“Edgar struck him A buffet on the face which
sent him reeling backwards.”
Edgar talks matters over with
the prior of st. Alwyth.
“In A moment Edgar’s sword
fell on the RUFFIAN’S wrist.”
The lord mayor stabs Wat
the Tyler in presence of the
boy-king.
Edgar and Albert are knighted
by king Richard.
The two young knights charge
down upon the panic-stricken
crowd.
Sir Edgar at last surrenders
to sir Robert de Beaulieu.
The prisoners make their escape
over the roofs of Ypres.
TROUBLED TIMES
“And what do you think of it all, good Father?”
“’Tis a difficult question, my son, and
I am glad that it is one that wiser heads than mine
will have to solve.”
“But they don’t seem to try to solve it;
things get worse and worse. The king is but a
lad, no older than myself, and he is in the hands of
others. It seems to me a sin and a shame that
things should go on as they are at present. My
father also thinks so.”
The speaker was a boy of some sixteen years old.
He was walking with the prior in the garden of the
little convent of St. Alwyth, four miles from the
town of Dartford. Edgar Ormskirk was the son of
a scholar. The latter, a man of independent means,
who had always had a preference for study and investigation
rather than for taking part in active pursuits, had,
since the death of his young wife, a year after the
birth of his son, retired altogether from the world
and devoted himself to study. He had given up
his comfortable home, standing on the heights of Highgate—that
being in too close proximity to London to enable him
to enjoy the seclusion that he desired—and
had retired to a small estate near Dartford.
Educated at Oxford, he had gone to Padua at his father’s
death, which happened just as he left the university,
and had remained at that seat of learning for five
years. There he had spent the whole of his income
in the purchase of manuscripts. The next two
years were passed at Bologna and Pisa, and he there
collected a library such as few gentlemen of his time
possessed. Then Mr. Ormskirk had returned to England
and settled at Highgate, and two years later married
the daughter of a neighbouring gentleman, choosing
her rather because he felt that he needed someone to
keep his house in order, than from any of the feeling
that usually accompanies such unions. In time,
however, he had come to love her, and her loss was
a very heavy blow to him. It was the void that
he felt in his home as much as his desire for solitude,
that induced him to leave Highgate and settle in the
country.
