Studies from Court and Cloister | Page 5

either thrown aside to spoil and
rot, or to become the prey of any who needed wrappers for small
merchandise. It is a marvel that so many should have escaped
destruction, to be collected when men had returned to their sane senses,
and formed again into libraries for the delight and instruction of
posterity to the end of time. And almost as strange as this circumstance,
is the fact that so few among us know of the existence of these
treasures which have become our national inheritance. Otherwise, how

could the reviewer of one of our foremost literary publications, in his
notice of the exhibition of medieval needlework at the Burlington Fine
Arts Club, in the spring of 1905, have discovered in it a surprising
revelation of the "refinement" of the Middle Ages?
The three last studies in the present volume are, therefore, devoted to a
description of some of the precious spoils of mediaeval refinement.
Where all is so splendidly beautiful, so deeply erudite, or so tenderly
naif, choice is difficult; but at all events, here are a few of the priceless
gems with which the Dark Ages have endowed a scornful after-world.
And lest it should be supposed that all this mediaeval piety and
devotion sprang up suddenly, with no apparent raison d'etre, I have
gone further back, and have shown that with the first dawn of
Christianity over these Islands, religion was no other than in the twelfth,
thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. The Arthurian legends, which Sir
Thomas Malory wove into one consecutive whole, had been handed
down from generation to generation for many hundreds of years.
Sometimes they had been written in the French language, but they lived
in the minds of the people, and Sir Lancelot, who died "a holy man,"
was as vivid and real to them as was Richard, the troubadour king.
With the story of his sharp penance, his fasting and prayers for the soul
of Guinevere, was also handed down incidentally the tradition of
Britain's obedience to the "Apostle Pope".
Some time after the Anglo-Saxon conquest, in the eighth century, was
set up a wonderful churchyard Cross at Ruthwell in Scotland, a
"folk-book in stone," alluded to in the Act passed by the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1642, "anent the Idolatrous
Monuments in Ruthwell," and already two years previously condemned
by that enlightened body to be "taken down, demolished, and
destroyed." The story of this ancient Cross, and that of the runes carved
upon it, form the subject of the opening study of Part II.
Little need be said here of Foxe, the great calumniator of Queen Mary's
bishops. His book, which so long deceived the world, is no more the
power it once was, but in it lay the venom which poisoned the wells, as
far as the ill-fated reign of Mary was concerned; and the essay which
deals with it could scarcely have been omitted.
In the hope that I have been enabled to throw a faint ray of additional
light on some vexed but interesting questions, this volume is put

forward.
J. M. S.
September 1905.

CONTENTS

PART I
I. MARGARET TUDOR
II. NOR WIFE NOR WIDOW
III. A NOTABLE ENGLISHMAN
IV. THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION IN GERMANY
V. JESUITS AT COURT
VI. GIORDANO BRUNO IN ENGLAND
VII. CHARLES THE FIRST AND THE POPISH PLOT
PART II
I. THE RUNIC CROSSES OF NORTHUMBRIA
II. A MISSING PAGE FROM THE "IDYLLS OF THE KING"
III. FOXES BOOK OF ERRORS
IV. THE SPOILS OF THE MONASTERIES
V. THE ROYAL LIBRARY
VI. THE HARLEIAN COLLECTION OF MANUSCRIPTS

STUDIES FROM COURT AND CLOISTER
I. MARGARET TUDOR
Notwithstanding the spy-system which was brought to so great a
perfection under the Tudors, the study of human nature was in their
days yet in its infancy. The world had long ceased to be ingenuous, but
nations had not yet learned civilised methods of guarding themselves
against their enemies. At a time when distrust was general, it was easier,
like Machiavelli, to erect deceit and fraud into a science, and to teach
the vile utility of lying, than to scrutinise character and weigh motives.
It was then generally understood that opponents might legitimately be
hoodwinked to the limits of their gullibility; but it was reserved for
Lord Chesterfield, two centuries later, to show how a man's passions
must be studied with microscopic intensity in order to discover his

prevailing passion, and how, that passion once discovered, he should
never be trusted where it was concerned. The study of men's characters
and motives as we understand it, formed no part of the policy of
sixteenth-century statecraft, or Wolsey would not have been disgraced,
or Thomas Cromwell's head have fallen on the block. Wolsey and
Cromwell were the subtlest statesmen of their age; indeed, in them