When Knighthood Was in Flower

When Knighthood Was in Flower, by Charles

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Title: When Knighthood Was in Flower or, the Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor the King's Sister, and Happening in the Reign of His August Majesty King Henry the Eighth
Author: Charles Major

Release Date: January 13, 2006 [eBook #17498]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER
or, the Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor the King's Sister, and Happening in the Reign of His August Majesty King Henry the Eighth
Rewritten and Rendered into Modern English from Sir Edwin Caskoden's Memoir
by
EDWIN CASKODEN [Charles Major]
Julia Marlowe Edition With Scenes from the Play

[Illustration]

Indianapolis, U.S.A. The Bowen-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright, Eighteen Hundred Ninety Eight, and Nineteen Hundred One by The Bowen-Merrill Company Press of Braunworth & Co. Bookbinders and Printers Brooklyn, N.Y.

"There lived a Knight, when Knighthood was in flow'r, Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bow'r."

To My Wife

CONTENTS
The Caskodens 1
I The Duel 6
II How Brandon Came to Court 13
III The Princess Mary 23
IV A Lesson in Dancing 45
V An Honor and an Enemy 74
VI A Rare Ride to Windsor 89
VII Love's Fierce Sweetness 102
VIII The Trouble in Billingsgate Ward 128
IX Put Not Your Trust in Princesses 146
X Justice, O King! 169
XI Louis XII a Suitor 182
XII Atonement 202
XIII A Girl's Consent 213
XIV In the Siren Country 226
XV To Make a Man of Her 244
XVI A Hawking Party 256
XVII The Elopement 268
XVIII To the Tower 289
XIX Proserpina 302
XX Down into France 320
XXI Letters from a Queen 337
"Cloth of gold do not despise, Though thou be match'd with cloth of frize; Cloth of frize, be not too bold, Though thou be match'd with cloth of gold."
Inscription on a label affixed to Brandon's lance under a picture of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, at Strawberry Hill.

The Play
The initial performance of the play was given in St. Louis on the evening of November 26, 1900, and the first New York production was on the fourteenth of the following January.
Its instant and continued success is well known. A prominent dramatic critic of the press has said:
"Julia Marlowe fully realized the popular idea of the Mary described by the novelist. She seemed to revel in the role. With its instantaneous changes from gay daring to anger and fear, from coyness to the dignity that hedges a princess, from resentment to ardent love, the part of Mary Tudor gives Julia Marlowe full scope for the display of her talent. She has never appeared to better or as good advantage as in this play for the reason that it gives opportunity for broader and more effective lights and shades than anything she has hitherto given us."

When Knighthood Was in Flower

When Knighthood Was in Flower....
The Caskodens
We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know, hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity, but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because they know both who and what.
Even admitting that it is vanity at all, it is an impersonal sort of failing, which, like the excessive love of country, leans virtueward; for the man who fears to disgrace his ancestors is certainly less likely to disgrace himself. Of course there are a great many excellent persons who can go no farther back than father and mother, who, doubtless, eat and drink and sleep as well, and love as happily, as if they could trace an unbroken lineage clear back to Adam or Noah, or somebody of that sort. Nevertheless, we Caskodens are proud of our ancestry, and expect to remain so to the end of the chapter, regardless of whom it pleases or displeases.
We have a right to be proud, for there is an unbroken male line from William the Conqueror down to the present time. In this lineal list are fourteen Barons--the title lapsed when Charles I fell--twelve Knights of the Garter and forty-seven Knights of the Bath and other orders. A Caskoden