A Book of Golden Deeds

C >> Charlotte M. Yonge >> A Book of Golden Deeds

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'I trillirt the knaves right well,' was honest George's way of telling
the story of his exploit, not only a brave one, but amounting even to
self-devotion when we remember that the robber baron was his near
neighbour, and a terror to all around. The word Triller took the place
of his surname, and when the sole reward he asked was leave freely to
cut wood in the forest, the Elector gave him a piece of land of his own
in the parish of Eversbach. In 1855 there was a grand celebration of the
rescue of the Saxon princes on the 9th of July, the four hundredth
anniversary, with a great procession of foresters and charcoal-burners
to the 'Triller's Brewery', which stands where George's hut and kiln
were once placed. Three of his descendants then figured in the
procession, but since that time all have died, and the family of the
Trillers is now extinct.

SIR THOMAS MORE'S DAUGHTER

1535

We have seen how dim and doubtful was the belief that upbore the grave
and beautiful Antigone in her self-sacrifice; but there have been women
who have been as brave and devoted in their care of the mortal remains
of their friends--not from the heathen fancy that the weal of the dead
depended on such rites, but from their earnest love, and with a fuller
trust beyond.

Such was the spirit of Beatrix, a noble maiden of Rome, who shared the
Christian faith of her two brothers, Simplicius and Faustinus, at the
end of the third century. For many years there had been no persecution,
and the Christians were living at peace, worshipping freely, and
venturing even to raise churches. Young people had grown up to whom the
being thrown to the lions, beheaded, or burnt for the faith's sake, was
but a story of the times gone by. But under the Emperor Diocletian all
was changed. The old heathen gods must be worshipped, incense must be
burnt to the statue of the Emperor, or torture and death were the
punishment. The two brothers Simplicius and Faustinus were thus asked to
deny their faith, and resolutely refused. They were cruelly tortured,
and at length beheaded, and their bodies thrown into the tawny waters of
the Tiber. Their sister Beatrix had taken refuge with a poor devout
Christian woman, named Lucina. But she did not desert her brothers in
death; she made her way in secret to the bank of the river, watching to
see whether the stream might bear down the corpses so dear to her.
Driven along, so as to rest upon the bank, she found them at last, and,
by the help of Lucina, she laid them in the grave in the cemetery called
Ad Ursum Pileatum. For seven months she remained in her shelter, but she
was at last denounced, and was brought before the tribunal, where she
made answer that nothing should induce her to adore gods made of wood
and stone. She was strangled in her prison, and her corpse being cast
out, was taken home by Lucina, and buried beside her brothers. It was,
indeed, a favorite charitable work of the Christian widows at Rome to
provide for the burial of the martyrs; and as for the most part they
were poor old obscure women, they could perform this good work with far
less notice than could persons of more mark.

But nearer home, our own country shows a truly Christian Antigone,
resembling the Greek lady, both in her dutifulness to the living, and in
her tender care for the dead. This was Margaret, the favorite daughter
of sir Thomas More, the true-hearted, faithful statesman of King Henry
VIII.

Margaret's home had been an exceedingly happy one. Her father, Sir
Thomas More, was a man of the utmost worth, and was both earnestly
religious and conscientious, and of a sweetness of manner and
playfulness of fancy that endeared him to everyone. He was one of the
most affectionate and dutiful of sons to his aged father, Sir John More;
and when the son was Lord Chancellor, while the father was only a judge,
Sir Thomas, on his way to his court, never failed to kneel down before
his father in public, and ask his blessing. Never was the old saying,
that a dutiful child had dutiful children, better exemplified than in
the More family. In the times when it was usual for parents to be very
stern with children, and keep them at a great distance, sometimes making
them stand in their presence, and striking them for any slight offence,
Sir Thomas More thought it his duty to be friendly and affectionate with
them, to talk to them, and to enter into their confidence; and he was
rewarded with their full love and duty.

He had four children--Margaret, Elizabeth, Cicely, and John. His much-
loved wife died when they were all very young, and he thought it for
their good to marry a widow, Mrs. Alice Middleton, with one daughter
named Margaret, and he likewise adopted an orphan called Margaret Giggs.
With this household he lived in a beautiful large house at Chelsea, with
well-trimmed gardens sloping down to the Thames; and this was the resort
of the most learned and able men, both English and visitors from abroad,
who delighted in pacing the shady walks, listening to the wit and wisdom
of Sir Thomas, or conversing with the daughters, who had been highly
educated, and had much of their father's humor and sprightliness. Even
Henry VIII. himself, then one of the most brilliant and graceful
gentlemen of his time, would sometimes arrive in his royal barge, and
talk theology or astronomy with Sir Thomas; or, it might be, crack jests
with him and his daughters, or listen to the music in which all were
skilled, even Lady More having been persuaded in her old age to learn to
play on various instruments, including the flute. The daughters were
early given in marriage, and with their husbands, continued to live
under their father's roof. Margaret's husband was William Roper, a young
lawyer, of whom Sir Thomas was very fond, and his household at Chelsea
was thus a large and joyous family home of children and grandchildren,
delighting in the kind, bright smiles of the open face under the square
cap, that the great painter Holbein has sent down to us as a familiar
sight.

But these glad days were not to last for ever. The trying times of the
reign of Henry VIII. were beginning, and the question had been stirred
whether the King's marriage with Katherine of Aragon had been a lawful
one. When Sir Thomas More found that the King was determined to take his
own course, and to divorce himself without permission from the Pope, it
was against his conscience to remain in office when acts were being done
which he could not think right or lawful. He therefore resigned his
office as Lord Chancellor, and, feeling himself free from the load and
temptation, his gay spirits rose higher than ever. His manner of
communicating the change to his wife, who had been very proud of his
state and dignity, was thus. At church, when the service was over, it
had always been the custom for one of his attendants to summon Lady More
by coming to her closet door, and saying, 'Madam, my lord is gone.' On
the day after his resignation, he himself stepped up, and with a low bow
said, 'Madam, my lord is gone,' for in good soothe he was no longer
Chancellor, but only plain Sir Thomas.

He thoroughly enjoyed his leisure, but he was not long left in
tranquillity. When Anne Boleyn was crowned, he was invited to be
present, and twenty pounds were offered him to buy a suitably splendid
dress for the occasion; but his conscience would not allow him to accept
the invitation, though he well knew the terrible peril he ran by
offending the King and Queen. Thenceforth there was a determination to
ruin him. First, he was accused of taking bribes when administering
justice. It was said that a gilt cup had been given to him as a New
Year's gift, by one lady, and a pair of gloves filled with gold coins by
another; but it turned out, on examination, that he had drunk the wine
out of the cup, and accepted the gloves, because it was ill manners to
refuse a lady's gift, yet he had in both cases given back the gold.

Next, a charge was brought that he had been leaguing with a half-crazy
woman called the Nun of Kent, who had said violent things about the
King. He was sent for to be examined by Henry and his Council, and this
he well knew was the interview on which his safety would turn, since the
accusation was a mere pretext, and the real purpose of the King was to
see whether he would go along with him in breaking away from Rome--a
proceeding that Sir Thomas, both as churchman and as lawyer, could not
think legal. Whether we agree or not in his views, it must always be
remembered that he ran into danger by speaking the truth, and doing what
he thought right. He really loved his master, and he knew the humor of
Henry VIII., and the temptation was sore; but when he came down from his
conference with the King in the Tower, and was rowed down the river to
Chelsea, he was so merry that William Roper, who had been waiting for
him in the boat, thought he must be safe, and said, as they landed and
walked up the garden--

'I trust, sir, all is well, since you are so merry?'

'It is so, indeed, son, thank God!'

'Are you then, sir, put out of the bill?'

'Wouldest thou know, son why I am so joyful? In good faith I rejoice
that I have given the devil a foul fall; because I have with those lords
gone so far that without great shame I can never go back,' he answered,
meaning that he had been enabled to hold so firmly to his opinions, and
speak them out so boldly, that henceforth the temptation to dissemble
them and please the King would be much lessened. That he had held his
purpose in spite of the weakness of mortal nature, was true joy to him,
though he was so well aware of the consequences that when his daughter
Margaret came to him the next day with the glad tidings that the charge
against him had been given up, he calmly answered her, 'In faith, Meg,
what is put off is not given up.'

One day, when he had asked Margaret how the world went with the new
Queen, and she replied, 'In faith, father, never better; there is
nothing else in the court but dancing and sporting,' he replied, with
sad foresight, 'Never better. Alas, Meg! it pitieth me to remember unto
what misery, poor soul, she will shortly come. These dances of hers will
prove such dances that she will spurn off our heads like footballs, but
it will not be long ere her head will take the same dance.'

So entirely did he expect to be summoned by a pursuivant that he thought
it would lessen the fright of his family if a sham summons were brought.
So he caused a great knocking to be made while all were at dinner, and
the sham pursuivant went through all the forms of citing him, and the
whole household were in much alarm, till he explained the jest; but the
earnest came only a few days afterwards. On the 13th of April of 1534,
arrived the real pursuivant to summon him to Lambeth, there to take the
oath of supremacy, declaring that the King was the head of the Church of
England, and that the Pope had no authority there. He knew what the
refusal would bring on him. He went first to church, and then, not
trusting himself to be unmanned by his love for his children and
grandchildren, instead of letting them, as usual, come down to the water
side, with tender kisses and merry farewells, he shut the wicket gate of
the garden upon them all, and only allowed his son-in-law Roper to
accompany him, whispering into his ear, 'I thank our Lord, the field is
won.'

Conscience had triumphed over affection, and he was thankful, though for
the last time he looked on the trees he had planted, and the happy home
he had loved. Before the council, he undertook to swear to some clauses
in the oath which were connected with the safety of the realm; but he
refused to take that part of the oath which related to the King's power
over the Church. It is said that the King would thus have been
satisfied, but that the Queen urged him further. At any rate, after
being four days under the charge of the Abbot of Westminister, Sir
Thomas was sent to the Tower of London. There his wife--a plain, dull
woman, utterly unable to understand the point of conscience--came and
scolded him for being so foolish as to lie there in a close, filthy
prison, and be shut up with rats and mice, instead of enjoying the favor
of the King. He heard all she had to say, and answered, 'I pray thee,
good Mrs. Alice, tell me one thing--is not this house as near heaven as
my own?' To which she had no better answer than 'Tilly vally, tilly
vally.' But, in spite of her folly, she loved him faithfully; and when
all his property was seized, she sold even her clothes to obtain
necessaries for him in prison.

His chief comfort was, however, in visits and letters from his daughter
Margaret, who was fully able to enter into the spirit that preferred
death to transgression. He was tried in Westminster Hall, on the 1st of
July, and, as he had fully expected, sentenced to death. He was taken
back along the river to the Tower. On the wharf his loving Margaret was
waiting for her last look. She broke through the guard of soldiers with
bills and halberds, threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him,
unable to say any word but 'Oh, my father!--oh, my father!' He blessed
her, and told her that whatsoever she might suffer, it was not without
the will of God, and she must therefore be patient. After having once
parted with him, she suddenly turned back again, ran to him, and,
clinging round his neck, kissed him over and over again--a sight at
which the guards themselves wept. She never saw him again; but the night
before his execution he wrote to her a letter with a piece of charcoal,
with tender remembrances to all the family, and saying to her, 'I never
liked your manner better than when you kissed me last; for I am most
pleased when daughterly love and dear charity have no leisure to look to
worldly courtesy.' He likewise made it his especial request that she
might be permitted to be present at his burial.

His hope was sure and steadfast, and his heart so firm that he did not
even cease from humorous sayings. When he mounted the crazy ladder of
the scaffold he said, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up; and
for my coming down let me shift for myself.' And he desired the
executioner to give him time to put his beard out of the way of the
stroke, 'since that had never offended his Highness'.

His body was given to his family, and laid in the tomb he had already
prepared in Chelsea Church; but the head was set up on a pole on London
Bridge. The calm, sweet features were little changed, and the loving
daughter gathered courage as she looked up at them. How she contrived
the deed, is not known; but before many days had passed, the head was no
longer there, and Mrs. Roper was said to have taken it away. She was
sent for to the Council, and accused of the stealing of her father's
head. She shrank not from avowing that thus it had been, and that the
head was in her own possession. One story says that, as she was passing
under the bridge in a boat, she looked up, and said, 'That head has
often lain in my lap; I would that it would now fall into it.' And at
that moment it actually fell, and she received it. It is far more likely
that she went by design, at the same time as some faithful friend on the
bridge, who detached the precious head, and dropped it down to her in
her boat beneath. Be this as it may, she owned before the cruel-hearted
Council that she had taken away and cherished the head of the man whom
they had slain as a traitor. However, Henry VIII. was not a Creon, and
our Christian Antigone was dismissed unhurt by the Council, and allowed
to retain possession of her treasure. She caused it to be embalmed, kept
it with her wherever she went, and when, nine years afterwards, she died
(in the year 1544), it was laid in her coffin in the 'Roper aisle' of
St. Dunstan's Church, at Canterbury.

UNDER IVAN THE TERRIBLE

1564.

Prince Andrej Kourbsky was one of the chief boyards or nobles at the
Court of Ivan, the first Grand Prince of Muscovy who assumed the Eastern
title of Tzar, and who relieved Russia from the terrible invasions of
the Tatars. This wild race for nearly four hundred years had roamed over
the country, destroying and plundering all they met with, and blighting
all the attempts at civilization that had begun to be made in the
eleventh century. It was only when the Russians learnt the use of
firearms that these savages were in any degree repressed. In the year
1551 the city of Kazan, upon the River Kazanka, a tributary of the
Volga, was the last city that remained in the hands of the Tatars. It
was a rich and powerful place, a great centre of trade between Europe
and the East, but it was also a nest of robbers, who had frequently
broken faith with the Russians, and had lately expelled the Khan Schig
Alei for having endeavored to fulfill his engagements to them. The Tzar
Ivan Vassilovitch, then only twenty-two years of age, therefore marched
against the place, resolved at any cost to reduce it and free his
country from these inveterate foes.

On his way he received tidings that the Crimean Tatars had come
plundering into Russia, probably thinking to attack Moscow, while Ivan
was besieging Kazan. He at once sent off the Prince Kourbsky with 15,000
men, who met double that number of Tatars at Toula, and totally defeated
them, pursuing them to the River Chevorona, where, after a second
defeat, they abandoned a great number of Russian captives, and a great
many camels. Prince Kourbsky was wounded in the head and shoulder, but
was able to continue the campaign.

Some of the boyards murmured at the war, and declared that their
strength and resources were exhausted. Upon this the Tzar desired that
two lists might be drawn up of the willing and unwilling warriors in his
camp. 'The first', he said, 'shall be as dear to me as my own children;
their needs shall be made known to me, and I will share all I have with
them. The others may stay at home; I want no cowards in my army.' No one
of course chose to be in the second list, and about this time was formed
the famous guard called the Strelitzes, a body of chosen warriors who
were always near the person of the Tzar.

In the middle of August, 1552, Ivan encamped in the meadows on the banks
of the Volga, which spread like a brilliant green carpet around the hill
upon which stood the strongly fortified city of Kazan. The Tatars had no
fears. 'This is not the first time', they said, 'that we have seen the
Muscovites beneath our walls. Their fruitless attacks always end in
retreats, till we have learned to laugh them to scorn;' and when Ivan
sent them messengers with offers of peace, they replied, 'All is ready;
we only await your coming to begin the feast.'

They did not know of the great change that the last half-century had
made in sieges. One of the Italian condottieri, or leaders of free
companies, had made his way to Moscow, and under his instructions,
Ivan's troops were for the first time to conduct a siege in the regular
modern manner, by digging trenches in the earth, and throwing up the
soil in front into a bank, behind which the cannon and gunners are
posted, with only small openings made through which to fire at some spot
in the enemy's walls. These trenches are constantly worked nearer and
nearer to the fortifications, till by the effect of the shot an opening
or breach must be made in the walls, and the soldiers can then climb up
upon scaling ladders or heaps of small faggots piled up to the height of
the opening. Sometimes, too, the besiegers burrow underground till they
are just below the wall, then fill the hole with gunpowder, and blow up
all above them; in short, instead of, as in former days, a well-
fortified city being almost impossible to take, except by starving out
the garrison, a siege is in these times almost equally sure to end in
favor of the besiegers.

All through August and September the Russians made their approaches,
while the Tatars resisted them bravely, but often showing great
barbarity. Once when Ivan again sent a herald, accompanied by a number
of Tatar prisoners, to offer terms to Yediguer, the present Khan, the
defenders called out to their countrymen, 'You had better perish by our
pure hands than by those of the wretched Christians,' and shot a whole
flight of arrows at them. Moreover, every morning the magicians used to
come out at sunrise upon the walls, and their shrieks, contortions, and
waving of garments were believed, not only by the Tatars but by the
Russians, and by Andrej Kourbsky himself, to bring foul weather, which
greatly harassed the Russians. On this Ivan sent to Moscow for a sacred
cross that had been given to the Grand Prince Vladimir when he was
converted; the rivers were blessed, and their water sprinkled round the
camp, and the fair weather that ensued was supposed to be due to the
counteraction of the incantations of the magicians. These Tatars were
Mahometans, but they must have retained some of the wind-raising
enchantments of their Buddhist brethren in Asia.

A great mine had been made under the gate of Arsk, and eleven barrels of
gunpowder placed in it. On the 30th of September it was blown up, and
the whole tower became a heap of ruins. For some minutes the
consternation of the besieged was such that there was a dead silence
like the stillness of the grave. The Russians rushed forward over the
opening, but the Tatars, recovering at the sight of them, fought
desperately, but could not prevent them from taking possession of the
tower at the gateway. Other mines were already prepared, and the Tzar
gave notice of a general assault for the next day, and recommended all
his warriors to purify their souls by repentance, confession, and
communion, in readiness for the deadly strife before them. In the
meantime, he sent Yediguer a last offer of mercy, but the brave Tatars
cried out, 'We will have no pardon! If the Russians have one tower, we
will build another; if they ruin our ramparts we will set up more. We
will be buried under the walls of Kazan, or else we will make him raise
the siege.'

Early dawn began to break. The sky was clear and cloudless. The Tatars
were on their walls, the Russians in their trenches; the Imperial eagle
standard, which Ivan had lately assumed, floated in the morning wind.
The two armies were perfectly silent, save here and there the bray of a
single trumpet, or beat of a naker drum in one or the other, and the
continuous hum of the hymns and chants from the three Russian chapel-
tents. The archers held their arrows on the string, the gunners stood
with lighted matches. The copper-clad domes of the minarets began to
glow with the rising sunbeams; the muezzins were on the roofs about to
call the Moslemin to prayer; the deacon in the Tzar's chapel-tent was
reading the Gospel. 'There shall be one fold and one Shepherd.' At that
moment the sun's disk appeared above the eastern hills, and ere yet the
red orb had fully mounted above the horizon, there was a burst as it
were of tremendous thunderings, and the ground shook beneath the church.
The Tzar went to the entrance, and found the whole city hill so 'rolled
in sable smoke', that he could distinguish nothing, and, going back to
his place, desired that the service should continue. The deacon was in
the midst of the prayer for the establishment of the power of the Tzar
and the discomfiture of his enemies, when the crushing burst of another
explosion rushed upon their ears, and as it died away another voice
broke forth, the shout raised by every man in the Russian lines, 'God is
with us!' On then they marched towards the openings that the mines had
made, but there the dauntless garrison, in spite of the terror and
destruction caused by the two explosions, met them with unabated fury,
rolling beams or pouring boiling water upon them as they strove to climb
the breach, and fighting hand to hand with them if they mounted it.
However, by the time the Tzar had completed his devotions and mounted
his horse, his eagle could be seen above the smoke upon the citadel.

Still the city had to be won, step by step, house by house, street by
street; and even while struggling onwards the Russians were tempted
aside by plunder among the rich stores of merchandise that were heaped
up in the warehouses of this the mart of the East. The Khan profited by
their lack of discipline, and forced them back to the walls; nay, they
would have absolutely been driven out at the great gate, but that they
beheld their young Tzar on horseback among his grey-haired councillors.
By the advice of these old men Ivan rode forward, and with his own hand
planted the sacred standard at the gates, thus forming a barrier that
the fugitives were ashamed to pass. At the same time he, with half his
choice cavalry, dismounted, and entered the town all fresh and vigorous,
their rich armor glittering with gold and silver, and plumes of various
colours streaming from their helmets in all the brilliancy of Eastern
taste. This reinforcement recalled the plunderers to their duty, and the
Tatars were driven back to the Khan's palace, whence, after an hour's
defense, they were forced to retreat.

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