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"It was a good and holy hermit, sir, the pious clerk of Copmanhurst, that you wot of, who played many a prank with us in the days that we knew King Richard. Ah, noble sir, that was a jovial time and a good priest." "They say the holy priest is sure of the next bishopric, my love," said Rowena. "His Majesty hath taken him into much favor.
In Scott's heroes, on the other hand, there is no characteristic so typical or so worthy of humour as their disposition to linger over their meals. The conviviality of the Clerk of Copmanhurst or of Mr. Pleydell, and the thoroughly solid things they are described as eating, is one of the most perfect of Scott's poetic touches. In short, Mr.
"Think what you do, my masters," said the Prior, "ere you put your hand on the Church's patrimony These things are 'inter res sacras', and I wot not what judgment might ensue were they to be handled by laical hands." "I will take care of that, reverend Prior," said the Hermit of Copmanhurst; "for I will wear them myself."
"Holy father," said the knight, "upon whose countenance it hath pleased Heaven to work such a miracle, permit a sinful layman to crave thy name?" "Thou mayst call me," answered the hermit, "the Clerk of Copmanhurst, for so I am termed in these parts They add, it is true, the epithet holy, but I stand not upon that, as being unworthy of such addition.
"A captive to my sword and to my lance, noble Captain," replied the Clerk of Copmanhurst; "to my bow and to my halberd, I should rather say; and yet I have redeemed him by my divinity from a worse captivity.
Signed by us upon the eve of St Withold's day, under the great trysting oak in the Hart-hill Walk, the above being written by a holy man, Clerk to God, our Lady, and St Dunstan, in the Chapel of Copmanhurst."
So saying, he stepped to the stone basin, in which the waters of the fountain as they fell formed bubbles which danced in the white moonlight, and took so long a drought as if he had meant to exhaust the spring. "When didst thou drink as deep a drought of water before, Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst?" said the Black Knight.
"'Drink hael', Holy Clerk of Copmanhurst!" answered the warrior, and did his host reason in a similar brimmer. "Holy Clerk," said the stranger, after the first cup was thus swallowed, "I cannot but marvel that a man possessed of such thews and sinews as thine, and who therewithal shows the talent of so goodly a trencher-man, should think of abiding by himself in this wilderness.
When he got to me he gave me a steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up to me, saying: "Ease this down for a fellow, will you?" I eased the gravestone down till it rested on the ground, and in doing so noticed that it bore the name of "John Baxter Copmanhurst," with "May, 1839," as the date of his death.
"Pardon my freedom, noble sirs," he said, "but in these glades I am monarch they are my kingdom; and these my wild subjects would reck but little of my power, were I, within my own dominions, to yield place to mortal man. Now, sirs, who hath seen our chaplain? where is our curtal Friar? A mass amongst Christian men best begins a busy morning." No one had seen the Clerk of Copmanhurst.
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