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About Lincoln County leader. (Toledo, Lincoln County, Or.) 1893-1987 | View Entire Issue (Feb. 28, 1902)
RALPH HARDE LOT'S MEDIATION BY WILLIAM iLVvvvvvvvvvvvv 1 K f CHAPTER I. doi 'It was the reign of Richard II., one nt(tho most disturbed reigns in English hittory. I The times were dark, and were grow ing darker, clouds gathering and lower ing on, every hand, and, worse than jhflt, ominous tremors beginning to arrnako themselves felt in the very iloor D pryi foundation of society its-elf. The ffjdarkne?s was all the more appalling jthat it had been preceded by a period a,f, unparalleled triumph, and splendor, tt Under Edward III., iii the middle of e ihijs long reign, England had teen the '".first nation in Europe, and the king's 'ifiourt had been on a corresponding scale 'of magnificence. Ho had realized the kingdom of the fabulous Arthur. 'The, j,' kings of Scotland and France were pris-1 jsners together in his capital; his dominion stretched literally from the it Orkneys to the Pyrenees; the chivalry (of Europe gathered to his feasts and g tournaments, and Christian potentates H the EnKt lrtrkfd to him, as the first 'prince in Christendom, for aid against !. the Saracens. But a few short years, ' though they witnessed no falling off in J the magnificence of the court and the nobles, had seen a woeful decline in 'political power. The expansion had i gone too far; the English rule had been I spread over a w ider surface than its i essential strength warranted, into a film so thin that the 'parts could not maintain their, cohesion. In reaching over into Spain, the Black Prince had ' loosened his hold on Aquitaine, and fortress after fortress, here a little and ttero a little, Edward's inheritances and conquests in Franco had been lost. When the great contending patties paused for a short breathing space dur ing the last ttireo years reign, there was left to of Edward's ' the English crown, of all its" Continental posses . sions, only a few strong towns on the northern and western coasts. The war was renewed, but the record was still of disappointment und disaster. Ill-luck combined with bad management against toe success of the English arms. The gteat captains of the prosperous time were gone; John of Gaunt an invet erate bungler in matters of war was a i sorry substitute for the Black Prince; jf.d Knolles, Cal verier HarlsUitif-d f f n vet ,th6u feh valiant men of their hands, did not, taken altogether, make up for the loss of Sir John Chandos, the groatest general of the age, the real . hero of Toictiers and Auray and Najar fa, who had been slain in a miserable ?i:irmish. Luck generally goes against men when they play badly, and it : teemed as if the very wind and waves "bad entered into the conspiracy to bring England as low in her humiliation as jho had lately been high in her glory. ' Relieving expeditions, calculated to arrive in the nick of time without a fray to spare, were shipwrecked by storms, or detained in port, or beaten ,hack by contrary winds. Indignities ithat twenty years before were never in ho dreams of the gloomiest prophets of ievil had become hard matters of fact, rstorn and urgent. Scotch . cruisers Abased the smacks of Filey and Scar j borough from their fishing grounds, ,and French fleots ravaged the southern oasts, menaced the mouth of the iThames, and actually, in the autumn of il380, the time when our story opens, ;.had the audacity to sail np the great i river, and burn and plundered as far as 5ravesend. The defense of London it ; self had become a subject of serious con- sideration a deplorable reverse from the time when the most pressing con- . " " I O , the maintenance of the border fort- to tempt the Sage King out of this cold resses of Gascony. blooded policy of endurance. . Nothing , Meantime, as in all periods of great ( had been achieved by the expedition to national reverse, discontent with the ; put Parliament in better humor to pay j management of affairs was loud t the outrageous cost of the war. I throughout the kingdom. Charges of I Other debts were urgent, notably the incapacity, extravaganco, . aisnonesty, ' 1 rrl.t 1 were ireeiy maue. niai larger sums ; should be necessary for the exchequer t.-j i i r l rj r man nau ever ueeu ueuru ui in xu1 j ward's most prosperous days, and that ' yet there should be nothing to show but fresh miscarriages and disasters, was up lor tne want oi pay by pillaging the monstrous nd bitterly unintelligible, country. It went hard with the great officers of The noble institution of national state and the minor collectors of reve- credit, whereby euch bills might have nue. They were accused of intercept- f been left to posterity, was as yet undo inir for their own use the money that' veloped. The ministers of Richard II. had been raised for the defense of the realm. Frequent changes were tried, while affairs still went from bad to worse. The knights and burgesses, summoned to Parliament again and again to hear the same tale of urgent dangers followed by requests for larger and larger supplies, grew restive, and, with all the care that could be used in their selection, could not be kept from open complaint and remonstrance against "the outrageous cost of wars that the country could in no manner sustain." And beneath the grumbling middle classes, far down among the lower strata of eociety, a fiercer and more dangerous dissatisfaction and unrest began to spread and take hold. Griev- MINTO pof ed a new kind of impost, a poll-tax, ances of longer standing than even the ! outragoeus cost and the outrageous fail ure of tbe wars with France began to be more acutely felt as the pressure above increased the pinch on the masses be low. The exasperation was especially keen among that largo class of peasant population which still remained in var ious forms and degrees of serfdom, sub ject to indefinite exactions from their lords and masters. The hardships and irritations of their position, which for a generation bad, under various influ ences, grown more and more intolera ble, were aggravated by the general dis tress, and their discontent now became bo intense that it was ready, at the slightest disturbing touch, to burst into destructive tempest. Our story' concerns the fortunes of a heroic spirit, who, like many others, saw the mischief that was brewing, but, unlike most, felt called upon to labor with all his might to avert the impending strife. The particulars of his strange devotion and dauntless en deavor to reconcile domestic enemies we have gathered from old and neglect ed chronicles, and here present to the reader in the hope that they may seem to him as they have seemed to us not unworthy of preservation. The most heavily-burdened man in the kingdom very much over-burdened as the event proved was Simon Sud bury, Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord High Chancellor. He was head of the Church and at the same time head of the secular administration; and both branches of constituted author ity were objects of bitter hatred and clamorous criticism, j As primate he had his troubles recalcitrant monks to be browbeat, a pestilent heresv to suppress, difficulties between the pope and the clercv to ad just, difficulties between the pope and the government, jealousies between the higher clergy and the baronage; but, grave as some of these troubles were, they were light compared with the des perate cares of the chancellorship, at that time the highest of the great offices of state, as measured by the weight and number of its responsibilities. There was not in those days the same subdivision of duties that exists now among the king's ministers, and the : responsibility of ways and means to re- jplenish the empty treasury fell upon ' the lord high chancellor. This base necessity was the problem of problems for the government. To find employment for the restless English chivalry, and to give the youngest of the king's uncles, Thomas of Woodstock, Earl of Buckingham, a taste of the glorious game of war, a splendid expedition had been sent across into France early in the summer. But the glorious game is costly ; the expenses were not yet paid, nor was there any money in the treasury where withal to pay them. The crown jewels were in pawn. Further, Buckingham's expedition did not promise to bo a success. Tbe French would not fight; at least in pitched battle. This was the pusillan imous policy of Charles the Sage, which had rendered so many grand and gal lant expeditions abortive to keep within walled towns and fortresses, to remove to safe shelters all that could conveniently be removed, to leave the rest to the mercy of the invaders, and to keep the track of devastation as nar row as possible by hanging on their flanks and cutting off adventurous ex cursion parties of plunder. No barbar- itv of fire and Rwnrd TwrnptrnPfl rn tha I L vu v.. w wages oi me lew mgiisn garrisons re- wtaininiv In Vmraa ,1 bourg, and Brest and Bayonne which were a year and a Quarter in armnr. , They were eo hemmed in that they j could not, as in happier times, make ' had no such resource. The pawning ol the crown jewels shows how very rudi mentary were their methods of finance. The government had no choice but to go once more to Parliament. Their last reception had not been encourag ing, but there was no alternative. And the money had to be raised at once by taxation from a people who bad pro tested last time that they really could pay no more. , It was a desperate case, but the chan cellor, trained in the exchequer of the pope, experienced in diplomacy, patient, cautious, and conciliatory, though near his wits end, did not absolutely de spair. une oi nis predecessors, three years before, had conoived, or nt least pro a tax ot so much a Lead on every per son in the kingdom over the age of fo irteen years. It 1 ad bee:i com plained of, but it had been fairly well paii better than any form of subsidy that had been tried since. The chancellor would try another poll-tax, and "modify the obnoxious features of the first. Tho first had been uniform, fourpence a head from poor and rich alike, and tho poor had naturally complained of such equality. He would avoid this grievance; the rich should aid the poor; an average of three groats should be raised, but tl e poorest should be asked for no more than one groat, while the riche.-t paid as much as sixty. Besides, the- age should be raised to fifteen. What could be moro" reasonable? It was the duty of everybody in such a national crisis to contribute . to the national defense. The plan was to cost the unfortunate chancellor his head; but' no more man could have thought of anything that looked fairer or more promising. Besides, he was to give Parliament a choice between this and one of tho older imposts. Further, he put off the evil day of submitting his budget, ni d waited for a supremely favoral lo moment when he might summon the Commons and launch it prosperously. Tho favorable moment for which he waited was the death of tho King of France. Charles the Sage, to whote crafty policy the deplorable reverses of recent years were attributed, had suf fered long from a mysterious illnos. Like tho illness of the Black Prince, it was suspected to be tbe pfWt of poison, and one of the incidents of it was an issue in tho arm, through which it was believed the venom of the poison dis charged itself. George of Prague, the physician whose skill had partially cured him and' kept him alive, had warned the king that when the issue dried up, he had only fifteen days left in which to arrange his affairs and pro vide for the welfare of his soul. , Sudbury had taken measures to get the earliest possible information of the appearance of the fatal symptom, lie knew well, from tho temper shown by the Commons when last they were aked for a subsidy) that there was lit tle chance of getting anything from them unless something occurred to brighten the prospects of tbe English cause in France. It was the policy of Charles that had undone them; his death would give them new hopes, and could hardly fail to put the Commons in a generous mood. At last the fatal favorable moment arrived. In the autmun of 1380, early in September, just after the insult offered by a French fleet to the Thames, the joyful news reached him that the fatal symptom had appeared, and that the King of France was on his death bed. CHAPTER II. The bearer of the good tidings pre sented himself to Lambeth, where the archbishop lay, more than an hour be fore midday. He had ridden post over night from iiover to Gravesend, and thence sailed np tho river with a favorable tide; his luck and speed had been such that, traveling day and night, ho had reached London on the second morning from his start. They kept early hours in those times; the archbishop, after a close morning's work, had already dined and was pre paring to proceed to the chancery at estminfitcr. It was his custom to sit there at eleven. The messenger was not held long in waiting for an audience. As soon as the archbishop-chancellor was informed of his arrival from Paris, he dismissed his secretaries, ordered him to be shown up, and received him most graciously. "Good-morrow, good fellow," he said, in a stately fashion, raising him with the hand which the messenger had knelt to kiss; "what news from Paris? You havo made good speed from there, I doubt not?" The messenger answered tho second question first, and then hesitated, glancing meaningly at the usher who had shown him into the chancellor's presence and who remained by the door. "You may speak," said the chancel lor. "Master Hardelot, my young cousin, is of my council." Thus authorized, he delivered his message. "I am charged, sir," h said, "to deliver to you this ring, and to say that that has happened which you wot of." The chancellor's face did not betray the joy he felt at hearing what he had waited for so long. He asked no fur ther questions. "You have done tbe king an excellent service," he said in a voice of well-pleased greatness. "It will bfe my care to see that you are fitly recompensed. You must be fatigued. Reginald, cause the cooks to provide at once some meat for this gen tleman, and see that a well-lighted chamber is made ready for him. Come to me when you have rested and we W.U talk further of what you have head and seen in Paris." Thfc messenger protested with All humilitj and respect and thanks for his grace- comfortable words about present relHhrnent and prospo-tive reward, that he was ready at once to anwscr to the M of his power; but the chancellor, Wy, in,l j,Pnrii aH mm.n as he wanted, insisted on his taking needful repose after li iong nn(i trying journey. (To bt cintlnu) WEPT HIS WAY TO VICTORY. Candidate Was Poped, but Ills Tear Were Eloquent. "There are nil sorts of tricks in n po litical campaign," said the ex-mom bcr of iu Legislature, "and one was play ed upon iuo when 1 was doing my first stumping that was Intended to lay ine out flatter than a paucake. I was oillpo to speak at n certain villago. and I prepared a first-rate talk for the oc- j caslon. Half an hour before I. was to take the platform I was Uivited to have n nip to brace me up. mid ten ' ni'LUtes after Imbibing I didn't know whether I was on foot or riding a ; cumei. as a mauer or ract, i uad oeeu i ..1' ,! I uv.lru 111 U1UV1 ivj iirevfui uie 1.UIU speaking. When I began to rnil-feiice uround and talk nonsense they tried to t.ike me away, but I became as stub born as a mule and Insisted r.pon speaking. It would be n nail lu my coffin to show me off in a drunken con dition, and 1 was finally pushed !r wnrd. I was simply conscious of the fact that I was making a fool if my self, and after uttering a dozen words I began to weep. There was n good deal of laughter at first, but pretty ! soon a man called out: " 'Look here, fellers, this man a n't I crying for nothing " 'You bet ho ain't,' shouted another. " 'lie must be weeping over our high taxes,' suggested n third. "'That's It, and It shows his true feeling,' added a fourth. Here's one ivro pledges' himself to work und vote for him.' " 'And here's another,' cnlled out twenty men In chorus as 1 was led nway with tears streaming lowii uiy cheeks. "That was my speech," said the ex olon, according to the Detroit Free Press. "The people laid It all to emo tion, and that towu gave me a major ity to make my hair stand up. I couldn't reduce their taxes.'but I got n bill through against any one owning a bull without keeping an iron ring la his nose, and did not lose uy,of mj admirers." PICTURESQUE OLD WINDMILL NEAR BLOOMINGTON. One of the most curious Industrial1 4. iw! plants In the West Is the old Holland had been properly Impressed. The su type of grist mill at Benson, near perlntendent nuked: "Now, my little Bloomlngton, 111. It was erected up ward of thirty years ago, and Is still doing business. It Is operated by wind power, re-enforced by a small engine, which can be called Into use whenever nature's agent fails In Its adequacy. The tall circular building Is surmount- ed by four huge wings, each of which s forty feet In length, or eighty In tho length of each pair. The mill Is sixty feet high aud is quite attractive for art ists who desire a picturesque bit of rural scenery. SWITZERLAND'S NEW PRESIDENT. Dr. Joseph Zemp, Head of the Mount ain State's Government. The"SwIss Republic has a new Presi dent. Ills name Is Dr. Joseph Zemp and he Is regarded as a statesman of superior ability. who Is well nuali lied to preside over ...i- U..L.UUUI luunui WUlcIl initiates ail legislation In tbe little mountain State. Dr. Zemp is 07 years old and Jim a native of Lu- cerne Province. A is a native of Lu cerne Province. A year ago he wus elected Vice Presi DR. ZEMP. dent and be steps Into tbe higher of fice by virtue of the unwritten law that the Vice President shall succeed to the hlghet office, unless he has ren dered himself obnoxious In the subord inate position. As Vice President ho was head of the Department of Stute Railways and Telegraphs, where he was well tested In the art of govern ment and acquitted himself creditably. He Is a Conservative. IMiaraohs in Mourning. The Pharaohs wore their beards when In uiourulng for a relative. Court mourning in Kgypt seems to have last ed a year. I-'rutt Trees In Georgia. The official entomologists of Georgia predict that within a few years the Umpire State of the South will contain more than 100,000.000 fruit tree. She I suppose you will commit sui cide if I refuse you? Ue That has been n,Jr custom. "Pa, what is a pre-glacial man?" "Why, man before he had to pay ice bills, of course." -Miss White. I believe?" "No, I am Miss Green." "Oh, pawdon me! I'm color blind, y'know " "Let me but own the earth," said the financier, with characteristic bravado, I "and I care not who writes tbe people's ongs:" Teacher What Js , a synonym? Bright Boy It's a word you use In place of another one when you "don't know how to spell the other one. Grandpa's birthday: "Many happy returns of the day, grandpa; and mam ma says If you give us each fifty centa wc mustn't lose it." Harlem Life. "Mother Is always telling me not to bolt my food," said a small boy, "aud now she has gone and bolted the cup board that has got ull the victuals." The Artist And, then, have you given sulliclent attention to the technique? Prospective Customer Well er per haps not. I was thinking of the price! Ocular Demonstration: "Mrs. Decol lete, over there, puts every cent her husband makes on her bnck." "lie's making very little, then." Philadel phia Press. Mr Botts I think, my dear, I have at last found the key to success. Mrs. Botts Well, just as like as not you'll not be able to And the keyhole. Yon kers Statesman. Vroud of the Boy: Doctor 'Pears to me lalk de boy dun got acute Indece- shuu. Aunt Lucy (smiling' through her I tpnral Tint's It rlnntnli! Tint linn olnb- er well, dun eb'ryt'Ihg cute. Judge. Prostrated: First Fly Come quick, mother! Sister has been drinking some of that poison they tried to fool us with. Second Fly Oh! Where Is she? First Fly-She's ou the celling In a dend faint. Life. The Important Question: Mrs. Dash lelgh Do you believe It is possible, as Mrs. Roosevelt says, for a woman to dress on three hundred dollars a year? Mrs. Kafllppe It may be possible, but what's the use. Exchange. Drain on the Empire: "If the war continues," groaned the British peer, "we shall run out of metal." "For mnk Ing guns for the men?" asked the friend. "No; for making meduls for the officers." Chicago News. Dr. A. Why do you always make such, particular Inquiries ns to what your patients eat? Docs'that assist you In your diagnosis? Dr. B. Not much; but it enables me to ascertain their so cial position and arrange my fees ac cordingly. Tit-Bits. The lesson had been about the prodi- cnl son. and the entire Sundav school friends, who stood by, objecting to this proposed banquet to the prodigal?" And a voice in a far corner answered, "The calf." Pure Accident: Flanagan Hlvlns! man, phwat's the matther wld ycr face? llanagan Fallh, 'twas an accl- deut Xh. ouId womnn ,lu.owed a plnte !t n)e Kingnil-An d'ye call that an accident? llanagan Av coorse! Didn't she hit phat sho aimed at? Philadel phia Press. ' Ills Mission: "It Is your aim, of course," said bis Intimate friend, "to make people tblnk." "No." replied the popular lecturer, In a burst of confi dence, "my business Is to make people think they think or, rather, to make them think I think they think." Chl cugo Tribune. "No," said the stubborn citizen, "1 never confess that 1 am In the wrong." , ..Wuy not7 There Is no use of It If a man miues a mistake in this life there flmiiHnmla nf tiKiitiln renriv in Inkn hold and advertise It, without his lift ing his voice to swell the clamor." Washington Star. "You know. John, vou nrnmlsprl nip a , , , , ! "And you and you haven't done. It." "Well, you don't meun to say you'll break your promise on that account?" , "Well, It's just like this: "You don't give a darn and I don't give a wrap." City Magistrate Of course I don't wish to stand In the wuy of my daugh ter's happiness, but 1 know ho little of you, Mr. Hawkins. What is your vo cation? Mr. Hawkins (alrlly)-Oh, I write cr poetry, novels er plays, and that sort of thing. City Magistrate Indeed! Most Interesting. And how do you live? Punch. It Got There Just tho Same: Mabel Such a Joko ou Mr. dayboy. We were out on the balcony between the dances, end he got the sleeve of his dresscoat all over red paint from one of the posts that were Just painted. Maud And did you go near the post? Mabel No. Why? Mnud-Hecause you hare red paint nil over the back of your waist. Harlem Life.
