Read Ebook: Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature Science and Art fifth series no. 126 vol. III May 29 1886 by Various

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CLAIMANTS TO ROYALTY.

When he found that his story was not to be credited, he accused the magistrate of yielding to pressure put upon him by the Princes Victor and Louis, whose interest it was to supplant the rightful heir. He spoke in the language of a well-educated man; and when examined with a view to determine his mental condition, he betrayed no symptom of derangement.

The methods of all Claimants have a certain similarity, though some have been more audacious and successful than others. This is perhaps the most audacious of modern instances. But there are many examples of Claimants more or less notorious in the history of past times, whose pretensions are quite as difficult to reconcile with recorded facts. In most of these historical instances the Claimants have advanced pretensions to the name and station of a deceased member of some reigning family, and much obscurity has thus been thrown around historical events, whose incidental details have been confused and complicated by the conflicting statements of contemporary or nearly contemporary records.

Haflidi Steinsson, the priest here mentioned, had long since gone back to Iceland, where he died parish priest of Breidabolstad; and in chronicling his death, the annalist adds that 'he was King Eirik's chaplain at the time that his daughter Margaret was taken to Scotland, as she herself afterwards bore witness when she was being carried to execution at Nordness.' Indeed, so prevalent was the belief in the personal identity of the Claimant with the daughter of King Eirik who died on the voyage to Orkney in 1290, that the place of her execution became a resort of pilgrims; and many of the priesthood having countenanced the popular belief in her martyrdom, a chapel was built on the spot where she suffered; and though uncanonised, and reprobated by the dignitaries of the church, her memory was held in reverence till the Reformation as St Maritte , the Martyr of Nordness. In 1320, the number of pilgrimages to this irregular shrine had become so numerous that Bishop Audfinn of Bergen issued an official interdict against them, an interference which was resented by his canons, some of whom were bold enough to protest against its promulgation.

Nothing is known of the Claimant's previous history, except that the contemporary annalist states that she came to Bergen in a ship from L?beck. Absolom Pedersen asserts that she came from Scotland, but gives no authority for the statement, and there is sufficient evidence in the records to render this highly improbable. But it is a very remarkable circumstance that Wyntoun, the popular historian of his time, gave currency in Scotland to the statement--which we must assume to have been then the popular belief--that the Maid of Norway was put to death in her own country by martyrdom. After giving circumstantial details of the sending of the Scottish embassy to Norway, consisting of Sir David of the Wemyss and Michael Scot of Balwearie, he adds, that when they arrived--

In accordance with the usage of the period, the expression of the chronicler describing the manner of her death would be universally understood to mean burning at the stake; and the evident anachronism, as well as the inherent improbability of the narrative, is accounted for by the fact that it quite accurately describes the death of the Claimant, but assigns it to the time of the death of the Princess. The reason given by Wyntoun for the 'martyrdom' is, that the Norwegians--though their law allowed--could not brook the idea of a woman succeeding to the crown; and this also may be accounted for by the fact that the woman who suffered was a pretender to the crown.

In his official interdict of 1320, forbidding the people 'any longer to invoke that woman with great vows and worship as if she had been one of God's martyrs,' the bishop states that he has deemed it his duty to declare the truth as to her case; 'She said, indeed, that she was the child and lawful heir of King Eirik; but when she came from L?beck to Bergen she was gray-haired and white in the head, and was proved to be twenty years older than the time of King Eirik's marriage with Margaret of Scotland. He was then only thirteen winters old, and consequently, could not have been the father of a person of her years. And then he had no other child than one daughter by Queen Margaret. This only child of King Eirik and Queen Margaret was on her journey to Scotland, when she died in Orkney between the hands of Bishop Narve of Bergen, and in the presence of the best men of the land, who had attended her from Norway; and the bishop and Herr Thore Hakonson and others brought back her corpse to Bergen, where her father had the coffin opened and narrowly examined the body, and himself acknowledged that it was his daughter's corpse, and buried her beside the queen her mother, in the stone wall on the north side of the choir of the cathedral church of Bergen.'

It is well known that shortly after the king's imprisonment, there was a conspiracy to replace him on the throne. The conspirators attempted to attract the people to their cause by spreading abroad the rumour of his escape from Pontefract; and, as is stated by a contemporary chronicler, 'to make this the more credible, they brought into the field with them a chaplain called Father Maudelain, who so exactly resembled good King Richard in face and person, in form and speech, that every one who saw him declared that he was their former king.' The conspiracy failed; and those most deeply concerned in it, among whom was the first personator, Father Maudelain, were beheaded.

Shortly afterwards, it was given out that King Richard had died in Pontefract Castle, on or about the 14th of February 1399. Rumour, indeed, spoke freely of the suspicion, that if he were dead, he had surely been murdered by his enemies, and with the connivance of the reigning king. It was not till nearly a month after the alleged date of his death that, in order to silence the popular rumours, King Henry caused the body to be brought publicly to London 'with the face exposed,' and laid in state for two days in the church of St Paul, 'that the people might believe for certain that he was dead.' 'But,' says the old chronicler formerly quoted, 'I certainly do not believe that it was the king, but I think it was Maudelain, his chaplain,' who had been beheaded little more than a month previously.

There were many who shared this unbelief; and in 1402, the rumours that King Richard was yet alive became so persistent and circumstantial, that King Henry dealt with them by putting to death a number of persons, principally priests and friars, for spreading such treasonable reports. The cause of the revival of these rumours at this time is revealed in a document issued by King Henry, requiring the sheriffs to arrest all persons guilty of spreading the report that King Richard was alive, which had arisen from a person calling himself King Richard having appeared in Scotland in company with one William Serle, who had been groom of the robes to Richard, and had possessed himself of his signet.

IN ALL SHADES.

Meanwhile, Harry Noel himself was quite unconsciously riding round to the Hawthorns' cottage, to perform the whole social duty of man by Edward and Marian.

'So you've come out to look after your father's estates in Barbadoes, have you, Mr Noel?' Marian inquired with a quiet smile, after the first greetings and talk about the voyage were well over.

Harry laughed. 'Well, Mrs Hawthorn,' he said confidentially, 'my father's estates there seem to have looked after themselves pretty comfortably for the last twenty years, or at least been looked after vicariously by a rascally local Scotch agent; and I've no doubt they'd have continued to look after themselves for the next twenty years without my intervention, if nothing particular had occurred otherwise to bring me out here.'

'But something particular did occur--eh, Mr Noel?'

'No, nothing occurred,' Harry Noel answered, with a distinct stress upon the significant verb. 'But I had reasons of my own which made me anxious to visit Trinidad; and I thought Barbadoes would be an excellent excuse to supply to Sir Walter for the expenses of the journey. The old gentleman jumped at it--positively jumped at it. There's nothing loosens Sir Walter's pursestrings like a devotion to business; and he declared to me on leaving, with tears in his eyes almost, that it was the first time he ever remembered to have seen me show any proper interest whatsoever in the family property.'

'And what were the reasons that made you so very anxious, then, to visit Trinidad?'

'Why, Mrs Hawthorn, how can you ask me? Wasn't I naturally desirous of seeing you and Edward once more after a year's absence?'

Marian coughed a little dry cough. 'Friendship is a very powerfully attractive magnet, isn't it, Edward?' she said with an arch smile to her husband. 'It was very good of Mr Noel to have thought of coming four thousand miles across the Atlantic just to visit you and me, dear--now, wasn't it?'

'So very good,' Edward answered, laughing, 'that I should almost be inclined myself to suspect some other underlying motive.'

'She is, certainly,' her husband echoed.

'When a man says that and really means it,' Marian replied encouragingly, 'I believe in the end he can always win the girl he has set his heart upon.'

'But I suppose you know,' Edward interrupted, 'that her father has already made up his mind that she's to marry a cousin of hers at Pimento Valley, a planter in the island, and has announced the fact publicly to half Trinidad?'

'Not Mr Tom Dupuy?' Harry cried in amazement.

'Yes, Tom Dupuy--the very man. Then you've met him already?'

'Then you don't like what you've seen so far of Mr Tom?' Marian asked with a smile.

Harry rose and leaned against the piazza pillar with his hands behind him. 'The man's a cad,' he answered briefly.

'If we were in Piccadilly again,' Edward Hawthorn said quietly, 'I should say that was probably a piece of pure class prejudice, Noel; but as we are in Trinidad, and as I happen to know Mr Tom Dupuy by two or three pieces of personal adventure, I don't mind telling you in strict confidence, I cordially agree with you.'

'Ah!' Harry Noel cried with much amusement, clapping him heartily on his broad shoulder. 'So coming to Trinidad has knocked some of that radical humbug and nonsense clean out of you, has it, Teddy? I knew it would, my dear fellow; I knew you'd get rid of it!'

'On the contrary, Mr Noel,' Marian answered with quiet dignity, 'I think it has really made us a great deal more confirmed in our own opinions than we were to begin with. We have suffered a great deal ourselves, you know, since we came to Trinidad.'

Harry flushed in the face a little. 'You needn't tell me all about it, Mrs Hawthorn,' he said uneasily. 'I've heard something about the matter already from the two Dupuys, and all I can say is, I never heard before such a foolish, ridiculous, nonsensical, cock-and-bull prejudice as the one they told me about, in the whole course of my precious existence. If it hadn't been for Nora's sake--I mean for Miss Dupuy's'--and he checked himself suddenly--'upon my word, I really think I should have knocked the fellow down in his uncle's dining-room the very first moment he began to speak about it.'

'Mr Noel,' Marian said, 'I know how absurd it must seem to you, but you can't imagine how much Edward and I have suffered about it since we've been in this island.'

'I can,' Harry answered. 'I can understand it easily. I had a specimen of it myself from those fellows at lunch this morning. I kept as calm as I could outwardly; but, by Jove, Mrs Hawthorn, it made my blood boil over within me to hear the way they spoke of your husband.--Upon my honour, if it weren't for--for Miss Dupuy,' he added thoughtfully, 'I wouldn't stop now a single night to accept that man's hospitality after the way he spoke about you.'

'No, no; do stop,' Marian answered simply. 'We want you so much to marry Nora; and we want to save her from that horrid man her father has chosen for her.'

And then they began unburdening their hearts to Harry Noel with the long arrears of twelve months' continuous confidences. It was such a relief to get a little fresh external sympathy, to be able to talk about it all to somebody just come from England, and entirely free from the taint of West Indian prejudice. They told Harry everything, without reserve; and Harry listened, growing more and more indignant every minute, to the long story of petty slights and undeserved insults. At last he could restrain his wrath no longer. 'It's preposterous,' he cried, walking up and down the piazza angrily, by way of giving vent to his suppressed emotion; 'it's abominable! it's outrageous! it's not to be borne with! The idea of these people, these hole-and-corner nobodies, these miserable, stupid, ignorant noodles, with no more education or manners than an English ploughboy--O yes, my dear fellow, I know what they are--I've seen them in Barbadoes--setting themselves up to be better than you are--there, upon my word I've really no patience with it. I shall flog some of them soundly, some day, before I've done with them; I know I shall. I can't avoid it. But what on earth can have induced you to stop here, my dear Teddy, when you might have gone back again comfortably to England, and have mixed properly in the sort of society you're naturally fitted for?'

Harry Noel paused and hesitated. 'Tastes differ, Mrs Hawthorn,' he answered more soberly. 'For my part, I can't say I feel myself very profoundly interested in the eternal nigger question; though, if a man feels it's his duty to stop and see the thing out to the bitter end, why, of course he ought in that case to stop and see it. But what does rile me is the idea that these wretched Dupuy people should venture to talk in the way they do about such a man as your husband--confound them!'

Tea interrupted his flow of indignation.

But when Harry Noel had ridden away again towards Orange Grove on Mr Dupuy's pony, Hawthorn and his wife stood looking at one another in dubious silence for a few minutes. Neither of them liked to utter the thought that had been uppermost in both their minds from the first moment they saw him in Trinidad.

At last Edward broke the ominous stillness. 'Harry Noel's awfully dark, isn't he, Marian?' he said uneasily.

'Very,' Marian answered in as unconcerned a voice as she could well summon up. 'And so extremely handsome, too, Edward,' she added after a moment's faint pause, as if to turn the current of the conversation.

Neither of them had ever observed in England how exceedingly olive-coloured Harry Noel's complexion really was--in England, to be as dark as a gipsy is of no importance; but now in Trinidad, girt round by all that curiously suspicious and genealogically inquiring society, they couldn't help noticing to themselves what a very dark skin and what curly hair he happened to have inherited.

'And his mother's a Barbadian lady,' Edward went on uncomfortably, pretending to play with a book and a paper-knife.

'She is,' Marian answered, hardly daring to look up at her husband's face in her natural confusion. 'He--he always seems so very fond of his mother, Edward, darling.'

Edward went on cutting the pages of his newly-arrived magazine in grim silence for a few minutes longer; then he said: 'I wish to goodness he could get engaged and married offhand to Nora Dupuy very soon, Marian, and then clear out at once and for ever from this detestable island as quickly as possible.'

'It would be better if he could, perhaps,' Marian answered, sighing deeply. 'Poor dear Nora! I wish she'd take him. She could never be happy with that horrid Dupuy man.'

They didn't dare to speak, one to the other, the doubt that was agitating them; but they both agreed in that half-unspoken fashion that it would be well if Harry pressed his suit soon, before any sudden thunderbolt had time to fall unexpectedly upon his head and mar his chance with poor little Nora.

As Harry Noel rode back to Orange Grove alone, along the level bridle-path, he chanced to drop his short riding-whip at a turn of the road by a broad canepiece. A tall negro was hoeing vigorously among the luxuriant rows of cane close by. The young Englishman called out to him carelessly, as he would have done to a labourer at home: 'Here you, hi, sir, come and pick up my whip, will you!'

The tall negro turned and stared at him. 'Who you callin' to come an' pick up your whip, me fren'?' he answered somewhat savagely.

Noel glanced back at the man with an angry glare. 'You!' he said, pointing with an imperious gesture to the whip on the ground. 'I called you to pick it up for me. Don't you understand English?'

'You is rude gentleman for true,' the old negro responded quietly, continuing his task of hoeing in the canepiece, without any attempt to pick up the whip for the unrecognised stranger. 'If you want de whip picked up, what for you doan't speak to naygur decently? Ole-time folk has proverb, "Please am a good dog, an' him keep doan't cost nuffin." Get down yourself, sah, an' pick up your own whip for you-self if you want him.'

Harry was just on the point of dismounting and following the old negro's advice, with some remote idea of applying the whip immediately after to the back of his adviser, when a younger black man, stepping out hastily from behind a row of canes that had hitherto concealed him, took up the whip and handed it back to him with a respectful salutation. The old man looked on disdainfully while Harry took it; then, as the rider went on with a parting angry glance, he muttered sulkily: 'Who dat man dat you gib de whip to? An' what for you want to gib it him dere, Peter?'

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