CHAPTER XII.

THE PALACE.

The palace of the Bishop of Norwich, then commonly called Wyke's Bishop's Palace, was one of the most splendid buildings in the whole of East Anglia. It was built in those early days when the men of God were also, alas! compelled by ignorance to be men of war; who, though loving peace, had so many temporal possessions in estates, and fines, and properties of various kinds, that they were expected to defend them with armed men, instead of with the sword of the Spirit, or the Word of Truth.

The building was of very ancient date, and was castellated and well fortified with bastions at eight different points, surrounded by a moat of great width, with a huge drawbridge on the western front. It was situated in a beautiful valley, surrounded on three sides by hills of considerable height, even now called the Bishop's Hills, and in what was then called Ufford's Dale, in which were the celebrated Holy Wells, where pilgrims came from all parts to visit the font St. Ivan, said to have the effect of curing every disease.

The castle, as it might be very properly called, had four watch-towers, in which were windows looking towards the four points, north, east, south, and west. In no other part of the structure, save the warder's room over the great gateway, was there any window; for this building had withstood many an insurrection, and many an incursion of the furious Dane, and was not only a Bishop's palace, but, in the ninth century, one of the strongholds of the townsmen of Ipswich beyond their walls.

There was a great square in the centre, into which all the apartments of the palace looked, so that it was not until the visitor had passed under the great arch that he could conceive the beauty of the building, or form any idea of the extent of its accommodation. Externally, its character was sombre, having battlements on all sides, enlivened only by the watch towers, plain walls, strong and thick, though in its latter days, in the time of which this history treats, symptoms of decay began to be visible in various parts, where landslips from the springs around had caused considerable inclinations of the buttresses. Still the inside of the area was kept up in all the characteristic state of Goldwell, Bishop of Norwich, the last of the possessors of a palace at Ipswich.

A small creek at that day ran up the valley in which the palace was built, and approached so near it that a boat could ascend from the Orwell almost up to the moat. That creek does not now exist, but in its place there are magnificent fish-ponds, and the ancient stream is diverted to a use very foreign to its original purpose.* But the palace was not half so grand in its appearance as its stately inmates.

* The Cliff Brewery.

Goldwell Hall, which then belonged to Bishop Goldwell and was so called in his lifetime, was the marriage portion of one of his sisters, who married Geoffery De Clinton, of Castle Clinton, near Linton, in Cambridgeshire. He was a wealthy noble, as well as proud, and had but one daughter by this marriage, though he had two sons by a former wife. He married Alice Goldwell when he was much advanced in years, and could scarcely expect to see his young offspring arrive at womanhood.

In consequence of this, and of the loss of his partner, the Lady Clinton, he left his daughter to the sole guardianship of Goldwell (then Secretary of State) her maternal uncle. He left the income of certain estates in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridgeshire, to the Bishop, as long as his child should live and remain single, and then to be given to her as her dower; and in case of the demise of the said Bishop and his niece, then to revert to the heir-at-law of the family of Goldwell. The Bishop's private chapel then stood on the opposite side of the hill on which the mansion was built.

Alice De Clinton, the particular care of the Bishop of Norwich, grew up under his superintendence a most magnificent woman to look at; so much so, that she was generally called Alice la Grande. She was very stately in her person, and always wore a haughty expression of countenance. She was quite a drawback upon the hospitality of Goldwell; yet, strange to say, she possessed a great degree of influence over the Bishop. He was liberal beyond what was usual in his day, and was never but once betrayed into an act of persecution, and that was in the case of one single heretic, John Bahram, whose death-warrant he countersigned not many months before his own exit.

Goldwell was not in spirit a persecutor: he had been possessed of very high influence in affairs of State, and was a learned and liberal-minded man. He who was not to be deceived by courtiers, could be commanded even by his niece, and yet be blind to her power. He was proud of her, but it was because she was proud of herself, and would brook no equal.

Her pride was so great as to be proverbial; and most persons were glad when Alice De Clinton was not at the palace. She would yield to none--not even to her uncle, the opinion she had once adopted. With neither priest nor squire of inferior degree would she ever exchange a word, though he might be a visitor in the palace, receiving the hospitality of the Bishop. Her hauteur was so great that none but a lord must speak to her; or if they did dare to do so, her uncommon expression of disdain was enough to silence any humble-minded man. Her bounty to the poor was never bestowed from pity. She gave the boon, whatever it might chance to be, as a gift after partaking of high mass; but none could possibly feel that relief of spirit which acknowledged the blessing was due to the giver, since she would make every one to understand he was much more blessed in receiving than she was in bestowing. Alice De Clinton gave with such haughtiness as to make the gift painful; so much so, that whenever she visited Goldwell Hall, in the neighborhood of Ipswich, it was called by the poor _Cold Hall_, so stiff, so benumbing was the influence of her miscalled charity.

To the palace of Wykes, in that day, came many of the unfortunate, who, in the previous wars of the Roses, and in foreign as well as domestic broils, had been reduced to become objects of bounty. House, home, board, and lodging, the weary pilgrim and broken-down stranger would always find at the hospitable palace. Those were days at least of generosity in this respect, whatever pride or superstition might be connected therewith; and, singular as the custom would now appear, the Bishop never sat down to his meal at mid-day without the company of every stranger in the palace.

Alice had been an inmate of De Freston's castle with her uncle in the early days of Ellen's childhood; and such was the meekness of the daughter of De Freston that even the proud Alice condescended to look upon her as a friend; but it was certainly as a friend beneath her, one to whom she might show a kind of patronizing air without any compromise of her dignity.

Years had elapsed sines the maid of Freston Tower had been summoned to visit Alice De Clinton. The messenger, however, had arrived at De Freston's castle, and the lord and the lady prepared to set forth upon their journey. In those days no carriage came sweeping round to the hall-door with their prancing steeds, and gold-laced coachmen and footmen; but ladies rode on horse-back, or were borne in covered litters to their places of entertainment. Horses 'with flowing tails and flying manes,' dressed with gorgeous trappings and high saddles, came from the stables to the mansion. There was no lack of attendants, for a noble then counted his state by the number of his retainers.

Ellen and her maid, on palfreys of beautiful jet black, were soon ready for the journey to Wyke's Bishop's Palace. Lord De Freston, on a milk-white horse of uncommon strength, one he had received as a gift from Lord Willoughby, from Hanover, accompanied his daughter, whilst a train of servants preceding as well as following, all mounted on black steeds, made him and his Snow-Ball, as he was called, so much the more conspicuous.

His horse had eyes so full of fire, and nostrils so expanded, that he looked well adapted for the battle-field. But he was now upon a visit of peace, and to a peaceful man: and his cavalcade left the castle accompanied by men bearing all the usual luggage which such state visits required.

De Freston, indeed, infinitely preferred the journey by water; for he was too sensible a man to delight in the mere pageantry of appearance, yet he was not insensible to the customs of his age. He had, however, a daughter in whom he delighted, and the thought that Alice De Clinton, who loved the forms of etiquette, and would blush to see any one she called _her_ friend lowering herself by condescension, would be affronted were he to forget the dignity of his barony, induced him to take the journey with all his retinue.

They descended the Freston Hill, which was then the boundary of the park, and swept along the strand, toward the Bourne Ford, where, following the guide who knew the passage, they dashed through the briny flood, and paced along the levels of Stoke, the tide of the Orwell actually washing their horses' hoofs, as if they were riding along the sea-shore. So beautiful and so clear were the waves of the river which then washed the banks of its course, that the receding tide left a sand almost as clean as that which borders the German Ocean.

So high were the waves at that time at the Prior's Ford, between St. Peter's Gate and Stoke, that the party had to sweep round beside the narrower stream of the Gipping, and pass over the Friar's Bridge before they could enter Ipswich.

The town was at that time celebrated for its religious houses, Grey Friars, Black Canons, White Monks, Benedictines, Carmelites, and all manner of brotherhoods and botherhoods of papal Rome. Mendicants of all descriptions accosted the industrious with a boldness such as no beggars dare in these days assume, for fear of the treadmill. But the terrors of Rome were much greater upon the priest-ridden yet industrious Britons than ever the treadmill could be to the vicious. Those who were sanctioned by the Pope to beg, carried along with them a mandate which few dared refuse to obey. The anathemas of the church were then bestowed with such a plentiful outpouring of bile upon such trivial subjects, too, as would have made Longinus laugh at the sublimity of their pompousness. But men trembled then with scarcely any conscience, for absolution had its pecuniary price, and could be purchased for sins, past, present, and to come.

The holy brethren at the Friar's Gate bent lowly to De Freston as he gave them his salutation, and passed on through St. Nicholas Street, past Robert Wolsey's house, down to St. Peter's Priory, along the warder's way, over the Bailiff's Customs Quay, through the parish of St. Clement, into the hamlet of Wyke's Ufford. The cavalcade then proceeded on what was termed the procession-way, leading to the shrine of St. Ivan, from which they digressed on the broad Palace Road to the Bishop's Gate.

The whole party soon passed over the drawbridge, then under the warder's arch into the area of the palace, where the verger, with the silver and golden ornaments of office, stood prepared with a number of serving-men to receive the noble.

'Here, my men,' said De Freston, after he had assisted Ellen to alight, 'ye will refresh yourselves and horses, and then set forth upon your return by the way ye came, and see that ye keep well together, and enter into no broils with any one. Ye will be in readiness for your summons for our return whensoever ye receive command. Pass on!'

De Freston and his daughter passed into the presence of Bishop Goldwell, who was seated in a chair of state at the upper end of a long and vaulted chamber prepared for their coming.

He rose, his step was proud and stately, and his large and noble eye glanced a penetrating look upon the noble. Goldwell would maintain in private the same dignity which he was accustomed to show in public. He was gracious though grand; his manner mild, bland, yet becomingly distant. Though a man of state, he was also a man of ease, and showed what was due to his own person, and what he expected even if he did not deserve it--which he did as much as any other man could.

He received the Lord De Freston and his daughter with such a courteous manner, as only to seem himself to be proud before his household. With the most paternal air he accosted Ellen, receiving her hand at her father's request, and led her to a seat, and, with great politeness, welcomed De Freston to his palace.

'Fair daughter!' he said to Ellen, 'this visit to my niece affords us both infinite pleasure: we have sought it many a day; but I scarcely think that Alice will be able to recognise thee; for thou art grown up from childhood to such form and feature that I should not, but for the likeness to thy father present, have discovered thee to be his daughter.'

Then, turning to the father, he added--

'I am proud to see thee, De Freston, maintaining thy years with becoming verdure. Time has laid his hand upon me, and the cares of state have borne me down.'

'I hope the years of peace yet reserved for your reverence may make amends for all your state anxieties.'

'I thank thee, De Freston, but let me send for Alice at once.'

The Bishop rang a small bell; a female made her appearance, and was ordered to inform her mistress that Lord De Freston and his daughter had arrived.