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Updated: May 11, 2025
"Dost thou know, my Stephen, thy way through this desolate country? for verily the traces of the road are but slight." "My lord, the night grows darker, and the air seems full of snow. Had we not better return and seek shelter within the walls of Hamelsham? I fear we have lost the way utterly, and shall never reach Michelham Priory tonight."
"Sir Ralph, son of the rebellious baron of Herstmonceux; the mayor of the disaffected town of Hamelsham; and a young friar, formerly a favourite page of the Earl of Leicester." "Why didst thou not hang them on the first oak big enough to sustain such acorns?" "I reserved them for the royal judgment, so close at hand."
The very thought that his hand actually had administered the fatal draught was in itself sufficiently painful. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and Martin left it. The poor burgher in the next cell, groaning in spirit, needs far more compassion. He was Mayor of Hamelsham, and great in the wool trade. He had at home a bustling, active wife, mighty at the spindle and loom.
We will not follow the royal army on its onward march to the seacoast, where they hoped to secure the two Cinque Ports Winchelsea and Pevensey, so as to keep open their communications with the continent. How Peter of Savoy, the then lord of the "Eagle," entertained them at the Norman castle, which had arisen on the ruins of Anderida; how they sacked Hamelsham and ravaged Herstmonceux.
The money must be raised, or I will send the good citizens of Hamelsham their mayor bit by bit, an ear to begin with. A man waits without, give him thy instructions to thy people. Farewell!"
The wild heath around is crisp with frost and white with snow, it appears a dense solitude; away to the east lies the town of Hamelsham, or Hailsham; to the west the downs about Lewes; to the south, at a short distance, one sees the lofty towers and monastic buildings of a new and thriving community, surrounded by a broad and deep moat; to the north copse wood, brake, heath, dell, and dense forest, in various combinations and endless variety, as far as the lodge of Cross in Hand, so called from the crusaders who took the sacred sign in their hands, and started for the earthly Jerusalem not so many years agone.
Hence they found the poor mayor of Hamelsham safe and sound, only a little less afraid of the "merrie men" than of Drogo; for often had they rifled the castle and robbed the hen roosts of his town. But all their efforts failed to open Martin's door, and they were at their wits' end what to do.
"And what right hast thou to arrest me?" said the mayor. "Good mayor, hast thou not stirred up thy town of Hamelsham, thy puissant butchers and bakers, to resist the good king and to send aid to the rebellious Earl of Leicester, may the fiends rive him! Wherefore I might, without further parley, hang thee to this beech, which never bore a worthier acorn."
It was what the French call un mauvais quart d'heure. The sun had arisen for some hours when the solitude of the forest was broken by the tread of three strangers travellers, who trod one of its most verdant glades. The one was a brother preacher of the order of Saint Francis. The second, a knight clad in hunting attire. The third, the mayor, the headman of the borough of Hamelsham.
Across the woods came the knell of parting day, the curfew from the tower of Hamelsham: the "lowing herd wound slowly o'er the lea" from the Dicker, when two friars came in sight, who wore the robe of Saint Francis, and approached the gateway. "There be some of those 'kittle cattle, the new brethren," said the old porter from his grated window in the gateway tower over the bridge.
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