The White Lady of Hazelwood A Tale of the Fourteenth Century   By: Emily Sarah Holt (1836-1893)

Her is another of Emily Holt's books set in the middle ages, this time at the end of the fourteenth century. We are kept constantly aware of this by the quaint words and expressions the players in the drama are always using. Many of these phrases have dropped out of the language, but sometimes the usage is very illuminating, as we can see how we got some modern expression or spelling.

On the whole in this story life goes on quite evenly, with not too many of those murders that aspiring members of the noblest families of England used to perpetrate in those days.

The heroine of the story is the "White Lady", the Countess of Montfort, who had fought bravely to bring her son back to power, but who was then ignored by him for many years until her death. For that reason the story is very moving. One part of the story I liked very much was when a Mercer, a dealer in rich cloths, is trying to tempt his customers to buy his wares. The variety of his goods, and the prices of them, make one realise what a wealthy trade he was engaged in.

THE WHITE LADY OF HAZELWOOD, BY EMILY SARAH HOLT.

PREFACE.

On the crowded canvas of the fourteenth century stands out as one of its most prominent figures that of the warrior Countess of Montfort. No reader of Froissart's Chronicle can forget the siege of Hennebon, and the valiant part she played in the defence of her son's dominions. Actuated by more personal motives than the peasant maid, she was nevertheless the Joan of Arc of her day, and of Bretagne.

What became of her?

After the restoration of her son, we see no more of that brave and tender mother. She drops into oblivion. Her work was done. Those who have thought again of her at all have accepted without question the only extant answer the poor response of a contemporary romance, according to which she dwelt in peace, and closed an honoured and cherished life in a castle in the duchy of her loving and grateful son.

It has been reserved for the present day to find the true reply to draw back the veil from the "bitter close of all," and to show that the hardest part of her work began when she laid down her sword, and the ending years of her life were the saddest and weariest portion. Never since the days of Lear has such a tale been told of a parent's sacrifice and of a child's ingratitude. In the royal home of the Duke of Bretagne, there was no room for her but for whose love and care he would have been a homeless fugitive. The discarded mother was imprisoned in a foreign land, and left to die.

Let us hope that as it is supposed in the story, the lonely, broken heart turned to a truer love than that of her cherished and cruel son even to His who says "My mother" of all aged women who seek to do the will of God, and who will never forsake them that trust in Him.

CHAPTER ONE.

AT THE PATTY MAKER'S SHOP.

"Man wishes to be loved expects to be so: And yet how few live so as to be loved!"

Rev Horatius Bonar, D.D.

It was a warm afternoon in the beginning of July warm everywhere; and particularly so in the house of Master Robert Altham, the patty maker, who lived at the corner of Saint Martin's Lane, where it runs down into the Strand. Shall we look along the Strand? for the time is 1372, five hundred years ago, and the Strand was then a very different place from the street as we know it now.