Oh, the strife
Of waves at the stone, some devil threw
In my life's mid-current thwarting God.
—BROWNING.
For Michael Kestyon was a man with a grievance. A just grievance enough since many held that he and not his cousin Rupert should have been the present Earl of Stowmaries.
But possession in those far-off days was even more absolutely an integral part of the law than it is now. Rupert Kestyon was de facto established at Maries Castle, whilst Michael had to begin life by selling his sword or his skin to the highest bidder, and all because his father and grandfather before him had been either very supine or hideously neglectful of their own respective son's interests to enforce the decree of King Edward III anent the family succession.
That the decree existed no one attempted to deny; it was embodied in a document which with other family archives was actually in the possession of Michael Kestyon the pretender. These papers in fact were the only inheritance bequeathed to him by his father, besides a legacy of hatred and covetousness against the usurpers of the name and fortune of Stowmaries. But ye shall judge if the reigning earls were usurpers or not.
It seems that in those distant days when Edward III reigned over England and France, the then Lady of Stowmaries presented her lord with twin boys, born within an hour of another. Fine boys they were, so tradition hath it, well grown and sturdy and as like to one another as two peas lying in the same pod.
The fond mother as she gazed proudly upon these children—who of a truth were each endowed with a powerful pair of lungs—little guessed the mischief which their joint arrival would cause in the ancient and noble family of Kestyon.
According to the laws of military tenure, the eldest of these two boys—older remember than his own brother only by a short hour or so—should have been held to be the heir to the titles, dignities, lands and appurtenances held in fief direct by the Lord of Stowmaries from his suzerain liege Lord Edward III by the Grace of God King of England and of France.
But as evil chance—presided over by some imp of mischief—would have it, the twins—when scarce a few hours old—being placed by my lady's tiring-woman side by side in the bed, presently took to vigorous quarrelling. My lady thereupon was much perturbed and her women were all hastily summoned to her bedside, so that they might administer such soothing draughts as were usual under the circumstances.
When my lady was once more restored to her former quietude she asked for her boys, requesting that the eldest be first placed in her arms.
Alas! the mischief was done! The tiring-woman could not remember which child she had lain on the right side of the bed, and which on the left, nor could her astuteness combined with the adoring mother's searching eyes state positively afterwards which boy was heir to the barony of Stowmaries, and which the mere younger son.
Imagine the confusion which ensued. Stories of innumerable quarrels between the brothers as they grew up to boyhood's estate have been handed down to their posterity. The father himself was at a loss what to do. He had a great love for both his boys, and not knowing which was the elder and which the younger son, he had a vast fear of doing an injustice either to the one or to the other.
What could he do but ask the advice and ascertain the wishes of his suzerain liege? This we are told he did as soon as the children had reached the mature age of ten and owed military service to their lord.
King Edward III we all know was a model of justice and of sound common sense. He declared it impossible that either of the boys should be deprived of what might be his lawful inheritance. Therefore, by a special decree signed by his own hand manual, he declared that on the death of his faithful cousin, the Baron of Stowmaries, the title, estates in fief or military tenure and other lands and appurtenances thereof should devolve jointly on the twin sons of the said lord, and that the first born child in the next generation should then once more reunite in his own person the titles and estates of Stowmaries.
Moreover the King decreed that if at any future time, a Lady of Stowmaries should take it into her gracious head to present her lord with twins, this same rule of succession should apply.
Thus said His Majesty King Edward III, and my lord of Stowmaries was thereby satisfied. The brothers were henceforth brought up as joint heirs of one of the finest baronies in the Kingdom and we hear nothing more of family feuds or dissensions.
That the twins eventually did jointly succeed to their father's title and estates we know from the records anent the twin Barons of Stowmaries who fought under the banner of John of Gaunt in the days of Richard II; and from the fact that King Henry IV in 1410 created the then Baron of Stowmaries, Earl of Stowmaries and Riveaulx we may infer that one of those turbulent twins did have a son who succeeded alone to his father and uncle, and once more united in his own person all dignities and lands belonging to the ancient family.
Thus the carelessness of a tiring-wench had for the time being no further serious consequences on the fortunes of the Kestyons. For some generations to come it seemed that the ladies of Stowmaries had no predilection for twins. But in the year 1552, so the family archives tell us, the wife of John, Earl of Stowmaries—Grand Master of the Ceremonies to King Edward VI—presented her lord with a sturdy pair of boys.
As like to one another as the proverbial peas were these two new scions of the ancient family of Kestyon, and mightily proud of them was their fond mother, but there never was any confusion as to their identity. One of them—Rupert—was born fully two hours before his brother Michael, and was ever after looked upon as his father's heir. Nor, on the death of the Earl, did any one seem to have thought of disputing his sole right to the title and estates of Stowmaries.
Rupert succeeded his father and in his turn was succeeded by his son. But what we do know as a certain fact is that Michael, the younger twin, had a son born to him a full year before his elder brother took unto himself a wife, and that if the decree of King Edward III had been duly enforced by law, Rupert and Michael should have been joint Earls of Stowmaries and it should have been Michael's son—the first born in the next generation—who should have united the title and estates in his own person.
Why Michael did not endeavour to enforce the ancient decree of Edward III we shall never know: there are neither letters nor other documents to explain this supineness, which is all the more inexplicable since it affected the future of his own son even more than his own.
We are concerned with the present generation. With Rupert, Earl of Stowmaries, the direct descendant of the older twin, and with Michael Kestyon, the grandson of the younger.
Such as I have related is the true history of the grievance which this Michael nurtured against his cousin whom he deemed an usurper, and against all his peers, kinsmen and fellow gentlemen for the injustice which they abetted by admitting that usurper as one of themselves.
But unlike his father and grandfather before him Michael was not content to see any one else in possession of the family title and estates, which of a truth should have been his. From his father he had inherited among other family archives the mediæval document embodying the decree of Edward III and bearing that monarch's signature. How and wherefore this had remained as an heirloom in this branch of the family, tradition does not tell us. The fact seems to suggest that the younger twin—Michael—may have had some intention of enforcing his son's claim at a future time—an intention, mayhap, frustrated by death.
The man whom Lord Stowmaries saw at this moment, with flushed face and unsteady voice singing ribald songs to the accompaniment of boisterous laughter, chink of dice and sword, and blasphemous oaths, had at one time taken up his own cause with ardent and heart-whole enthusiasm.
At the age when boyhood first yields to maturity, Michael had lost his father and thereupon had begun to fight for his rights, with all the strength of a turbulent nature, full of instincts of luxury and driven to penury through flagrant injustice. He had spent some of the best years of his life, in a perpetual appeal to the King and to his peers to try his cause and if necessary to find it just. But the King was not fond of settling important questions himself and the Lords' House of Parliament was overbusy re-establishing a number of its own lapsed privileges to bother about a claimant with empty pockets.
Driven from pillar to post, Michael appealed to Common Law, to Chancery and to equity, setting up divers pleas in order to bring his case within the jurisdiction of these respective Courts. He spent all his substance in lawyer's fees, in sworn documents, in meeting constant demands for bribery, the while his kinsman sat comfortably enthroned at Maries Castle paying no heed to a claim, the justice of which one attempted to deny yet which no one was able legally to enforce.
Gradually as his pockets grew more and more empty, as constant rebuffs took the edge off his optimism, Michael carried on the fight with less and less hope if with unabated doggedness.
In the intervals he had sold his sword and his skin to the highest bidder, to Italy or Flanders, to the Emperor or to the King of France. He had led the life of the adventurer, who knows not from day to day whence will come the rations for the morrow, of the soldier of fortune who has neither kindred nor home.
His mother whom he adored—in his own turbulent passionate way—spent a life of humble penury in a remote Kentish village. To this lowly abode of peace Michael returned from time to time from his far-off wanderings in Sicily or Spain; here he would spend some few days in worshipping his mother, until the agony of seeing her patient and serene within measurable sight of starvation drove him frantic from out her doors.
Then he would rush back to London and once more haunt the Courts and the purlieus of Whitehall, swallowing his outbursts of pride in vain supplications for a fresh hearing, in a mad desire to see the King, in licking the dust before the feet of those who might help him to further his cause.
At those times self-deprecation would render him moody; his pleasure-loving nature was swamped beneath the heavy pall of a mother's want, a mother's sorrow and misery. He despised himself for being unable to lift her out of such humiliating penury. She who should be Countess of Stowmaries, one of the greatest ladies in the land, scrubbed her own floors and oft lacked a meal, the while her son, the able-bodied and reckless adventurer, was eating out his heart with the shame of his own impotence.
But what he could not accomplish whilst the scanty means left to him by his father were still at his command, he was totally unable to obtain now that he had not one stiver to offer to those who might have helped him but whose palms seemed forever to be in want of grease.
Blood-money abroad had also become more meagre. The King of France and the Emperor had their own standing armies now, and had less need of mercenary troops than of yore. Michael who in battle sought wounds as another would seek cheap glory, was given but twenty crowns for a sword thrust which he received at Fehrbellin whilst fighting for the Elector of Brandenburg.
He nearly died of the thrust, and afterwards of starvation, for he sent the twenty crowns to his mother, and being considered too enfeebled for active service, he could not immediately obtain further enlistment.
This was but one of the many episodes which had helped to make Michael Kestyon what he now was. A bitter sense of wrong gnawed at his heartstrings, the while he strove to hide his better nature beneath the mask of boisterous gaiety, of a licentious life and reckless gambling.
The buffetings of law officials, the corrupt practises of second rate attorneys, the constant demands on his scanty purse now made up the sum total of his dealings with humanity, when he was not actually in the company of adventurers more profligate, more dissolute than himself.
He saw the better world—that world which was composed of his own kindred—turned, as if in arms against him. Not a friend to give him help save at a price which he could not afford to pay. It was money and always money: money which he could not get, and without which he saw the last chance of getting a hearing for his case vanishing beyond his reach.
The descent from those early boyish days full of idealism and of hope, down to the lowest rung of the social ladder, to the companionship of gamesters and of drunkards, had been overcertain and none too slow. Accustomed to the revelries of camp life, to that light-hearted gaiety so full of exuberance to-day and oft the precursor of a bloody death on the morrow, Michael found the England of the Restoration a mercenary and inhospitable spot.
Among his own kind, mockery of his vain endeavours; among the others—the wastrels—a life of boisterous merrimaking which at any rate made for forgetfulness.