CHAPTER X.

ELLEN AND HER SUITORS.

Whilst Wolsey was pursuing his honorable career at Oxford, and paving his way to future fame, the maid of Freston Tower was not less honorably distinguishing herself for every amiable virtue. During the greater portion of the year, the graceful building was her daily resort. Not that she neglected the duties of society; for she became the ornament of De Freston's Hall, and was celebrated for her beauty, her learning, her piety, and accomplishments. There were few who really knew her but loved her.

She was received, as she had every right to be, among the noblest and wealthiest of the land, and now that she had arrived at an age when the last trace of girlishness vanishes in the graces of womanhood, she commanded much homage.

The fair sex, though not in that day remarkable, generally speaking, for the cultivation of letters and for the most part precluded from scientific pursuits, had as great a sway over the persons and manners of the age, as they have at this day. Fair ladies were highly prized in the land, and stately and ceremonious were the attentions paid to them in public, however much neglected in the castle.

The bloody wars between the houses of York and Lancaster had now terminated; and in the persons of the reigning sovereigns, Henry VII. and Elizabeth, the contending families became united, and this example was beginning to be generally followed.

As soon as these differences were terminated, that is in the following year, the first rose-plants were cultivated in England. All the flowers which the friends of the opposing parties wore were sent over from the continent: there might be some exotics, but not till the wars of the roses terminated did the banks of the Orwell, and Ellen's garden, exhibit plants of both the red and white rose, and hers were some of the earliest planted in England. Not for thirty years after did they become generally cultivated throughout the country.

Ellen grew to womanhood beloved. She was not only admired, but she was sought after by many who courted an alliance with the family of De Freston. She was an heiress too of no mean possessions, as well as of high connexion. Had she been disposed to wed highly and merely for nobility of blood, the De la Poles were accounted sufficiently noble to claim equality with any in the land. Independently of estates, of good personal carriage, and fine countenance, she possessed a mind like a diamond of great value, fit to make its possessor incomparably happy. Nor was she without suitors, led to her by the fame of her beauty, her acquirements, and her fortune.

Lord Willoughby, of Farham House, in the county of Suffolk, was one of the first to endeavor to create a sympathy in the fair maid of Freston Tower for his own person and establishment. He was a frank, independent nobleman, of gallant mien, and ever deemed the foremost, whether with horse and hound, or helm and spear. He was lofty in his carriage, vain of his person, and proud of his feats; and according to his ideas, whoever he took to be his wife must be considered to have acquired infinite honor by the alliance, and must observe an obsequious servility before him: for, an equal in a man he could scarcely brook; and, as to a woman, though Ellen might be his wife, she must never expect to be his equal. She had wisdom to perceive this, and declined the proffered honor.

Lord Ufford, from Orford Hall, a man of gaunt figure, approaching to gigantic stature, broad shoulders and expanded chest, with vast domains in the county of Suffolk, became a rough and formal suitor for the maiden's hand. This nobleman was remarkable for having a most unsightly countenance; but having a fine castle on the banks of the Aide, and considerable territory on the sea-coast, together with rich lands, woodlands, highlands, lowlands, and sands, he was a kind of autocrat whose word was not to be disputed.

Camden relates a curious circumstance of a sea-monster being caught by some of his villains, while it was basking upon the desolate shores of the Aide, not a great way from Orford Ness. Old Ralph de Gogershall, from whom Camden takes the tale, says, the monster went directly out of the sea, and through the river, up to the gates of his castle, and was there captured. It was most probably a species of seal--perhaps a stray walrus from the northern regions. Having been borne by its captors to the castle, Lord Ufford had a strong cage made for it by the sea-side, and took great delight in feeding it with fish, and such watery sea-cale as grew upon the North Vere.* Hence grew preposterous tales of his attachment to this monster, which, it was reported, had a head so much like his lordship's, that the latter must have been a most marine-looking animal.

* A large desolate track of shingle and clay, separating the river Alde from the sea, upon which the Orford Lights now stand.

He went to pay his court to Ellen, but as may readily be supposed, he was not successful. On the day that his suit was refused at Freston Tower, the sea-monster escaped and was heard of no more.

Richard Fitz-john, of Dunwich Castle, and the noble Rous, of Dennington Hall, though barons not upon very friendly terms at that time, were both suitors to the maiden of Freston Tower; but neither successful, though both were men of high honor and renown. Felton, of Playford; Naunton, of Letheringham; Corbett, of Assington; and brave Sir William Coppinger, whose fame for living like a lord became proverbial, were numbered among the aspirants. The first wanted temper. The next, though famed for deeds of munificence, had a very uncultivated mind; and the last Ellen considered would love his table more than his wife. So they were all rejected.

Sir Thomas Crofts, of Saxham, a man as proud of his person as of his estate, did what he could to win the lady to his mind. He had much knowledge of letters to aid him, but was so personally vain, he could scarcely control himself when Ellen, not consenting to admit his pretensions, told him, she was herself proud, very proud; and, therefore, must decline his offer.

Fitz-Gilbert, the first Earl of Clare, came to see if he could persuade the maiden to join her fate to his. He was skilful in war, and equally skilled in music: and there were other things in which few could bear comparison with him. He was elegant in mind and person, yet he pleased not Ellen; and he took his rejection so to heart, that music became distasteful to him; and not until he heard of Cavendish's unsuccessful suit, did he become reconciled to his own loss.

One of her greatest suitors was John Mowbray, from Framlingham Castle; a man so high and mighty, that he thought, with his splendid establishment, any woman would be glad to accept him. He cared not for books, or science, taste, or mind. He left such things to those who had any inclination for them. A rich dower he could offer, and he did not calculate upon having a refusal; but he was mistaken.

Cove, of Covehithe, a very honest unassuming man, of good property, noble heart, and generous blood, made an offer of all he possessed; and Ellen much admired his principles and character, but did not accept him. Neither did she accept Sir John Bouville, Sir James Luckmore, nor Warner, of Wammil Hall. Tendering, of Tendering Hall, met with no better success--Lanham of Lavenham equally failed.

Sir Robert Drury, who could break swords as well as words, and use both dexterously, was not sufficiently persuasive with his words to obtain the maid of Freston Tower. Neither Kedington nor Jermyn of Raesbrooke succeeded. If valorous conduct could have won her William Lord Helmingham must have been successful; for none of the warriors of Suffolk were braver than he. Sir Richard Broke, of Nacton, was his equal, but excelled him, neither in the warlike field, nor in the lady's bower. Sir Edward Edgar, of Glemham, was one of the last of the bold but unsuccessful Suffolk suitors. And now it was that people began to think she had sworn to live and die a recluse. But Ellen De Freston was not a cold and cheerless maiden, who evaded society and friends, and shunned her fellow creatures like a nun. She delighted not in the cloister to read books and tell beads, and to kneel before the Prior in the confessional, and vow allegiance to the Pope of Rome. Ellen was possessed of such true nobility that she was never afraid of losing or compromising her own dignity in conversing with a gentleman, though he was not so highly bred, but better read than many a noble.

She was alike benevolent to all who visited her father's mansion, for life and love were in her soul, and she could behave ill to no one. She well knew the ignorant phantoms and fallacies of her day; and though she conformed to the church in most of its observances, she was by no means an admirer of its tricks and follies. She read the Bible in Latin and Greek; and drew therefrom the just laws of God, and could separate the dross of superstition from the good seed of religion.

There were few nobles at that time who ventured to think for themselves concerning matters of religion. The Church of Rome, or rather the Papal power and its hierarchy, had obtained such dominion over the landed gentry, merchants, and squires, that the care of the soul was left to the priest, and to obey human penances, human penalties, human obligations, with the sanction of ecclesiastical authority, was the all-sufficient devotion of the period.

Few read the Word of God to improve their souls. A superficial knowledge of the events of Scripture, so that the plays and holy representations, in the shape of acting or pictures, might be understood, was considered sufficient for any nobleman. Letters, learning, literature, and the love of God, were all mere names, fit only for the monasteries, abbeys, priories, and religious houses in the kingdom; and, as long as men paid their offerings at Easter, and gave alms to the poor, told their beads, said their Ave Marias, Paternosters, and attended matins, vespers, or saints' days, they were considered godly men by the priest. And who else, on that day, had any right to say whether a man was fit to go to heaven or hell?

Ellen, however, determined that the man who aspired to her hand should have some knowledge beyond the mere externals of religion. However brave he might be in the face of the foes of his country, however expert in single combat in the tournament, she would have nothing to say to him unless he had learnt to combat internally with the sinful propensities of his heart.

It was this secret, which she kept in her own breast, that induced her to dismiss so many suitors for her hand. She boasted not of her own knowledge, her own perception, or her own requirements; but she did manage to try those who came to court her, by that beautiful test of humility which she had herself, in the midst of a superstitious age, so piously adopted.

She received all the friends who, according to the custom of the age, came to pay court and suit. She accepted their introduction at the hand of her father, and, during the three days allowed for her answer, never once appeared to shun the society of the hall, or to converse with these nobles; but in that period she contrived to ascertain, beyond all doubt, whether the man who was to be her lord, had for his Lord the God of truth, love, and charity.

She felt this to be her privilege; to endeavor to use every exertion before she bound herself for life to any man, to find out his religious principles, and whether or not God was his acknowledged head; for she was well assured of that truthful doctrine: 'The head of the woman is the man, and the head of the man is God'; and if she could not look up to her earthly lord as one who looked up to his heavenly Master, she felt she could never expect to be happier than she was, and resolved, until such was the case, that she would remain single.

She was neither haughty, cold, proud, nor censorious, but, having been taught good principles, she was very firm in the maintenance of good resolutions. She despised not nobility, ancestry, honorable distinctions, birth, parentage, valour, goodly person, manners, nor acquirements; she only preferred good, solid, sound sense, humility, and a right dependence upon God; not so much in words, but in life, character, conduct, and actions. She considered faith best shown by works such as these; and if she found them not, she did not value the possessor of any other qualities, as having those qualifications to render her earthly career comfortable.

There were many who, if they had understood this secret bent of her youthful mind, might have tried the tricks of hypocrisy to have won the prize; but, to the honor of that age, such species of hypocrites were then very few; and though, they may now be discerned more quickly than they were, yet true love only can possess the power to perceive the arts of the pretenders to religion.

There were some in that age who were such bigotted adherents to the mere outward forms of sanctity, such devoted slaves of the papal domination, that, had they known Ellen's secret, would undoubtedly have set her down for a heretic, and in revenge for their dismissal might have given information to the ecclesiastical authorities, who then interfered with the consciences of men as much as they did with their temporalities.

This would have seemed to them but a mere species of duty which they owed to the church; and it was no difficult thing then for men to drive away every species of natural affection, however innocent or virtuous, under the idea of doing God service. Frequently the most malignant passions were vented in what was thought to be holy ardor.

Even Ellen would have been sacrificed to the demoniac frenzy of a bigot, had she consented to be the wife of some of those whose consciences would have allowed her to have been made a just victim to the fiery stake. So powerfully operated that hideous principle of man, trusting his conscience in the hands of fallible man, without making the Word of God the ground-work of his direction.

It is true that nothing but the superiorly-gifted and superiorly-educated mind of the maid of Freston Tower could have led her to adopt the course she did in this selection of a husband. It was wisdom, indeed, in her not to divulge the principle she acted upon to any one but her enlightened father, but, confiding in his honor, love, and wisdom, she had no fear of exposure. He was too true a father, too fond a parent, and naturally too noble a minded man, ever to demand of his daughter a sacrifice which she could not willingly, with her full consent, approve.

Lord De Freston too dearly loved, valued, honored, and respected the child whom he had educated, to bias her affections. One thing he was quite sure of, that she would marry a gentleman and a Christian, and he was content to leave the matter to the direction of His hand who governs and orders all things for man's felicity.

It was not to be supposed that the Baron of Freston Castle had no pride of ancestry. He had as much as his contemporaries. He was a man who could uphold the appearance of a noble by as much internal dignity and self-composure as any of the judges of the land; but he was a man enlightened enough to perceive that nothing unnatural could be acceptable to the God of Nature.

He found in the revelation of God everything virtuously natural upheld, that corruption only had instilled false principles of superstition, which alike defied the laws of nature and of God. Though he admired the devotions of piety, he abjured the horrors of fanaticism; though he honored men of learning, he despised not the ignorant; and only when he found fools claiming, or rather arrogating to themselves superior godliness, and showing it in the condemnation of others, did he venture upon open rebuke and expostulation. His zeal was even then tempered with such manly discretion that the censorious fanatic, confused before the noble, could not but acknowledge that he might be wrong; yet seldom, though defeated, would he turn and say, 'I am benefited'; such is the difference between rebuking a wise man and a fool.

No wonder, then, with such a father, Ellen should feel confidence in maintaining her own right to judge for herself in that event which, for good or evil, is certainly, with all who do enter into its bonds, productive of misery or comfort.