When Knighthood Was in Flower

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 17498-h.htm or 17498-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/9/17498/17498-h/17498-h.htm) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/4/9/17498/17498-h.zip)

+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | Transcriber's Note: | | | | A number of obvious typographical errors have been corrected | | in this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | | this document. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+

WHEN KNIGHTHOOD WAS IN FLOWER

or, the Love Story of Charles Brandon and Mary Tudor the King's Sister, and Happening in the Reign of His August Majesty King Henry the Eighth

Rewritten and Rendered into Modern English from Sir Edwin Caskoden's Memoir

by

EDWIN CASKODEN [Charles Major]

Julia Marlowe Edition With Scenes from the Play

[Illustration]

Indianapolis, U.S.A. The Bowen-Merrill Company Publishers Copyright, Eighteen Hundred Ninety Eight, and Nineteen Hundred One by The Bowen-Merrill Company Press of Braunworth & Co. Bookbinders and Printers Brooklyn, N.Y.

"There lived a Knight, when Knighthood was in flow'r, Who charmed alike the tilt-yard and the bow'r."

To My Wife

CONTENTS

The Caskodens 1

I The Duel 6

II How Brandon Came to Court 13

III The Princess Mary 23

IV A Lesson in Dancing 45

V An Honor and an Enemy 74

VI A Rare Ride to Windsor 89

VII Love's Fierce Sweetness 102

VIII The Trouble in Billingsgate Ward 128

IX Put Not Your Trust in Princesses 146

X Justice, O King! 169

XI Louis XII a Suitor 182

XII Atonement 202

XIII A Girl's Consent 213

XIV In the Siren Country 226

XV To Make a Man of Her 244

XVI A Hawking Party 256

XVII The Elopement 268

XVIII To the Tower 289

XIX Proserpina 302

XX Down into France 320

XXI Letters from a Queen 337

"Cloth of gold do not despise, Though thou be match'd with cloth of frize; Cloth of frize, be not too bold, Though thou be match'd with cloth of gold."

Inscription on a label affixed to Brandon's lance under a picture of Mary Tudor and Charles Brandon, at Strawberry Hill.

The Play

The initial performance of the play was given in St. Louis on the evening of November 26, 1900, and the first New York production was on the fourteenth of the following January.

Its instant and continued success is well known. A prominent dramatic critic of the press has said:

"Julia Marlowe fully realized the popular idea of the Mary described by the novelist. She seemed to revel in the role. With its instantaneous changes from gay daring to anger and fear, from coyness to the dignity that hedges a princess, from resentment to ardent love, the part of Mary Tudor gives Julia Marlowe full scope for the display of her talent. She has never appeared to better or as good advantage as in this play for the reason that it gives opportunity for broader and more effective lights and shades than anything she has hitherto given us."

When Knighthood Was in Flower

When Knighthood Was in Flower....

The Caskodens

We Caskodens take great pride in our ancestry. Some persons, I know, hold all that to be totally un-Solomonlike and the height of vanity, but they, usually, have no ancestors of whom to be proud. The man who does not know who his great-grandfather was, naturally enough would not care what he was. The Caskodens have pride of ancestry because they know both who and what.