Hawkwood needed some such testimony. The Peace of Bretigny had been ratified in 1360; and they who before had not had leisure to be ill, were all becoming seriously indisposed for want of action. As employment did not come, they made it for themselves. If kings could be stupendous scamps, why not commoner men? They waited long enough, as they thought, for hire for their swords, till at last they put the latter to private use. A band was formed, and called “Les Tards Venus,”—the “Come-at-Lasts,”—as if apologetically and modestly expressive of their patience. Some people would have been the better pleased had the self-styled tardy gentlemen been content to “wait a little longer.” The more learned members of the society, perhaps the chaplains, called the band the “Magna Comitiva,” or “Great Band.” A greater band of brigands certainly never existed, the chaplains included! When it is thus said of those worthy gentlemen, of course the expression is based upon the principles, and measured by the standard, of these our own later and degenerate days. Hawkwood and his truculent friends thought they had a vested right to remain in undisturbed possession of every castle, their ownership of which was founded on their having murdered the last proprietor at his own hearth. We have foolish ideas on such matters; and we must only judge of these perfect gentlemen,—so at least historians tell us,—not by the criterion of that Christianity which they professed, but by the customs which they observed. As Mr. Justice Erle remarked the other day, we shall soon have thieves pleading the custom of Hounslow Heath. Hawkwood was one of the most terrible of those men who either made war on their own account, or let out their swords and sinews in the service of any party who promised to pay them, and guaranteed the plunder. He became awfully renowned under the not very menacing title of “John of the Needle.” But his needle was four feet long; and if to “sew up” a person means to slay him, the phrase probably had its origin from the times and the actions of this most ruthless of tailors. He swept, with his English followers, the south of France; where the sound of his bugle and the flutter of his pennon always heralded devastation or death. England and France were at peace at that time, and the King of France complained to his brother of England. The gracious Edward, who thought as little of lying as the Czar Nicholas, gave his “parole de gentilhomme” that he was highly disgusted; but privately he signalled the freebooter with a “Well done, Hawkwood!”