When Knighthood Was in Flower | Page 2

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 distinguished himself by gallant service under the Great
Norman and was given rich English lands and a fair Saxon bride, albeit
an unwilling one, as his reward. With this fair, unwilling Saxon bride
and her long plait of yellow hair goes a very pretty, pathetic story,
which I may tell you at some future time if you take kindly to this. A

Caskoden was seneschal to William Rufus, and sat at the rich, half
barbaric banquets in the first Great Hall. Still another was one of the
doughty barons who wrested from John the Great Charter, England's
declaration of independence; another was high in the councils of Henry
V. I have omitted one whom I should not fail to mention: Adjodika
Caskoden, who was a member of the Dunce Parliament of Henry IV, so
called because there were no lawyers in it.
It is true that in the time of Edward IV a Caskoden did stoop to trade,
but it was trade of the most dignified, honorable sort; he was a
goldsmith, and his guild, as you know, were the bankers and
international clearance house for people, king and nobles. Besides, it is
stated on good authority that there was a great scandal wherein the
goldsmith's wife was mixed up in an intrigue with the noble King
Edward; so we learn that even in trade the Caskodens were of
honorable position and basked in the smile of their prince. As for
myself, I am not one of those who object so much to trade; and I think
it contemptible in a man to screw his nose all out of place sneering at it,
while enjoying every luxury of life from its profits.
This goldsmith was shrewd enough to turn what some persons might
call his ill fortune, in one way, into gain in another. He was one of
those happily constituted, thrifty philosophers who hold that even
misfortune should not be wasted, and that no evil is so great but the
alchemy of common sense can transmute some part of it into good. So
he coined the smiles which the king shed upon his wife--he being
powerless to prevent, for Edward smiled where he listed, and listed
nearly everywhere--into nobles, crowns and pounds sterling, and left a
glorious fortune to his son and to his son's son, unto about the fourth
generation, which was a ripe old age for a fortune, I think. How few of
them live beyond the second, and fewer still beyond the third! It was
during the third generation of this fortune that the events of the
following history occurred.
Now, it has been the custom of the Caskodens for centuries to keep a
record of events, as they have happened, both private and public. Some
are in the form of diaries and journals like those of Pepys and Evelyn;

others in letters like the Pastons'; others again in verse and song like
Chaucer's and the Water Poet's; and still others in the more pretentious
form of memoir and chronicle. These records we always have kept
jealously within our family, thinking it vulgar, like the Pastons, to
submit our private affairs to public gaze.
There can, however, be no reason why those parts treating solely of
outside matters should be so carefully guarded, and I have determined
to choose for publication such portions as do not divulge family secrets
nor skeletons, and which really redound to family honor.
For this occasion I have selected from the memoir of my worthy
ancestor and namesake, Sir Edwin Caskoden--grandson of the
goldsmith, and Master of the Dance to Henry VIII--the story of Charles
Brandon and Mary Tudor, sister to the king.
This story is so well known to the student of English history that I fear
its repetition will lack that zest which attends the development of an
unforeseen denouement. But it is of so great interest, and is so full, in
its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble by time, Love,
that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir Edwin's memoir. Not so
much as an historical narrative, although I fear a little history will creep
in, despite me, but simply as a picture of that olden long ago, which, try
as we will to put aside the hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still
retains its shadowy lack of sharp detail, toning down and mellowing the
hard aspect of real life--harder and more unromantic