My father loved him best of us all, and trusted and
believed him; for he was the youngest child and others hated him-
these qualities being in all ages sufficient to win a parent's dearest
love; and he had a smooth persuasive tongue, with an admirable gift of
lying- and these be qualities which do mightily assist a blind
affection to cozen itself. I was wild- in troth I might go yet farther
and say very wild, though 'twas a wildness of an innocent sort,
since it hurt none but me, brought shame to none, nor loss, nor had in
it any taint of crime or baseness, or what might not beseem mine
honorable degree.
'Yet did my brother Hugh turn these faults to good account- he
seeing that our brother Arthur's health was but indifferent, and
hoping the worst might work him profit were I swept out of the path-
so- but 'twere a long tale, good my liege, and little worth the
telling. Briefly, then, this brother did deftly magnify my faults
and make them crimes; ending his base work with finding a silken
ladder in mine apartments- conveyed thither by his own means- and
did convince my father by this, and suborned evidence of servants
and other lying knaves, that I was minded to carry off my Edith and
marry with her, in rank defiance of his will.
'Three years of banishment from home and England might make a
soldier and a man of me, my father said, and teach me some degree of
wisdom. I fought out my long probation in the continental wars,
tasting sumptuously of hard knocks, privation, and adventure; but in
my last battle I was taken captive, and during the seven years that
have waxed and waned since then, a foreign dungeon hath harbored me.
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