his foes. Happily, her wounds were not mortal. She lived long enough to do justice upon the murderers, several of whom were executed. The aged Earl of Athol, one of the chief conspirators, was crowned with a coronet of red hot iron, with the inscription, "THIS IS THE KING OF THE TRAITORS," and after suffering the most horrible tortures for three days, was beheaded, and his quarters sent to the chief cities of the kingdom.

Windsor Castle is also celebrated as the place of durance of another, but less illustrious poet, the Earl of Surrey, of whom we have already discoursed at Hampton Court. What his of

fence was is not known, but it appears to have been trifling, as well as his punishment. Some of his biographers say, that it was for no crime more heinous than that of eating flesh in Lent. It was here that he spent some of his earlier years, roving through the green glades of the forest with the young duke of Richmond, son of Henry VIII. In a poem written during his imprisonment, the Earl recals to mind all the pleasures of his youth in Windsor with the dear friend then dead, and remembers to regret,

The large green courts where we were wont to rove
With eyes cast up unto the Maiden's Tower,
The palm-play where despoiled for the game
With dazzled eyes, oft we by gleams of love
Have missed the ball, and got sight of our dame
To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above.
The secret groves, which oft we made resound
Of pleasant plaint and of our ladies' praise;
Recording oft what grace each one had found,

What hope of speed, what dread of long delays.
The wild forest, the clothed holts with green;
With reins availed, and swiftly-breathed horse,
With cry of hounds and merry blasts between,

When we did chase the hart of fearful force.

All these delights of his youth came forcibly to his mind as he pined a prisoner, and alone, in the scenes associated with so much joy; but he strove at last, he says, to forget the

lesser sorrow of his captivity, by dwelling upon the greater, the loss of his "noble fere," then cold in the tomb. At Windsor also at a later period, he dangled in the train of his celebrated "Geraldine," writing smooth rhymes in her praise; complaining of coldness, for which he did not care; feigning raptures which he never felt; and making, if the truth must be told, somewhat of a fool of himself, and of the little girl too. The story of his love, unlike that of James Stuart for his beautiful Jane Beaufort, has not the merit of truth and deep passion to recommend it, however much it may have been vaunted by other poets, who were content to take tradition instead of history, as we have already shown in a previous part of our peregrinations.

We have lingered so long in the pleasant company of the poets, as to have left ourselves but little time to dilate upon the curiosities of the spot. But in this respect we decline to become the Cicerone of the reader. To point out all the objects that attract the eyes of a visiter, would occupy a space which we should be loth to bestow; and referring all who may be interested in the fine works of art in the Waterloo Chamber, or in the beautiful chapel of St. George, to the guide books, which are

sold in Windsor, and which will give all the information the most particular can require, we will stroll into the mausoleum of kings, and see the place where they sleep well, "after life's fitful fever;" ramble into the parks and forest, and then upwards again, in our prescribed course, breasting the waters of the Thames.

294

CHAPTER XII.

[ocr errors]

Royal Tombs in St. George's Chapel. The Persians at Windsor. Windsor Forest.-Herne's Oak.-Eton College. Monkey Island.-The Vicar of Bray.-The Town of Maidenhead.-Claude Duval.-Cliefden.

[graphic]

HE Collegiate chapel of St. George, in Windsor Castle, not the edifice built by Edward III. with the same name, but a more splendid building erected on its site, by Sir Reginald Bray, the architect of that beautiful pile at Westminster Abbey called Henry VIIth's Chapel, is one of the most beautiful structures of its kind in the world. It is a scene of much pomp upon the installation of a Knight of the Garter; but these are rare occasions, and a more solemn interest dwells permanently within its walls. Here are buried several of the Kings of England. Amongst others ill-fated Henry VI ;

« AnteriorContinua »