sends him to the wars, that he may win
fame for himself, and thus exchange a shadow for a reality. There the
great dignity that his valor acquired for him places him on an equality
with any one of his ancestors, and he is no longer beholden to them
alone for the world's observance. Thus in his own person he discovers
there is something better than mere hereditary honors; and his heart is
prepared to acknowledge that the entire devotion of a Helen's love is of
more worth than the court-bred smiles of a princess."[33]

It is not extraordinary that, in the first instance, his spirit should
revolt at the idea of marrying his mother's "waiting gentlewoman," or
that he should refuse her; yet when the king, his feudal lord, whose
despotic authority was in this case legal and indisputable, threatens
him with the extremity of his wrath and vengeance, that he should submit
himself to a hard necessity, was too consistent with the manners of the
time to be called _cowardice_. Such forced marriages were not uncommon
even in our own country, when the right of wardship, now vested in the
Lord Chancellor, was exercised with uncontrolled and often cruel
despotism by the sovereign.

There is an old ballad, in which the king bestows a maid of low degree
on a noble of his court, and the undisguised scorn and reluctance of the
knight and the pertinacity of the lady, are in point.

He brought her down full forty pound
Tyed up within a glove,
"Fair maid, I'll give the same to thee,
Go seek another love."

"O I'll have none of your gold," she said,
"Nor I'll have none of your fee;
But your fair bodye I must have,
The king hath granted me."

Sir William ran and fetched her then,
Five hundred pounds in gold,
Saying, "Fair maid, take this to thee,
My fault will ne'er be told."

"'Tis not the gold that shall me tempt,"
These words then answered she;
"But your own bodye I must have,
The king hath granted me."

"Would I had drank the water clear,
When I did drink the wine,
Rather than my shepherd's brat
Should be a ladye of mine!"[34]

Bertram's disgust at the tyranny which has made his freedom the payment
of another's debt, which has united him to a woman whose merits are not
towards him--whose secret love, and long-enduring faith, are yet unknown
and untried--might well make his bride distasteful to him. He flies her
on the very day