In the Days of Chivalry | Page 7

into their walls large numbers of persons who helped originally in the construction of the new townships, and then resided there, and their children after them, proud of the rights and immunities they claimed, and loyally true to the cause of the English Kings, which made them what they were.
It is plain to the reader of the history of those days that Gascony could never have remained for three hundred years a fief of the English Crown, had it not been to the advantage of her people that she should so remain. Her attachment to the cause of the Roy Outremer, her willing homage to him, would never have been given for so long a period of time, had not the people of the land found that it was to their own advancement and welfare thus to accord this homage and fealty.
Nor is the cause for this advantage far to seek. Gascony was of immense value to England, and of increasing value as she lost her hold upon the more northerly portions of France. The wine trade alone was so profitable that the nobility, and even the royal family of England, traded on their own account. Bordeaux, with its magnificent harbour and vast trade, was a queen amongst maritime cities. The vast "landes" of the province made the best possible rearing ground for the chargers and cavalry horses to which England owed much of her warlike supremacy; whilst the people themselves, with their strength and independence of character, their traditions of personal and individual freedom which can be clearly traced back to the Roman occupation of the province, and their long attachment to England and her King, were the most valuable of allies; and although they must have been regarded to a certain extent as foreigners when on English soil, they still assimilated better and worked more easily with British subjects than any pure Frenchman had ever been found to do.
Small wonder then that so astute a monarch as the First Edward had taken vast pains to draw closer the bond which united this fair province to England. The bold Gascons well knew that they would find no such liberties as they now enjoyed did they once put themselves beneath the rule of the French King. His country was already overgrown and almost unmanageable. He might cast covetous eyes upon Gascony, but he would not pour into it the wealth that flowed steadily from prosperous England. He would not endow it with charters, each one more liberal than the last, or bind it to his kingdom by giving it a pre-eminence that would but arouse the jealousy of its neighbours. No: the shrewd Gaseous knew that full well, and knew when they were well off. They could often obtain an increase of liberty and an enlarged charter of rights by coquetting with the French monarch, and thus rousing the fears of the English King; but they had no wish for any real change, and lived happily and prosperously beneath the rule of the Roy Outremer; and amongst all the freemen of the Gascon world, none enjoyed such full privileges as those who lived within the walls of the "villes Anglaises," of which Sauveterre was one amongst the smaller cities.
The construction of these towns (now best seen in Libourne) is very simple, and almost always practically the same -- a square in the centre formed by the public buildings, with eight streets radiating from it, each guarded by a gate. An outer ditch or moat protected the wall or palisade, and the towns were thus fortified in a simple but effective manner, and guarded as much by their own privileges as by any outer bulwarks. The inhabitants were bound together by close ties, and each smaller city looked to the parent city of Bordeaux, and was proud of the title of her daughter.
Sauveterre and its traditions and its communistic life were familiar enough, and had been familiar from childhood to the twin brothers.
Halfway between the mill and the town stood a picturesque and scattered hamlet, and to this hamlet was attached a church, of which a pious ecclesiastic, by name Father Anselm, had charge. He was a man of much personal piety, and was greatly beloved through all the countryside, where he was known in every hut and house for leagues around the doors of his humble home. He was, as was so frequently the case in those times, the doctor and the scribe, as well as the spiritual adviser, of his entire flock; and he was so much trusted and esteemed that all men told him their affairs and asked advice, not in the confessional alone, but as one man speaking to another in whom he has strong personal confidence.
The twin brothers knew that during the years when their dead