CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE MARRIAGE PROCESSION.

A marriage in the year 1498, and in a nobleman's family, was almost like an affair of state. In the metropolis, such an event might not have been uncommon; but, in the country, it was in that day so joyous an event, that he was considered but a niggard nobleman who had not the whole country to participate in his festivity.

Such a maid as Ellen, too--so universally beloved in her own neighborhood, and so celebrated for every female virtue of her time--was sure to command the generous and gentle affections of all who had any regard for their betters. There might be some morose dispositions, who staid at home, brooding over melancholy forebodings, and caring nothing for a marriage, for bride, bridegroom, bridal attire, bridal friends, men, maids, banquets, or any kind of festivity; but there was then no lack of well-wishers, who really loved Ellen De Freston, and wished her happy.

Alice De Clinton, had she been at all of Ellen's disposition, would have been her companion upon this occasion, but she lacked not friends of the noblest class to fill her place. The fair daughters of Fastolf, and De Broke, from the Haugh, were at Freston Castle, together with four other maidens of quality, to accompany her to the wedding.

The morning broke most lovely! The merry bells could be heard from the town of Ipswich, ringing cheerily; for Lord De Freston and Edmund Daundy were as universally loved for their amiable qualities, as they were known to be rich and generous. Everything indicated a happy morning: birds were singing blithely, and men and women's voices mingled therewith. The hills around Ipswich echoed the joyful notes, whilst people looked upon that day as one of the brightest festival in which love reigned omnipotent. In short, every face exhibited something of the anticipated pleasure of the bridal.

Maidens might be seen tripping along the meadows of the meandering Gipping, with little baskets of flowers, on purpose to strew the bridal path from St. Peter's Gate to the porch of St. Lawrence. It was no loss of time to them to be seen to participate in the happiness of a lady whom some one or other of them had known, for her kindness to some poor relative, or for her gentleness and amiable bearing.

Fame, when not courted but deserved, will come with a reward which is as pleasant as it is unexpected. Actions done upon the Christian principle of brotherly love are sure to be successful in the end; they carry with them their own reward, being done from faith, and a sense of duty.

Such were those of the whole life of Lord De Freston and his daughter. Such were the motives which influenced him in his patronage of Wolsey; such were his daughter's motives in the interest she felt in his rising fame. But whilst hundreds around them were grateful, and rejoiced to show the interest they felt in Ellen's happiness, that one, the scholar and the friend, felt nothing of gratitude, little of affection: he felt only the deepest, the most heartfelt mortification.

Early on the morning of the 8th of July, 1498, did Thomas Wolsey, Priest of Magdalen College, rise. Whether he slept or not, those who saw him could only give a surmise, and from the swollen appearance of his eyes, and the excessive pallor of his countenance, it was thought that his reverence had passed a very restless night.

He was not stirring earlier than William Latimer, who, when Wolsey descended from the internal balcony of the hall, was, with Edmund Daundy, preparing to depart for Ipswich, that both might be in readiness to receive the _cortège_ of the bride at the house of the latter in St. Lawrence. As they stood in the hall, Thomas Wolsey descended. He bowed haughtily in return to the generous salute of his uncle and his young friend.

'I am ready to depart for Ipswich, gentlemen, and to solicit of the officiating priest of St. Lawrence permission to perform the _marriage ceremony_.'

These last words created a kind of adhesive firmness of his tongue to the roof of his mouth; for, when his uncle replied that he had already secured that permission, there was but a bow of acquiescence, and a dignified move towards the massive hall-door. The party went forward. Three of Lord De Freston's horses stood caparisoned for them at the porch; but a delay was created by the proud priest saying to the groom in waiting--

'My own horse!'

'My lord thought your own would be fatigued, and requests that you will use his,' said the man.

'My own horse, sirrah!' was the uncourteous reply. The gentlemen were equally as astonished as the groom; but seeing that Wolsey quietly retreated into the hall, they could but desire the groom to be as expeditious as possible in bringing the said nag round to the door.

It was evident that Wolsey would have his own way, and not put a foot into the stirrup until he had.

The horse was brought round. The bridegroom, bridesman, and priest, departed with a retinue of horsemen for the town. It was a stately ride. Nothing seemed to please Wolsey. He received all that was said to him with silent indications of assent, as if they were only such commonplace sayings as he might expect to receive from the attendants upon his greatness. So passed they to his native town, where, at this day, nothing remains in any way connected with him but a postern gate of brick, leading to the school-master's lodge within the area of the schools, and not, as some have called it, the principal entrance to the President's Court.

They arrived at the mansion of Edmund Daundy at seven o'clock on the morning of the eighth of July.

Dame Joan, Wolsey's mother, was there before them, with many of the friends, wives, and daughters of the best families of the town and neighborhood, who came to participate in the joyous doings.

'I give thee this, young man,' said Wolsey to the groom on taking his horse, 'that thou mayest learn that a reward is worth having when it is deserved. At ten o'clock do thou be at the portal leading to the chancel door of St. Lawrence Church. Thou knowest the priest's entrance, his private entrance, from the lane. There be thou with this horse, caparisoned exactly as he now is--his trappings on, exactly as thou seest them now. Let nothing be taken out of thy possession. There is an angel for thee. Another angel doth await thee.'

Wolsey gave the man a golden angel, of the value of six and eightpence, a gift which commanded much more attention than many such pieces would do now-a-days.

He not only promised obedience, but kept it punctually.

'Thou wilt accept once more, Thomas Wolsey, thine aged uncle's hospitality. Come in.'

'I have a vow at the altar of St. Lawrence, which I must pay this morning. I can enter no house until that is paid.'

'How long wilt thou be?'

'Until this marriage is over.'

'We shall hope to see thee then?'

'Thou mayest then hope.' And Wolsey departed for the church.

Whilst he bent at the altar of St. Lawrence Church, glad to escape from anything like cheerfulness, he was steeling his heart for a trial to which the pages of romance could scarcely afford a parallel. Never once did he reproach himself for the cruelty of his behaviour towards those who really loved him, and had given him the greatest possible proofs of attachment. Never once did he reflect that his then state of deportment towards Ellen was barbarous or unjust; his whole soul was enveloped in the cloak of his own selfishness. His heart was full of gall and bitterness, grief and agony. And as he knelt before that altar to which he had devoted himself soul and body, did he pray for that high, that holy, inward peace, which the man who sacrifices every selfish feeling for the good of another would so earnestly desire? His heart could have burst at the very position he had then placed himself in, but for that indomitable pride which prayed for future aggrandizement, that the poor scholar of Ipswich might rival, or rather out-rival, the Lord De Freston and his friends.

His vow was but an excuse for the feeding of his own solitary disappointment, but for the opportunity of brooding over the melancholy superstition to which his nature and his enlightened mind were adverse, but to which his seemingly injured affections had fled for solace.

Whilst Wolsey was thus mournfully fasting and praying, and the gay world was shut out from the gloom of his devotion, parties of maidens formed in rank, a long and pleasing file, went with their baskets of flowers from Daundy's mansion gate towards St. Peter's Ford, by which the bride was expected to enter the town, and as they went, their leaders lifted up their voices and sung one stanza, at the conclusion of the last two lines of which the whole company joined:

Come all ye merry lasses! Come bring your flowers gay; Come all in smiling masses, And strew the bridal way.

Leave sorrow far behind you, And be not you forlorn, For Love alone should bind you To greet the bridal morn.

CHORUS.

Then haste! oh, haste, this happy hour! To meet the Maid of Freston Tower.

It was a lovely morning, indeed; and Ellen, the Maid of Freston Tower, with her dear and anxious father, and her whole train of fair damsels and rustic maidens, and tenants' daughters and servants, were seen descending Freston Hill, from the park side to the strand. It was a long and sweeping _cortége_; the bridesmaids and the bride attired in travelling costume, attended by noble gentlemen, the friends of the various parties, swept along that happy strand amidst the blessings and praises of those poor people, who left their morning toil by permission of their masters.

It was a sight in those feudal days worthy of being recorded in a better ballad than the old one extant in the archives of the borough of Ipswich, written by old Dan Lydgate, monk of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Edmund's Bury; though he was a genuine poet of his day, and few could vie with him in allegory, or in narrative, or in words; and yet old Dan wanted that sense of feeling that meditates in love upon things passing around him. He described them with flowery colours, and now and then with a daring liberty almost approaching to licentiousness. He was seldom pathetic or reflective--yet he is a good old poet, and describes his times quite as well as Byron does his, with far less morbid selfishness.

From far and near, Ipswich was like a vast fair; but there was no gambling, hooting, hallooing, cheating, drinking, bargaining, and brawling. Instead of these, there was a cheerful wedding, upon which every face smiled with delight.

Beautiful indeed was the attachment between two such souls as those of the son of Sir William Latimer and the daughter of Lord De Freston, enhanced by similarity of taste, a love of truth, literature, and talent, and by every virtue which adorns or ennobles human nature. An abhorrence of anything unjust and oppressive pervaded De Freston and Sir William Latimer, and was instilled into their children.

The country was alive with joyful faces, and not only the hamlets of Ipswich, but from every village down the Orwell, as far as Felixtow Beach on the one side, and Shotley Point on the other, boats ascended the tide to the gaily festive scene. Songs were got up by the village singers. One ballad, or song, or chaunt, or whatever else it may be called, is preserved, which affords not only a lively description of the feeling then felt towards the daughter of Lord De Freston, but it is not devoid of elegance or metrical beauty, though it may not be exactly accurate in rhyme:--

The Boatmen's Bridal Song.

Come, row the boat, row! from Levington Creek; The boat full of roses as e'er it can stick. Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go!

Come, row the boat, row! 'tis the bridal day; And woe to the maiden who stays away. Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go.

Come, row the boat, row! o'er the Orwell's wave, If the youth or the maiden would happiness have. Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go.

Come, row the boat, row! from the Haugh's green side, 'Neath the Wolferstone shade let our oars quick glide. Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go.

Come, row the boat, row! with all your power. For the maiden is gone from De Freston's Tower. Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go.

Come, row the boat, row! for the fairest maid. The roses we'll strew ere the dew-drop fade. Come, row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! For the pride of the castle, fair Ellen, we go.

Then row the boat, row! ye Levington boys. For who would not welcome the true lovers' joys? Row the boat, row! Yoho! yoho! To the bridal of Ellen, fair Ellen, we go!

The very metre of the old song gives an idea of the boat pulled by stout rowers in the vigor of youth, bent upon a scene of festive rejoicing.

Levington was the first village on the Orwell, celebrated for the cultivation of the rose, which the Lord of the Manor of Levington Hall, Hugh de Fastolf, encouraged, and gave permission on the day of the celebration of Ellen's marriage for the villagers to gather from the hall garden as many as they could place in their boat for the occasion; so that the village maidens who went up the Orwell in the Levington boat, were literally in the midst of roses.

They arrived at St. Peter's Ford, to the no small delight of hundreds who sought for a bunch of flowers to scatter on the maiden's path.

And ill the luck that maiden's lot, Who had her flowrets then forgot, Lest sorrow should her marriage mar, Or fill the bridal day with care.