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A wild chase through Ouse marshes

The council at Northampton

A desperate plunge

"Through fire and smoke the besiegers stormed the breach"

THE ROBBER BARON OF
BEDFORD CASTLE.

CHAPTER I.

BY THE BANKS OF OUSE.

In the first quarter of the thirteenth century, the evil doings of King John were yet fresh in the minds of men all over England, and the indirect consequences of his evil deeds were still acutely felt, and nowhere more than in Bedfordshire, where the scene of our story is laid. The county itself has much altered in appearance since that period. Great woods, intersected by broad, soft green lanes, overran its northern portion. Traces of these woods and roads still survive in Puddington Hayes and Wymington Hayes, and the great broad "forty-foot." South of this wild wooded upland, one natural feature of Bedfordshire remains unchanged. Then, as now, the Great Ouse took its winding, sluggish course from southwest to north-east across the county, twisting strangely, and in many places turning back upon itself as though loath to leave Bedfordshire. Some fifteen miles from point to point would have taken it straight through the heart of the little county, whereas its total course therein is more like fifty. One poetic fancy likens the wandering stream to a lover lingering with his mistress, but old Drayton compares it to one of the softer sex:--

"Ouse, having Olney past, as she were waxed mad,

From her first staider course immediately doth gad,

And in meandering gyves doth whirl herself about,

That, this way, here and there, back, forward, in and out.

And like a wanton girl, oft doubting in her gait,

In labyrinthine turns and twinings intricate,

Through those rich fields doth flow."

 

It is in the Ouse valley that the events of our story will chiefly be laid, for here was centred the life of the county, in those castles which once crowned with their keeps the various mounds which still exist,--

"Chiefless castles, breathing stern farewells

From gray but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells."

 

It was along the banks of the Ouse, a little north of Bedford, that a young knight was riding one bright January morning in 1224. By his side hung his good sword, though he was clad only in the ordinary riding dress of the period; for these were troublous times, and the country round by no means secure. At Bedford Castle, Sir Fulke de Breauté, one of the late King John's lieutenants, sat strongly intrenched, like the robber-barons of a later day in their castles on the Rhine, spreading devastation far and wide.

Young Ralph de Beauchamp, who was making his way that winter morning along the marshy banks of the river, which were later to develop into Drayton's "rich meadows," was the son of the younger brother of the former occupant and ejected owner of Bedford Castle. For more than a hundred years the banner of the De Beauchamps had waved from Bedford keep. Their ancestor, Hugo de Beauchamp, had received the feof from the Conqueror, together with many a broad manor in the county. His son, Pain, had reared the strong keep on the lofty mound which to this day overlooks the Ouse, and from which Cuthwulf the Saxon had driven the Britons in 572, pursuing them far south into the Thames valley. Later on, the Danes, sailing up the Ouse, had burned the Saxon Burh; but the Norman keep, though it had surrendered, had never yet been taken by assault. Eight years before the time of our story, William de Beauchamp, the head of the family, and the uncle of young Ralph, had sided with the barons who were standing up for the liberties of England against King John, and had been ousted by John's ferocious lieutenant, Fulke de Breauté. This latter, as has been told, now held the castle, no longer as lieutenant for Henry, John's youthful successor, but as the leader of a band of robbers, who knew no right but might.

Thus it had come to pass that the house of De Beauchamp, once so powerful in Bedfordshire, was rather down in the world in the early part of the thirteenth century, and young Sir Ralph felt the reverses of his family. Left an orphan in childhood, he had been brought up by his uncle William, and though a penniless knight, heir neither to the estates of Bedford, nor to those of another branch of the family seated at the castle of Eaton Socon, lower down the river, he had, as it were, been rewarded by nature with more than a compensating share of the graces of face and form. He was, moreover, a proficient in those exercises of the tilt-yard which formed an important part of a knightly education, and which were as dear to young men in the thirteenth century as are their athletic pursuits to those of the present day. Nor had his mental training been entirely neglected. True, the latter would not be considered much now-a-days; but in his boyhood, in Bedford Castle, Ralph had sat many hours in the chaplain's room, when he would much rather have been bathing or fishing in the stream below the walls, learning from the venerable priest how to read, write, and speak Latin, then a most necessary part of a gentleman's education.

But neither poverty nor the misfortunes of his family appeared to weigh heavily on Sir Ralph's mind, to judge by the cheerful expression of his countenance, as he rode along humming the refrain of an old Provençal love-song, which some of De Beauchamp's retainers had brought into Bedfordshire from fair France. Neither did he seem in any dread of Fulke de Breauté's myrmidons, for the valley was clear of such as far as eye could reach, though it was then in great measure overflowed by the waters of the Ouse. As was not unusual then in winter-time, the broad river had risen above its low-lying banks, and a vast expanse of water shimmered far and wide in the sunlight. Later on, in Fuller's time, a not uncommon saying gave the Ouse the name of the "Bailiff of Bedfordshire," from the quantity of hay and other produce distrained from the low-lying lands by these frequent and extensive floods.

As Ralph approached Milton Mill,