Great Britain -- History -- Tudors, 1485-1603 -- Fiction; Historical fiction
The Lord Lovell made Hugh Raket tell all over again his story of how
they had contended with the bailiff. For, the first time, he had not
been very attentive. But now he bent his brows firmly on the face of
this cunning bondsman and gave him all his mind. And then it speedily
appeared to him that it was this fellow that had really moved in the
resistance to the bailiff, and that Barty of the Comb and Corbit Jock
had had little to do with it, for they were simple, slow fellows. So
the Young Lovell frowned upon Hugh Raket and called him a naughty knave,
for the Young Lovell prized good order in his dominions above
everything.
The bondsman began to cry out then, that if they had paid their
tributes, heriots and what not to the bailiff of the false pretenders,
they would have none wherewith to pay the Young Lovell’s bailiff when he
came in turn as come he would.
"Now are you a very naughty fellow," the Young Lovell cut into his
outcry, "for well ye knew ye thought I should never come again, but was
away amongst the false Scots and dead, or amongst the false witches and
worse. So ye were minded to escape all your suits and services for
ever. And, for the bailiff of a great lord, proclaimed with drums upon
his hill, he is no person for such scum and vermin as ye are to protest
against, or against whom to cry out to lawyers. It is for you to do
your services to those whom God for the time sees fit to set over you,
and to our Lord the King and the Prince Bishop and the Lord Warden and
others. For, if such fellows as you are to question whom ye shall pay
and whom ye shall not pay, what peace or order should we have in these
my lands? Nay, we shall see ye rise up against mine own bailiffs, so
that, by God His sorrow, I must speedily come against ye with fire and
brands...."
The Lord Lovell set his teeth and the bondsman shrank back.
Nevertheless, he mumbled that they were very poor folk and could never
pay two sets of masters, the one against the law and the other their
rightful lord.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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