When Knighthood Was in Flower | Page 3

even than our
own--into the blending softness of an exquisite mirage.
I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shall
now and then quote from contemporaneous chronicles in the language
of his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal
would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King is
almost a foreign tongue to us. I shall, therefore, with a few exceptions,
give Sir Edwin's memoir in words, spelling and idiom which his
rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of his
whatsoever. So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thought
hob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, be
not disturbed; I did it. If the little old fellow grows grandiloquent or

garrulous at times--he did that. If you find him growing
super-sentimental, remember that sentimentalism was the life-breath of
chivalry, just then approaching its absurdest climax in the bombastic
conscientiousness of Bayard and the whole mental atmosphere laden
with its pompous nonsense.
CHAPTER I
The Duel
It sometimes happens, Sir Edwin says, that when a woman will she
won't, and when she won't she will; but usually in the end the adage
holds good. That sentence may not be luminous with meaning, but I
will give you an illustration.
I think it was in the spring of 1509, at any rate soon after the death of
the "Modern Solomon," as Queen Catherine called her old
father-in-law, the late King Henry VII, that his august majesty Henry
VIII, "The Vndubitate Flower and very Heire of both the sayd
Linages," came to the throne of England, and tendered me the
honorable position of Master of the Dance at his sumptuous court.
As to "worldly goods," as some of the new religionists call wealth, I
was very comfortably off; having inherited from my father, one of the
counselors of Henry VII, a very competent fortune indeed. How my
worthy father contrived to save from the greedy hand of that rich old
miser so great a fortune, I am sure I can not tell. He was the only man
of my knowledge who did it; for the old king had a reach as long as the
kingdom, and, upon one pretext or another, appropriated to himself
everything on which he could lay his hands. My father, however, was
himself pretty shrewd in money matters, having inherited along with
his fortune a rare knack at keeping it. His father was a goldsmith in the
time of King Edward, and enjoyed the marked favor of that puissant
prince.
Being thus in a position of affluence, I cared nothing for the fact that
little or no emolument went with the office; it was the honor which
delighted me. Besides, I was thereby an inmate of the king's palace, and

brought into intimate relations with the court, and above all, with the
finest ladies of the land--the best company a man can keep, since it
ennobles his mind with better thoughts, purifies his heart with cleaner
motives, and makes him gentle without detracting from his strength. It
was an office any lord of the kingdom might have been proud to hold.
Now, some four or five years after my induction into this honorable
office, there came to court news of a terrible duel fought down in
Suffolk, out of which only one of the four combatants had come
alive--two, rather, but one of them in a condition worse than death. The
first survivor was a son of Sir William Brandon, and the second was a
man called Sir Adam Judson. The story went that young Brandon and
his elder brother, both just home from the continental wars, had met
Judson at an Ipswich inn, where there had been considerable gambling
among them. Judson had won from the brothers a large sum of money
which they had brought home; for, notwithstanding their youth, the
elder being but twenty-six and the younger about twenty-four years of
age, they had gained great honor and considerable profit in wars,
especially the younger, whose name was Charles.
It is a little hard to fight for money and then to lose it by a single spot
upon the die, but such is the fate of him who plays, and a philosopher
will swallow his ill luck and take to fighting for more. The Brandons
could have done this easily enough, especially Charles, who was an
offhand philosopher, rather fond of a good-humored fight, had it not
been that in the course of play one evening the secret of Judson's
winning had been disclosed by a discovery that he cheated. The
Brandons waited until they were sure, and then trouble began, which
resulted in a duel on the second morning following.
This Judson was