Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country: With Copious Notes — John Shaqi
Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country: With Copious NotesWhite, John Pagen
General
Lays and Legends of the English Lake Country: With Copious Notes
White, John Pagen
Lake District (England) -- Poetry; Legends -- England -- Lake District
Roger, his son, the second lord, was engaged in the Earl of
Lancaster's insurrection, and had done much to deserve political
martyrdom in that rebellious age: but a feeling of humanity, such
as is seldom read of in civil wars, and especially in those times,
saved him from execution, when he was taken prisoner with Lancaster
and the rest of his associates. He had received so many wounds in
the battle (of Borough bridge), that he could not be brought before
the judge for the summary trial, which would have sent him to the
hurdle and the gallows. Being looked upon, therefore, as a dying
man, he was respited from the course of law: time enough elapsed,
while he continued in this state, for the heat of resentment to
abate, and Edward of Carnarvon, who, though a weak and most
misguided prince, was not a cruel one, spared his life; an act of
mercy which was the more graceful, because Clifford had insulted
the royal authority in a manner less likely to be forgiven than his
braving it in arms. A pursuivant had served a writ upon him in the
Barons' Chamber, and he made the man eat the wax wherewith the writ
was signed, "in contempt, as it were, of the said King."
He was the first Lord Clifford that was attainted of treason.
His lands and honours were restored in the first year of Edward
III., but he survived the restoration only a few weeks, dying in
the flower of his age, unmarried; but leaving "some base children
behind him, whom he had by a mean woman who was called Julian of
the Bower, for whom he built a little house hard by Whinfell, and
called it Julian's Bower, the lower foundation of which standeth,
and is yet to be seen," said the compiler of the family records,
an hundred and fifty years ago, "though all the walls be down long
since. And it is thought that the love which this Roger bore to
this Julian kept him from marrying any other woman."
Roger de Clifford was succeeded in his titles and estates by his
brother Robert, the third baron, who married Isabella de Berkeley,
sister to Thomas, Lord Berkeley, of Berkeley Castle; in which
Castle, two years after it had rung with "shrieks of death," when
the tragedy of Edward II. was brought to its dreadful catastrophe
there, the marriage was performed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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