266
XLIII. A ROYAL VISIT 272
XLIV. THE FEAST OF KINGS 279

THE BOY CRUSADERS.

CHAPTER I.

A FEUDAL CASTLE.

IT was the age of chain armour and tournaments--of iron barons and
barons' wars--of pilgrims and armed pilgrimages--of forests and forest
outlaws--when Henry III. reigned as King of England, and the feudal
system, though no longer rampant, was still full of life and energy;
when Louis King of France, afterwards canonised as St. Louis, undertook
one of the last and most celebrated of those expeditions known as the
Crusades, and described as 'feudalism's great adventure, and popular
glory.'

At the time when Henry was King of England and when Louis of France was
about to embark for the East, with the object of rescuing the Holy
Sepulchre from the Saracens, there stood on the very verge of
Northumberland a strong baronial edifice, known as the Castle of Wark,
occupying a circular eminence, visible from a great distance, and
commanding such an extensive view to the north as seemed to ensure the
garrison against any sudden inroad on the part of the restless and
refractory Scots. On the north the foundations were washed by the waters
of the Tweed, here broad and deep; and on the south were a little town,
which had risen under the protection of the castle, and,--stretching
away towards the hills of Cheviot,--an extensive park or chase,
abounding with wild cattle and deer and beasts of game. At an earlier
period this castle had been a possession of the famous house of Espec;
and, when in after days it came into the hands of the Montacute Earls of
Salisbury, Edward III. was inspired within its walls with that romantic
admiration of the Countess of Salisbury which resulted in the
institution of the Order of the Garter. During the fifth decade of the
thirteenth century, however, it was the chief seat of Robert, Lord de
Roos, a powerful Anglo-Norman noble, whose father had been one of the
barons of Runnymede and one of the conservators of the Great Charter.

Like most of the fortresses built by the Norman conquerors of England,
Wark consisted of a base-court, a keep, and a barbican in front of the
base-court. The sides of the walls were fortified with innumerable
angles, towers, and buttresses, and surmounted with strong battlements
and hornworks. For greater security the castle was encompassed, save
towards the Tweed, with a moat or deep ditch, filled w