The House of Walderne | Page 2

reply "so they
were;" but there was this great difference, that they deeply realised the
sacramental system of the Church, and led people to her, not from her;
the preacher was never allowed to supersede the priest.
But, on the other hand, it may reasonably be objected that Brother
Martin only exhibits one side of the religion of his period; that there is
an unaccountable absence of the popular superstitions of the age in his
teaching; and that, more especially, he does not invoke the saints as a
friar would naturally have done again and again.
Now, the author does not for a moment deny that Martin must have
shared in the common belief of his time; but such things were not of the
essence of his teaching, only the accidental accompaniments thereof.
The prominent feature of the preaching of the early Franciscans was, as
was that of St. Paul, Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And in a book
intended primarily for young readers of the Church of England, it is
perhaps allowable to suppress features which would perplex youthful
minds before they have the power of discriminating between the chaff
and the wheat; while it is not thereby intended to deny that they really
existed. The objectionable side of the teaching of the medieval Church
of England has been dwelt upon with such little charity, by certain
Protestant writers, that their youthful readers might be led to think that
the religion of their forefathers was but a mass of superstition, devoid
of all spiritual life, and therefore the author feels that it is better to
dwell upon the points of agreement between the fathers and the
children, than to gloat over "corruptions."
In writing the chapters which describe medieval Oxford, the author had
the advantage of an ancient map, and of certain interesting records of
the thirteenth century, so that the picture of scholastic life and of the

conflicts of "north and south," etc. is not simply imaginary portraiture.
The earliest houses of education in Oxford were doubtless the religious
houses, beginning with the Priory of Saint Frideswide, but schools
appear to have speedily followed, whose alumni lodged in such hostels
as we have described in "Le Oriole." The hall, so called (we are not
answerable for the non-elision of the vowel) was subsequently granted
by Queen Eleanor to one James de Hispania, from whom it was
purchased for the new college founded by Adam de Brom, and took the
name of Oriel College.
Two other points in this family history may invite remark. It may be
objected that the Old Man of the Mountain is too atrocious for belief.
The author can only reply that he is not original; he met the old man
and all his doings long ago, in an almost forgotten chronicle of the
crusades, especially he noted the perversion of boyish intellect to crime
and cruelty.
Lastly, in these days of incredulity, the supernatural element in the
story of Sir Roger of Walderne may appear forced or unreal. But the
incident is one of a class which has been made common property by
writers of fiction in all generations; it occurs at least thrice in the
Ingoldsby Legends; Sir Walter Scott gives a terrible instance in his
story of the Scotch judge haunted by the spectre of the bandit he had
sentenced to death {2}, which appears to be founded on fact; and
indeed the present narrative was suggested by one of Washington
Irving's short stories, read by the writer when a boy at school.
Whether such appearances, of which there are so many authentic
instances, be objective or subjective--the creation of the sufferer's
remorse--they are equally real to the victim.
But the author will no longer detain the reader from the story itself,
only dedicating it to the kind friends he met at Waldron during his
summer holiday in eighteen hundred and eighty-three.

Prologue.

It was an ancient castle, all of the olden time; down in a deep dell,
sheltered by uplands north, east, and west; looking south down the
valley to the Sussex downs, which were seen in the hazy distance
uplifting their graceful outlines to the blue sky, across a vast canopy of
treetops; beneath whose shade the wolf and the wildcat, the badger and
the fox, yet roamed at large, and preyed upon the wild deer and the
lesser game. It bore the name of Walderne, which signifies a sylvan
spot frequented by the wild beasts; the castle lay beneath; the parish
church rose on the summit of the ridge above--a simple Norman
structure, imposing in its very simplicity.
Behind, the ground rose gradually to the summit of the ridge--which
formed a sort of backbone to the Andredsweald. The ridge was then, as
now, surmounted by a windmill, belonging then to