ath
which, though he did not trouble himself about all other oaths, he was
never known to break. It was not for some years after he had registered
this vow, that he was enabled to keep it.

Had Ivanhoe been present at Ronen, when the King meditated his horrid
designs against his nephew, there is little doubt that Sir Wilfrid would
have prevented them, and rescued the boy: for Ivanhoe was, as we need
scarcely say, a hero of romance; and it is the custom and duty of all
gentlemen of that profession to be present on all occasions of historic
interest, to be engaged in all conspiracies, royal interviews, and
remarkable occurrences: and hence Sir Wilfrid would certainly have
rescued the young Prince, had he been anywhere in the neighborhood of
Rouen, where the foul tragedy occurred. But he was a couple of hundred
leagues off, at Chalus, when the circumstance happened; tied down in his
bed as crazy as a Bedlamite, and raving ceaselessly in the Hebrew tongue
(which he had caught up during a previous illness in which he was tended
by a maiden of that nation) about a certain Rebecca Ben Isaacs, of whom,
being a married man, he never would have thought, had he been in his
sound senses. During this delirium, what were politics to him, or he to
politics? King John or King Arthur was entirely indifferent to a man
who announced to his nurse-tenders, the good hermits of Chalus before
mentioned, that he was the Marquis of Jericho, and about to marry
Rebecca the Queen of Sheba. In a word, he only heard of what had
occurred when he reached England, and his senses were restored to him.
Whether was he happier, sound of brain and entirely miserable, (as any
man would be who found so admirable a wife as Rowena married again,)
or perfectly crazy, the husband of the beautiful Rebecca? I don't know
which he liked best.

Howbeit the conduct of King John inspired Sir Wilfrid with so thorough
a detestation of that sovereign, that he never could be brought to take
service under him; to get himself presented at St. James's, or in any
way to acknowledge, but by stern acquiescence, the authority of the
sanguinary successor of his beloved King Richard. It was Sir Wilfrid of
Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the Barons of England to league
together and extort from the king that famous instrument and palladium
of our liberties at present in the British Museum, Great Russell Street,
Bloomsbury--the Magna Charta. His name does not naturally appear in