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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 27/6/2018, SPi
A S S O C I A T I V E PO L I T I C A L C U L T U R E
I N T H E H O L Y R O MA N E M P I R E
OXFORD HISTORICAL MONOGRAPHS
The Oxford Historical Monographs series publishes some of the best

Oxford University doctoral theses on historical topics, especially
those likely to engage the interest of a broad academic readership.
Editors
P. CLAVIN J. INNES
J. McDOUGALL D. PARROTT J. SMITH
S. A. SMITH J. L. WATTS W. WHYTE
Associative Political
Culture in the Holy
Roman Empire
Upper Germany, 1346–1521
DU NC AN H AR DY
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Duncan Hardy 2018
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2018
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
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rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
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Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Acknowledgements
Stemming as it does from my doctoral thesis, this book has been several
years in the making, and in that time I have benefited from the assistance
and counsel of many people and institutions. Above all, I am very grateful
to my doctoral supervisor (and, latterly, the corresponding editor of this
book), John Watts. Since my undergraduate days, when he first encour-
aged my interest in fifteenth-century European history, he has been an
unfailing source of generous support, judicious advice, and intellectually
stimulating conversation. The examiners of my thesis, Len Scales and
Lyndal Roper, have refined my thinking about German history in differ-
ent ways. I thank them for their ideas and support as I have worked on
preparing this monograph and finding new academic positions since
completing the doctorate, and also for involving me in wider communities
of scholars of medieval and early modern Germany. I am also grateful to
Joachim Whaley for his detailed feedback on earlier versions of this text,
and his insightful ideas about how I might situate this book’s findings and
implications within the wider history and historiography of the Holy
Roman Empire.
I have learned a great deal from the community of medievalists and
early modernists at Oxford, and this book has benefited, directly or
indirectly, from the insights of Natalia Nowakowska, Tracey Sowerby,
Ian Forrest, Benjamin Thompson, Hannah Skoda, Felicity Heal, and Sue
Doran. In particular, my warmest thanks are due to Chris Wickham,
whose work has shaped much of my thinking about pre-modern Europe,
and who has been very generous in providing perceptive feedback and
timely support for many of my academic endeavours. Thanks are also
owed to fellow early career scholars in the UK and beyond, with whom
I have enjoyed thought-provoking conversations over the last few years:
Ben Pope, Mark Whelan, Alexandra Kaar, Levi Roach, Edmund Wareham,
and Martin Christ among the Germanists; and, among those working on
other regions, Eliza Hartrich, Oren Margolis, Patrick Lantschner, Ilya
Afanasyev, Tom Johnson, Erin Maglaque, Tom Hamilton, Kevin Lewis,
Emily Winkler, and Jenn Depold.
The staff of all the archives and libraries listed in this book’s bibliog-
raphy have all assisted me in one way or another, and I am particularly
grateful to the archivists of the Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (most
especially Prof. Dr. Volker Rödel), where I conducted extensive research
vi Acknowledgements
in 2012. The debt that this book owes to the Generallandesarchiv was
further cemented by the decision of its Förderverein to award the thesis
upon which it is based the 2017 Johann Daniel Schöpflin Prize.
The researching and writing of this book were made possible by several
funding bodies and institutions. The doctoral work from which it
derives was funded by Jesus College, Oxford (particularly through the
T.E. Lawrence Award for Mediaeval History), an Arts and Humanities
Research Council Doctoral Studentship (2011–14), a German History
Society Postgraduate Bursary (2014), and a Scouloudi Fellowship at the
Institute of Historical Research (2014–15). My subsequent preparation of
this monograph was enabled by generous support from the Wiener-
Anspach Foundation during my time at the Université libre de Bruxelles
(2015–16), Trinity College, Cambridge, where I took up a Title
A Fellowship in 2016, and, latterly, the University of Central Florida.
I am especially grateful to my colleagues at UCF for their warm welcome
and the many ways in which they have helped me to settle into full-time
academic life, facilitating my attempts to carve out the time to finish
writing up this book.
Finally, I am grateful to my family—my wife Alison, and my parents
Fiona and Adam—for their love and patience over the years, which have
underpinned everything I have done.
Contents
List of Figures and Maps ix

List of Abbreviations xi
Note on Usage xv
Introduction 1
I. SHARED AND INTERCONNECTIVE

STRUCTURES AND P RACTIC ES
1. Documentary Culture and Ritual 21
2. Arbitration and Para-Judicial Mediation 41
3. Feuding and Warfare 56
4. Lordship and Administration 69
I I . A S S O C I A T I O N S A N D AS S O C I A T I V E
P OLI TI C AL CU LT UR E
5. Associations in Comparative Perspective: The Continuum
of Alliances and Leagues 93
6. The Functions of Alliances and Leagues: Assistance and
Adjudication 123
7. Associations and the Discourses of Peace, Common
Weal, and Empire 141
8. Beyond Alliances and Leagues: The Associative Character
of Political Life in the Empire 159
I II. ASSO C IAT IV E P O LITIC AL CULTUR E

I N A C T I O N : F O U R CA S E S T UD I E S
9. The ‘Town War’, c. 1376–89 179
10. Upper Germany in the Reign of Sigismund
of Luxemburg, c. 1410–37 198
viii Contents
11. Burgundian Rule on the Upper Rhine and its Aftermath,
c. 1468–77 215
12. The Age of Imperial Reform, c. 1486–1521 233
Conclusion 256
Bibliography 265
Index 289
List of Figures and Maps
Figures
1. Illustration (detail) from the Diebold Lauber workshop
Schwabenspiegel (c. 1440) depicting the king of the Romans
distributing Urkunden. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels,
Cabinet des Manuscrits, ms. 14689–91, fol. 95v 28
2. 1439 alliance treaty of the bishop of Strasbourg, the free and
imperial cities of Alsace, the lords of Rappoltstein and Lichtenberg,
and several knights. ADBR G139/3, author’s photograph 29
3. 1479 renewal treaty of the alliance between Zurich, Bern, Lucerne,
Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Glarus, Fribourg, and Solothurn
on the one hand and the bishop of Strasbourg on the other.
ADBR G153, author’s photograph 29
4. Illustration from the Diebold Lauber workshop Schwabenspiegel
(c. 1440) depicting the electors of the Empire swearing an oath on
holy relics. Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des
Manuscrits, ms. 14689–91, fol. 150r 36
(c. 1440) depicting a prisoner making a vow. Bibliothèque Royale
de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des Manuscrits, ms. 14689–91,
fol. 216v 37
(c. 1440) depicting a feudal oath being sworn on holy relics.
Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des Manuscrits,
ms. 14689–91, fol. 183v 38
(c. 1440) depicting the swearing of oaths before God. Bibliothèque
Royale de Belgique, Brussels, Cabinet des Manuscrits, ms.
14689–91, fol. 167r 39
8. 1420 treaty of the Society of the Leopard with Bishop Wilhelm
of Strasbourg. Detail showing the slot (labelled ‘Gesellschafft’) for
the Society’s collective seal, now missing. ADBR G136/2, author’s
photograph 106
9. Illustration (detail) from Diebold Schilling the Elder’s Spiezer
Chronik (1484) depicting the swearing of a Burgrecht-alliance
between the family of the count of Kyburg and the city of Bern.
Burgerbibliothek, Bern, Mss.h.h.I.16, fol. 152. Image from
www.e-codices.unifr.ch under a Creative Commons license;
used with permission 120
x List of Figures and Maps

10. Copy (c. 1540) of a late fifteenth-century depiction of a council
session (Ratssitzung) of Count Eberhard III of Württemberg
(1362[?]–1417) and his councillors. Landesmuseum Württemberg,
Stuttgart, WLM inv. Nr 2735. Image from Wikimedia Commons
under a Public Domain license 171
11. Depiction of an arbitrational Tag in Mainz in 1419, conducted
by the archbishops of Mainz, Trier, and Cologne to resolve the
disputes between the Count Palatine, their ally, and the margrave
of Baden. The caption also mentions the presence of the duke of
Saxony and the margrave of Brandenburg. From Eberhard
Windeck’s chronicle of the life of Sigismund (c. 1430–40).
Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Cod. 13.975.
Eberhard Windeck, Sigismundbuch, fol. 127v 210
12. The Quaternion, as depicted in a woodcut in Hartmann Schedel’s
‘Nuremberg World Chronicle’. Hartmann Schedel, Buch der
croniken und geschichten mit figuren und pildnussen von anbeginn
der welt bis auf unnsere Zeit (Nuremberg, 1493), p. CLXXXIII.
Image from Wikimedia Commons under a Public Domain
license 258
Maps
1. Significant geographical features and customary regions of the
Upper Rhine and Swabia, c. 1346–1521 xvi
2. Notable urban centres in the southern Holy Roman Empire,
c. 1346–1521. Solid circles represent free or imperial cities, while
hollow circles represent towns that were subject to an intermediary
lord for at least some of this period xvii
List of Abbreviations
ADBR Archives Départementales du Bas-Rhin
ADHR Archives Départementales du Haut-Rhin
AEA Amtliche Sammlung der ältern eidgenössischen Abschiede, ed. J. Vogel
et al. (8 vols, Zurich, 1856–86)
AMC Archives Municipales de Colmar
AMH Archives Municipales de Haguenau
AMM Archives Municipales de Mulhouse
AMS Archives Municipales de Sélestat
AUWG Ausgewählte Urkunden zur württembergischen Geschichte, ed.
E. Schneider (Stuttgart, 1911)
AVCUS Archives de la Ville et de la Communauté Urbaine de Strasbourg
BC Basler Chroniken, ed. W. Vischer et al. (8 vols, Leipzig/Basel,
1872–1945)
BTBC ‘Bendicht Tschachtlans Berner Chronik’, in Quellen zur Schweizer
Geschichte, ed. G. Stuber et al. (25 vols, Basel, 1877–1906), I,
188–298
CDM Cartulaire de Mulhouse, ed. X. Mossmann (4 vols, Strasbourg,
1883–90)
CDN Chartrier de Nidernai, ed. C. Heider (2000) <https://www.grandest.
fr/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/liste-chartes.pdf>
CKK Chronik des Konstanzer Konzils 1414–1418 von Ulrich Richental, ed.
T.M. Buck (Stuttgart, 2010)
COS Die Chroniken der oberrheinischen Städte. Straßburg, ed. C. Hegel
(2 vols, Leipzig, 1870–1)
CSZ Chronik der Stadt Zürich. Mit Fortsetzungen, ed. J. Dierauer (Basel,
1900)
DPIP Volumen rerum Germanicarum novum, sive de pace imperii publica
libri V, ed. J.P. Datt ([Stuttgart?], 1698)
FUB Fürstenbergisches Urkundenbuch, ed. S. Riezler (7 vols, Tübingen,
1877–91)
GGRS Geschichte des großen rheinischen Städtebundes, ed. K.A. Schaab
(2 vols, Mainz, 1843–5)
GHW Geschichte des Herzogthums Würtenberg unter der Regierung der
Graven, ed. C.F. Sattler (4 vols, Tübingen, 1767–8)
GLA Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe
HLS Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz <http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/>
HRG Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte, ed. W. Stammler
et al. (5 vols, Berlin, 1964–98)
HSA Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart
xii List of Abbreviations

HZB Historia Zaringo-Badensis, ed. J.D. Schöpflin (7 vols, Karlsruhe,
1763–6)
KC Klingenberger Chronik, ed. A. Henne (Gotha, 1861)
LDM Lexikon des Mittelalters, ed. R. Auty et al. (10 vols, Munich/Zurich,
1977–99)
LUB Liechtensteinisches Urkundenbuch, ed. B. Bilgeri (2 vols, Vaduz,
1948–65)
MGHCA Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Constitutiones et acta publica
imperatorum et regum, ed. L. Weiland et al. (11 vols, Weimar,
1893–2003)
MGHFI Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Fontes iuris Germanici antique,
Nova series, ed. K.A. Eckhardt et al. (8 vols, Weimar/Göttingen/
Hannover, 1950–2006)
MHAEB Monuments de l’histoire de l’ancien évêché de Bâle, ed. J. Trouillat
(5 vols, Porrentruy, 1852–67)
PCKAA Politische Correspondenz des Kurfürsten Albrecht Achilles, ed.
F. Priebatsch (3 vols, Leipzig, 1894–8)
QBL Quellensammlung der badischen Landesgeschichte, ed. F.J. Mone
(4 vols, Karlsruhe, 1848–67)
QGFDS Quellen zur Geschichte Friedrich’s des Siegreichen, ed. C. Hofmann
and K. Menzel (2 vols, Munich, 1862–3)
RA Neue und vollständigere Sammlung der Reichs-Abschiede, ed. H.C. von
Senckenberg and J.J. Schmauß (4 vols, Frankfurt, 1747)
RCDFIII Regesta chronologico-diplomatica Friderici III. Romanorum Imperatoris.
(Regis IV.). Auszug aus den . . . Reichsregistraturbüchern vom Jahre
1440–1493, ed. J. Chmel (2 vols, Vienna, 1859)
REC Regesta episcoporum Constantiensium. Regesten zur Geschichte der
Bischöfe von Konstanz, ed. K.J. Rieder et al. (5 vols, Innsbruck,
1895–1931)
RI Regesta Imperii, ed. J.F. Böhmer et al. (14 vols, Cologne/Vienna/
Innsbruck, 1839–2012) <http://www.regesta-imperii.de/>
RKS Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores. Staatschriften des späteren
Mittelalters, vol. 6: Reformation Kaiser Siegmunds, ed. A. Hierseman
(Stuttgart, 1964)
RMBH Regesten der Markgrafen von Baden und Hachberg, ed. R. Fester et al.
(4 vols, Innsbruck, 1892–1915)
RTA Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Ältere Reihe, ed. J. Weizsäcker et al.
(22 vols, Gotha etc., 1867–2013)
RTAJR Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Jüngere Reihe. Deutsche Reichstagsakten unter
Kaiser Karl V., ed. A. Kluckhohn et al. (21 vols, Gotha etc.,
1893–2015)
RTAMR Deutsche Reichstagsakten. Mittlere Reihe. Deutsche Reichstagskaten
unter Maximilian I., ed. H. Angermeier et al. (9 vols, Göttingen,
1972–2014)
List of Abbreviations xiii

RTT Des Heil. Römischen Reichs, Teutscher Nation/ReichsTags Theatrum.
wie selbiges/unter Keÿser Friedrichs V. allerhöchsten Regierung/von Anno
MCCCCXL. bis MCCCCXCIII. gestanden . . . , ed. J.J. Müller ( Jena,
1713)
RUB Rappoltsteinisches Urkundenbuch, ed. K. Albrecht (5 vols, Colmar,
1891–9)
SAC ‘Straszburgische Archiv-Chronik’, in Code historique et diplomatique
de la ville de Strasbourg. Tome premier. Deuxième Partie (Strasbourg,
1843), pp. 131–220
SBE Staatsarchiv des Kantons Bern
SBL Staatsarchiv des Kantons Basel-Landschaft
SBS Staatsarchiv des Kantons Basel-Stadt
SF Stadtarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau
SLU Staatsarchiv des Kantons Luzern
SZH Staatsarchiv des Kantons Zürich
TLA Tiroler Landesarchiv Innsbruck
TRA Das Teutsche Reichs-Archiv, vol. 12: Des Teutschen Reichs-Archivs
Partis Specialis Continuatio III. . . . Dritter Absatz, ed. J.C. Lünig
(Leipzig, 1713)
UAODSB Die Urkunden und Akten der oberdeutschen Städtebünde vom 13.
Jahrhundert bis 1549, ed. K. Ruser et al. (3 vols, Göttingen,
1979–2005)
UBASG Urkundenbuch der Abtei Sanct Gallen, ed. H. Wartmann et al. (6 vols,
Zurich, 1863–1955)
UBB Urkundenbuch der Stadt Basel, ed. R. Wackernagel et al. (11 vols,
Basel, 1890–1910)
UBE Urkundenbuch der Stadt Esslingen, ed. A. Diehl (2 vols, Stuttgart,
1899–1905)
UBF Urkundenbuch der Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau, ed. H. Schreiber
(2 vols, Freiburg, 1828–9)
UBR Urkundenbuch der Stadt Rottweil, ed. H. Günther (Stuttgart, 1896)
UBS Urkundenbuch der Stadt Strassburg, ed. J. Fritz et al. (7 vols,
Strasbourg, 1879–1900)
UGKF Urkunden zur Geschichte des Kurfürsten Friedrichs des Ersten von der
Pfalz, ed. C.J. Kremer (Mannheim, 1766)
UGSB Urkunden zur Geschichte des schwäbischen Bundes (1488–1533), ed.
K. Klüpfel (2 vols, Stuttgart, 1846–53)
USAA Die Urkunden des Stadtarchivs Aarau, ed. G. Boner (Aarau, 1942)
USGÖA Urkunden zur Schweizer Geschichte aus österreichischen Archiven, ed.
R. Thommen (5 vols, Basel, 1899–1935)
WLB Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart
Note on Usage
There are no universal conventions for writing about the pre-modern

history of German-speaking Europe in English, so the following decisions
about style and usage have been made for the sake of consistency in
this book. The adjectival and adverbial forms of ‘Holy Roman Empire’
are ‘imperial’ and ‘imperially’ (the equivalents of the German prefix Reichs-).
Place-names are given in the majority language of the country or region
in which they are now located (so Strasbourg, not Straßburg; Sélestat, not
Schlettstadt; Fribourg, not Freiburg im Üchtland). Widely used English
forms have been employed for those places that have them (so Constance,
not Konstanz; Nuremberg, not Nürnberg; Lucerne, not Luzern; Zurich,
not Zürich), but these have been avoided where they are disputed or
antiquated (so Bern, not Berne; Basel, not Basle; Regensburg, not
Ratisbon). The most well-established versions of the names of the kings
and emperors of the Romans in English are used, where these differ from
the modern German forms (so Charles IV and V, not Karl; Wenceslas, not
Wenzel; Rupert, not Ruprecht; Sigismund, not Sigmund; Frederick III,
not Friedrich). However, all other names of German-speakers have been
given in their modern German form, or in the form used in the primary
source(s) if there is no modern version of the name. Titles are given in
their English form, and noble, knightly, or toponymic names preceded
by a title consequently employ the English ‘of ’ to remain consistent
(Margrave Bernhard I of Baden, Bishop Wilhelm II of Strasbourg, Lord
Smassmann I of Rappoltstein, Duke Sigmund of Austria-Tyrol). In the
absence of a title, the names remain entirely in German (Smassmann von
Rappoltstein, Eglolff von Wartemberg). Where a German, Latin, or French
word is used that is not being quoted directly from a source, it is rendered
in italics. However, words or phrases that are quoted from a primary
source are presented in quotation marks. The abbreviation used for the
various types of Gulden minted in the Empire is ‘fl.’ (florins).
PALATINATE
IA

ON
to Middle Rhine
A NC
KRAICHGAU FR
Alt
mü
hl
e
BADEN
hin
rR
U
LOWER SWABIA &
NA
pe
LORRAINE WÜRTTEMBERG
TE
Up
OR
kar
Nec ub
e
CE
u ra D an
h
s J
M
ALSA
ge
Lec
ian
os
ARIA
s ab
Vo
t
ell
res
Sw
e
BAV
Fo
BREISGAU BAAR
ck
UPPER SWABIA
Bla
HEGAU
Lak
Upper Rhine (Hochrhein) eC ALLGÄU
ons
SUNDGAU THURGAU tan
ce
s AARGAU APPENZELL
ub
Do
tal
Lak
BUCHSGAU eZ
ein
uric
h
Rh
FRANCHE- re Vierwald-
COMTÉ Aa stättersee SCHWYZ
TYROL
ÜCHTLAND ein
enrh Alps
VAUD Alp
Map 1. Significant geographical features and customary regions of the Upper Rhine and Swabia, c. 1346–1521
to Trier, Frankfurt Cheb (Eger)
Cologne, Mainz
& Aachen Bamberg Pilsen
Worms Würzburg to Prague
Mergentheim
Nuremberg
Speyer Ansbach
Heidelberg Neumarkt
to Metz Wimpfen
Regensburg
Wissembourg
Dinkelsbühl Eichstätt

Haguenau Stuttgart Aalen Nördlingen
Weil
Pforzheim Esslingen Ingolstadt
to Nancy
Baden Tübingen Urach Giengen Landshut
Strasbourg
Sélestat Rottenburg Reutlingen

Rottweil Ulm Augsburg
Villingen
Memmingen to Vienna
Colmar Munich
Pfullendorf
Breisach Salzburg
Freiburg Radolfzell Überlingen
Mulhouse Schaffhausen Kaufbeuren
Buchhorn Wangen
Waldshut Kempten
Basel Baden in Constance Lindau
the Aargau Zurich
to Bern St Gallen to Meran
to Lucerne to Chur Feldkirch Innsbruck
Map 2. Notable urban centres in the southern Holy Roman Empire, c. 1346–1521. Solid circles represent free or imperial cities, while hollow
circles represent towns that were subject to an intermediary lord for at least some of this period
Introduction
THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE:

A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ENIGMA
The Holy Roman Empire has long presented a challenge to historians

who have sought to study and conceptualize it. Forged from the central
European fragments of the Carolingian Empire in the tenth to thirteenth
centuries, this durable political entity rarely followed the conventional
pathways of nation-state formation posited by modern scholars. Every
period in the Empire’s centuries-long existence, from the Ottonian age
to the Napoleonic Wars, has been the subject of fraught interpretations
predicated on contested concepts, a situation generated in large part by the
highly charged and politicized nature of historical enquiry and debate at
various stages in the modern history of German-speaking Europe.¹
This is especially true of the later middle ages, traditionally a chrono-
logical no-man’s-land caught between the presumed achievements of the
‘universal’ Hohenstaufen monarchs (c. 1138–1254) and the confessional
and geopolitical fractures of the sixteenth century. The relative neglect and
condemnation of the fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Empire stem in part
from the same simplistic grand narratives that affect the historiography of
Europe as a whole in the same period. The later medieval centuries are
often perceived as a time of crisis, decline, and excessive violence com-
pared to the preceding ‘high middle ages’ and the ensuing Reformation
and early modernity, or else as a mere ‘age of transition’ between these
better-defined epochs.² The fifteenth century has been described with
some justification as ‘a historiographical black hole that annihilates data in
an interpretive vacuum’.³
The Empire also suffers from more specific scholarly prejudices,
not least the enduring view that ‘Germany’ was beset by unparalleled
¹ See Whaley, Germany, i, 1–14.

² These narratives are surveyed in Rexroth, Geschichte, pp. 97–100; Watts, Polities,
pp. 13–23.
³ Lange, Church Reform, p. 19.
2 Associative Political Culture in the Holy Roman Empire

problems and crises, particularly in the political and religious spheres.
These narratives of convulsion relate to the perception that the Empire
had a weak monarchy, that it was acutely fragmented and reduced
to internecine feuding, and that it was the subject of idealistic but
partially unrealized projects for political and ecclesiastical reform.⁴
Above all, they are founded on the assumption of nineteenth- and
twentieth-century German historians that their ‘nation’ followed a unique
and problematic path (the Sonderweg) towards the nation-statehood that
was held to be, in one form or another, the end of historical development.
In this scheme, the medieval Empire is thought to have obstructed
the coalescence of the state and the German nation.⁵ In the late twen-
tieth century it was still common for the study of the fifteenth-century
Empire to be justified as an engagement with ‘the German state-problem
[“Staatsproblematik”] at the transition between middle ages and modernity’.⁶
In view of this complex and negative historiographical situation, historians
have naturally struggled to articulate and explain the history of the Holy
Roman Empire in the later medieval period, resulting in a mix of politi-
cized, teleological, and chronologically patchy models and narratives that
defy neat synthesis.
This book is an attempt to re-conceptualize the Holy Roman Empire
between the mid-fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This is the
period spanned by the accessions of Charles IV (r. 1346–78), who is
traditionally viewed as the last imperial monarch to strive for something
approaching ‘hegemonic kingship’, and Charles V (r. 1519/21–56),
whose election, coronation, and first diet coincided with the initial stir-
rings of the sixteenth-century German Reformations.⁷ As far as possible,
the book aims to build this interpretation on a comparative study of the
abundant and under-exploited evidence that survives from this period,
and to avoid reading this evidence through the prism of the various
preconceptions about the later medieval Empire noted above. Clearly,
this does not (and cannot) mean a neutral interpretive agenda. While the
present work seeks to circumvent or challenge many of the ideas and
concerns of the existing scholarship of the German lands and the Empire,
it is doubtless shaped, consciously or not, by another set of assumptions
and emphases, most of which will inevitably derive from the author’s
formation in the Anglophone world of medieval and early modern studies.
Still, this book aims to show that a perspective that is removed from the
⁴ See e.g. Waley, Later Medieval Europe, ch. 13: ‘German Disunity and the Origins of
the Reformation’.
⁵ See Scales, Identity, pp. 1–97 and the German historiography discussed on pp. 4–8.
⁶ Angermeier, Reichsreform, p. 7. ⁷ Bauch, ‘Hegemoniales Königtum’.
Introduction 3
internal discussions and traditions of German-speaking historiography can
yield a different model of the later medieval Empire: one that re-envisions
its political life so as to illuminate its coherence, vitality, and interconnec-
tion, which have often been obscured by existing narratives and schemes.
The chapters that follow will seek to reconstruct the political structures
and dynamics of the Holy Roman Empire from a broad and representative
sample of the surviving evidence. For both historical and pragmatic reasons
which are explored in the final section of this Introduction,⁸ they will focus
above all on the Upper German localities around the Rhine and Swabia,
while relating this regional evidence to Empire-wide developments.
The sources underpinning this study include letters, seal-authenticated
charters and contracts, the outcomes (Abschiede, Schiedssprüche) of political
and arbitrational meetings (Tage), legal and financial records, chronicle
accounts, law-books, and manuscript illuminations. We shall see that clear
patterns and structures, which constituted a distinctive political culture in
the Empire, are discernible in these sources. These patterns and structures
included technologies, rituals, institutions, and concepts and configur-
ations of government shared by a range of actors and authorities. Crucially,
political elites in the Empire all participated in contractual relationships
with one another, often in the form of leagues, alliances, and other treaty-
based associations. These associations transcended the putative divisions
that underlie many of the negative perceptions of German history in this
period, such as morcellated ‘territories’ and political ‘estates’. By creating
frameworks for collective activity, associations were a vital means of enab-
ling and regulating aspects of warfare, justice and arbitration, and even
lordship and administration. As they participated in associations, German
elites used language which exhibited a mentality of ‘horizontal’ member-
ship of (rather than vertical subjection to) their surrounding political
communities, which came to shape how the Holy Roman Empire itself
was understood and articulated as a political entity.
Thus, the re-conceptualization of the Empire’s political history that
follows centres on what we shall call an ‘associative political culture’ that
framed the interactions of monarchs, princes, prelates, nobles, and towns
in the fragmented yet interconnected context of the Upper German lands.
The underpinnings and workings of this associative political culture are
worth exploring, not only to shed light on the history of the Empire in this
period, but also because its historiography has not taken them into
account. Many of the concepts and narratives which underlie existing
scholarship (the ‘state’, ‘transition’ from ‘medieval’ to ‘(early) modern’
⁸ See section ‘The Empire and Upper Germany between Fragmentation and Intercon-
nection, 1346–1521’, pp. 14–17.

structures, and so on) over-simplify or misrepresent the patterns and
developments in evidence in the primary sources. These categories
and frameworks do not allow for the significance—or even the existence—
of associations, and the kinds of political structures and dynamics that
gave rise to them. To understand how conceptualizing the Empire as a
polity shaped by an associative political culture improves upon existing
models and narratives, it is first necessary to survey in more detail the
historiography of the Empire and its constituent parts.
ENTRENCHED MODELS AND NEW APPROACHES
Some distinct and durable interpretive trends have characterized the

existing scholarship of the Holy Roman Empire. To make sense of these
trends, it is important to take into account a tendency in German
scholarship, derived in part from a strong tradition of legal history, to
subsume multiple historical actors and processes within abstracted or
reified wholes. To a greater extent than elsewhere, the study of history
in German-speaking Europe has been undertaken through the lens of
ideal-typical legalistic categories. This emphasis can be traced back to
the most famous of the early academic historians in nineteenth-century
Germany, Friedrich Carl von Savigny and his pupil Leopold von Ranke,
who reified law and placed it at the heart of historical enquiry.⁹ Highly
abstract or essentialized concepts (Begriffe) have shaped the interpretive
agenda in the study of pre-modern history ever since. Otto von Gierke,
taking a positive view of the medieval period, sought to explain the
political development of the Empire in terms of the Germanic law of
communities or collectivities (Genossenschaftsrecht).¹⁰ Gierke and his pro-
lific intellectual rival Georg von Below, who saw the medieval Empire as
a lengthy diversion from the predestined path towards German nation-
statehood,¹¹ both took for granted the idea, borrowed from nineteenth-
century German jurisprudence, that medieval polities were fundamentally
legal entities (Rechtsstaaten)—that is to say, that authority within these
polities was enshrined in and regulated by a fixed legal system, and leaders
within them could rule legitimately because they were assigned positions
of authority within a constitution (Verfassung).¹²
⁹ Kroeschell, Rechtsgeschichte, i, 254–6.

¹⁰ This thesis is presented in Gierke, Genossenschaftsrecht. On Gierke see Chapter 5,
section ‘Associations: An Underestimated and Misrepresented Political Framework’.
¹¹ Below, Verfassungsgeschichte.
¹² Kroeschell, Rechtsgeschichte, i, 14; Oexle, ‘Feudalismus, Verfassung und Politik’.
Introduction 5
The study of later medieval history through the legal-historical prism of
Verfassungsgeschichte survived the upheavals of the mid-twentieth century
and found a new lease of life in the influential work of Otto Brunner.¹³
Decrying the application of modern legal abstractions, above all that of the
‘institutional state’ (Anstaltsstaat), to the middle ages, Brunner offered
what he thought was a ‘social’ explanation for the structures of later
medieval politics. Focusing primarily on Austria, he depicted a localized
Verfassung in which politics consisted of two main phenomena. The first
was ancestral noble lordship (Herrschaft), preserved through rightful feud-
ing and legitimized by a paternalistic relationship with the lower orders.
The second was the land-community (Landesgemeinde), in which Germanic
communal values ensured the equitable treatment of those who occupied
their rightful place and the estates (Landstände) represented the interests of
the locality. In fact, law remained at the heart of this new Verfassungs-
geschichte. Brunner argued that both noble lordship and the land-
community operated according to the principles of local customary law
(Landrecht), which was founded on the sense of reciprocal obligation and
justice (Treue and Recht) inherent in Germanic kin-based groups (Sippen
and Gefolgschaften) since the early middle ages.¹⁴ The Brunnerian version
of the medieval Verfassung fast became a blueprint for medievalists writing
in the latter half of the twentieth century. Its framework for regional
history (Landesgeschichte) has been applied to many later medieval local-
ities, while its insights into the nature and distribution of power have
shaped thinking about the Empire as a whole.¹⁵
Though Brunner has not been without his critics—not least because
of the political and intellectual climate of the 1930s and ’40s in which
his ideas were first formulated—his work inaugurated a tacit post-war
consensus in the study of the later medieval German lands. Whether at
the level of a region or sub-polity or at that of the entire Holy Roman
Empire, this period has been studied in terms of the legal constitution of
political entities, even if this approach has been coupled with other
methodologies, such as prosopography and discourse analysis. In most
historiography the Verfassung serves as a master category within which
other social, political, and cultural phenomena are arranged and inter-
preted.¹⁶ One consequence of this approach is that the nineteenth-century
¹³ Brunner’s magnum opus is Land und Herrschaft. See also Brunner, Verfassungs- und
Sozialgeschichte.
¹⁴ Brunner, Land und Herrschaft, pp. 165–239.
¹⁵ A manifesto for this approach by one of Brunner’s admiring contemporaries is
Schlesinger, ‘Verfassungsgeschichte und Landesgeschichte’.
¹⁶ An early—and mostly unheeded—critique of this framework is offered by Graus,
‘Verfassungsgeschichte’.

tendency to compartmentalize historical processes within discrete and
reified categories has endured. In seeking to identify and characterize
Verfassungen, historians of the late medieval German lands have organized
and examined historical data within a variety of bounded legal-political
concepts, including ‘territories’, ‘estates’, and factions within a ‘dualistic’
imperial constitution, in ways explored below. By contrast, the argument
of this book is that political life in the Empire, particularly as manifested in
associations and the ideas and behaviours that gave rise to them, was much
more integrated across putative boundaries than the dominant categories
of post-Brunnerian Verfassungsgeschichte would allow.
Two principal models and narratives of the Empire have developed
since the emergence of this Brunnerian consensus, and they continue
to influence most historiography of German-speaking Europe today.
The first conceives of the Empire as a patchwork of atomized constitu-
tional ‘territories’. Michel Parisse, summarizing this view unquestioningly,
puts it like this: ‘mapping the German Empire [sic] at the end of the
middle ages has become an impossible task . . . imperial Europe has
become an illegible mosaic, a puzzle of differently sized pieces’.¹⁷ Partly
this desire to read the growth of ‘territories’ into the later medieval
evidence stems from a traditional German interest in local history and
regional studies, which was reinvigorated in the immediate post-war
decades, as the study of the ‘German nation’ as a whole temporarily
became taboo.¹⁸ It also derives from the resumption of interest in the
concept of the ‘state’ in German academic circles from the 1970s onwards,
in the context of an increasingly comparative European historiography
which took (and often still takes) the ‘genesis of the modern state’ to be
a central and self-evident feature of the late medieval and early modern
periods.¹⁹ These ‘territories’, especially those ruled by princes, are viewed
as the locus of state formation in the Empire. In the words of Karl-
Friedrich Krieger, ‘the Romano-German Empire did not find the path
to modern statehood . . . [and] that which was denied the Empire as
a whole was substantially accomplished in the territories, so that in
Germany it was rather the territorial lordships which laid the founda-
tions of the modern institutional state’.²⁰ The concepts of territorial
statehood and lordship (Territorialstaatlichkeit, Landesherrschaft) have been
applied to most regions of the Empire, often with the explicit goal of
¹⁷ Parisse, Allemagne et Empire, pp. 216–17.

¹⁸ See Gerlich, Geschichtliche Landeskunde.
¹⁹ The state-oriented narratives originated above all in France, Belgium, and the
Netherlands. See e.g. Guenée, États; Blockmans et al., Origins of the Modern State.
²⁰ Krieger, Reichsreform, p. 1.
Introduction 7
understanding their Verfassungen.²¹ The teleology of ‘territorialization’,
culminating in the attainment by the imperial princes of so-called
territoria clausa endowed with sovereignty (Landeshoheit) in the 1648
Peace of Westphalia, still underpins much of this work.²²
The second model through which the Holy Roman Empire is concep-
tualized in current scholarship pertains to the polity in its entirety. It is
presented as an ‘imperial constitution’ (Reichsverfassung), a legal—and,
latterly, social—unit within which the various imperial powers were
arranged schematically. The term ‘Reichsverfassung’ has existed since at
least the eighteenth century, but in the context of the later middle ages it
has become linked to a highly influential interpretation developed by the
prolific Peter Moraw and his students between the 1970s and the turn of
the twenty-first century. Employing sociological and prosopographical
methods, Moraw reaffirmed the centrality of the monarchy to the
Empire, a perspective buttressed by contemporaneous legal-historical
research.²³ He articulated these innovative findings within the framework
of the old concepts of ‘statehood’, ‘territoriality’, and the ‘imperial con-
stitution’, situating the components and dynamics of the Empire in
relation to the monarchy in order to characterize a complex and evolving
‘political system’.²⁴
Moraw argued that in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the
German core of the Empire consisted of co-existing entities with few
obligations towards the crown or one another. This was the so-called
offene Verfassung. By the fifteenth century, the trauma of external invasions
and endless internal problems of law and order drew the political elites
into closer and more intensive interaction with the crown and one
another, in a consolidatory shift that Moraw called gestaltete Verdichtung.²⁵
A corollary to this Verdichtung was the growth of a sense of political
community among those involved in Empire-wide discussions, usually in
the context of imperial diets, such that the elites came to regard themselves
as ‘estates’ or Reichsstände whose sphere of action was at the heart of
imperial politics. Here, they formed one of the poles of the dualistic
late medieval Reichsverfassung—the other pole being the dynasticized
²¹ E.g. Patze, Territorialstaat; Bader, Territorialstaatliche Entwicklung. The concepts and

narratives of Territorialstaatlichkeit and Landesherrschaft are considered in Chapter 4,
pp. 70–1.
²² E.g. Boockmann and Dormeier, Reichsreform, pp. 155–6; Herbers and Neuhaus,
Reich, p. 170.
²³ Moraw, ‘Verwaltung’, pp. 22–65, Verfassung, ‘Königtum’, ‘Funktion’. See also Krieger,
Lehnshoheit; Schubert, König und Reich.
²⁴ See esp. Moraw, ‘Landesgeschichte und Reichsgeschichte’, ‘Machtgefüge’, ‘Zur
staatlichen-organisatorischen Integration’; Wefers, Sigismund.
²⁵ See esp. Moraw, Verfassung, pp. 21–2.

monarchy. According to this narrative, the increasingly powerful ‘territorial
princes’ were the dominant force within the imperial estates that now
opposed the monarchy, while other elites (towns, noblemen, prelates)
were marginalized.²⁶ Furthermore, there is a latent tendency in this litera-
ture and elsewhere to depict these socio-political ‘estates’—the nobility
(Adel), the towns (Städte), the princes (Fürsten), and so on—as ontologic-
ally different groups with inherently opposed aims and ways of life.²⁷
A recent surge in interest in the ‘diplomacy’ and ‘external relations’ of
these entities and groups within and beyond the Empire has uncovered
new and potentially challenging evidence of their mutual dependence and
interconnection, but this new focus has not yet prompted a widespread
re-examination of the disjunctive imperial system posited by Moraw and
his disciples.²⁸ The Morawian paradigm of the estate-based and dualistic
‘imperial constitution’ is widely regarded today—sometimes with enthu-
siasm, sometimes by default—as the orthodox scholarly interpretation of
the Holy Roman Empire’s political development in the fourteenth to
sixteenth centuries.²⁹
Both of these models and narratives capture something of the structures
of the late medieval and early modern Empire and the long-term changes
it experienced in the course of these periods, and this book will draw on
many of the findings of historians who have deployed them. However, it
will also aim to rectify some of their weaknesses by seeking to apprehend
the patterns and dynamics detectable in the primary sources, rather than
through a reading of the evidence that places it a priori within ‘territorial’
and ‘constitutional’ or ‘state’-oriented categories. What both of these
models suggest, explicitly or implicitly, is that politics in the Holy
Roman Empire was discrete and compartmentalized. The emphasis is on
ostensibly separate units, be they the individual ‘territories’ or ‘states’,
different socio-political estates, or the abstracted constitution or system
of the Empire itself. This situation is well summarized by Christian
Heinemeyer in his recent overview of this historiography: ‘The history
of political activity, political structures, and the constitution of the
Empire and its members . . . has so far been studied predominantly at
²⁶ See e.g. Herbers and Neuhaus, Reich, p. 192.

²⁷ E.g. Boockmann and Dormeier, Reichsreform, pp. 140–69. The use of reifying
concepts like das Städtewesen—‘town-ness’—contributes to this disjunctive categorization.
See e.g. Janssen and Wensky, Mitteleuropäisches Städtewesen.
²⁸ E.g. Jörg and Jucker, Außenpolitik. On the interconnective implications of this focus,
and the ongoing dominance of Morawian constitutional terminology, see Heinemeyer,
Zwischen Reich und Region, pp. 25–51.
²⁹ See e.g. Fuchs, Heinig, and Schwarz, Reich, p. vii; Diestelkamp, Königsgerichtsbarkeit;
Reinle, Der Forschungseinfluss Peter Moraws.
Introduction 9
the levels of regional history [“Landesgeschichte”], imperial history
[“Reichsgeschichte”], or in the context of external relations between
units, either separately from one another, or from the perspective of
only one of these levels.’³⁰ In order to reinforce these conceptual delinea-
tions of different spheres of political activity in the late medieval Empire,
the historiography has also tended to downplay countervailing evidence of
connections across boundaries between regions, territories, factions, and
estates. In particular, the numerous and varied associations in the German
lands—alliances, leagues, and other contractual relationships, often
between supposedly disparate actors—have mostly been dismissed by
historians of the Empire as anomalous, short-lived, ineffective, and unrep-
resentative of prevailing political configurations.³¹
How, then, can the Holy Roman Empire be re-conceptualized so as to
break down the unhelpful boundaries between these putative levels and
spheres of politics and government? This book will seek to approach the
evidence through a more holistic perspective: that of ‘political culture’.
This concept has been applied fruitfully to many other medieval and
early modern contexts in recent decades.³² These include earlier and
later periods of the Empire’s own history: Gerd Althoff and Barbara
Stollberg-Rilinger have drawn attention to the importance of shared
norms of behaviour and symbolic and ritual interactions between elites
as constituents of the polity’s loose and constantly negotiated political
framework in, respectively, the Ottonian and Salian era and the seven-
teenth and eighteenth centuries.³³
The integrative potential of political culture lies in its placement of the
political within what Christine Carpenter has called ‘the “complex whole”
of social organisation’.³⁴ Concretely, this will entail examining the ways in
which Upper German politics and government were configured by the
social ties and common ritual, discursive, and judicial forms of interaction
of the varied individuals and groups who wielded political authority of
some kind in the Holy Roman Empire. Through this comparative and
connective lens, we shall see that—contrary to prevailing disjunctive
perspectives in the historiography—there are many indications in the
sources that political elites were highly interconnected across both geo-
graphical and socio-political space. The evidence does not suggest that any
³⁰ Heinemeyer, Zwischen Reich und Region, p. 50. ³¹ See Chapter 5, pp. 94–5.
³² See e.g. Powell, ‘After “After McFarlane” ’, p. 13; Wolfart, Political Culture. The
origins and utility of this term, as used in Anglophone scholarship, are considered in
Carpenter, ‘Political Culture’, pp. 1–20.
³³ Althoff, Spielregeln; Stollberg-Rilinger, ‘Kulturgeschichte des Politischen’, Symbolic
Language.
³⁴ Carpenter, ‘Political Culture’, p. 2.

group or entity was neatly sealed off from any other. On the contrary, they
were constantly interacting, which continually reinforced conformity to
certain mutually intelligible forms and practices. Furthermore, to address
the theoretical side of ‘political culture’,³⁵ all kinds of actors in the Empire,
regardless of their strength or status, seem to have shared a core repertoire
of concepts and ideologies of power. We shall see that the kings and
emperors of the Romans were central to this political imaginaire, as recent
scholarship has rightly asserted, but a range of other shared conventions
(revolving around, for instance, notions of honour, justice, and rights to
titles, properties, and jurisdictions) also played a vital role.
These common features, which are examined in Part I of this book,
shaped many aspects of political life, enabling and perpetuating the
entanglement of princes, clerics, townspeople, and nobles in one another’s
affairs within tenurial, financial, or dynastic networks. At the same time,
these elite actors generally enjoyed substantial formal autonomy from one
another, such that their interactions cannot easily be viewed as the
products of strict hierarchies between rulers and subjects or centralizing
processes led by unitary administrations. In order to formalize and regu-
late these quasi-horizontal connections, in a context which lacked an
overarching governmental framework capable of doing so in their place,
the imperial elites regularly entered into contractual relationships,
enshrined in bi- or multilateral treaties containing binding stipulations,
especially with regard to military and judicial matters. In the vernacular of
the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, these relationships had a variety
of labels, usually related to the words Bund or Bündnis and Einung or
Vereinung (all terms that could be rendered as ‘league’, ‘alliance’, or
‘union’), but also Gesellschaft, Vertrag, Verständnis, or Verschreibung (‘soci-
ety’, ‘treaty’, ‘understanding’, ‘obligation’), among others.³⁶ As we have
already indicated, in the absence of an agreed English vocabulary to refer
to such multilateral, treaty-based frameworks, they will be referred to here
collectively as ‘associations’, and they are explored in detail in Part II.
The contention of this book is that the prevalence and significance of
associations in Upper Germany have been vastly underestimated. Swabia
and the Upper Rhine—some of the most densely settled regions of the
German lands—saw the proliferation of leagues, alliances, and other forms
of association in the period between the reigns of Charles IV and Charles V.
Yet associations were not limited to these regions, and as such this book
aspires to be more than just a large regional case study. Emerging from the
shared and interconnected configurations of power in the Holy Roman
³⁵ As discussed in, e.g., Watts, Polities, pp. 381–93.

³⁶ This terminology is discussed in Chapters 5 and 8.
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also joined them in order to open the ball and set the liquor flowing.
In these days of Radicalism perhaps they find they can get on just as
well without them. Larry still kept Lizzie’s arm snugly tucked within
his own as he described to her how beautiful the walls of the barn
looked hung with flags and decorated with flowers and evergreens,
and what a number of lamps there were, and what a lot of liquor and
eatables were stowed away at the further end. He was still talking to
her rapidly, and, as she imagined, somewhat uneasily, when a cheer
rose up from a group of rustics outside, and Larry gave a start that
almost disengaged her from his clasp.
‘What’s the matter?’ she demanded. ‘Is it the gentry coming,
Larry?’
‘Yes! ’tis they, sure enough. Keep close to me, Liz—I don’t want to
part from you, not for one moment.’
‘Oh, Larry! that do make me feel so happy,’ she whispered. As she
spoke, the party from Mavis Farm entered the barn and were
received with a shout of welcome. Mr Murray, a fine, hale old
gentleman, and his sons came first; then Miss Rosa, looking rather
conscious, tripping after her brothers in a white muslin dress. The
farmer advanced to the beer barrel, and having filled his glass, drank
success to all present, and asked them to give three cheers for a
bountiful harvest. When that ceremony was completed the fiddlers
struck up a merry country dance, and every one was at liberty to
drink and caper about. The young people from Mavis Farm all took
part in the first dance, and Rosa Murray came up and asked Larry if
he would be her partner on the occasion. She ought in fairness to
have opened the ball with her father’s bailiff or one of the upper
servants, but she preferred the young groom, with whom she held
daily intercourse, and she was accustomed to go her own way
without reference to anybody’s feelings. As she approached the
cousins she gave Lizzie a kindly welcome.
‘I am so glad you have come up, Lizzie; and now your cousin must
get you a nice seat until this dance is ended, for I intend him to open
the ball with me.’
This was considered a great honour on the part of the villagers,
and the blind girl coloured with pleasure to think that her fiancé had
been selected for the ceremony.
‘Oh, Miss Rosa, you are good! Larry, why don’t you thank the
young lady, and say how proud you shall be to dance alongside of
her?’
But Larry said nothing. He reddened, it is true, but more from
confusion than pleasure, and he was so long a time settling Lizzie to
his satisfaction, that Rosa was disposed to be angry at his
dilatoriness, and called out to him sharply that if he were not ready
she should open the ball with some one else. Then he ran and took
his place by her side, and went through the evolutions of ‘down the
middle’ and ‘setting at the corners’ with a burning face and a fast-
beating heart. Poor Laurence Barnes! His young mistress’s constant
presence in the stables and familiarity with himself had been too
much for his susceptible nature. She was to him, in the pride of her
youthful loveliness and the passport it afforded her for smiling upon
all classes of men, as an angel, rather than a woman, something set
too high above for him ever to reach, but yet with the power to thrill
his veins and make his hot blood run faster. The touch of her
ungloved hand in the figures of the dance made him tremble, and the
glance of her eyes sickened him, so that as soon as the terrible
ordeal was concluded he made her an awkward salute, and rushed
from her side to that of the beer barrel, to drown his excitement in
drink. And it was just there that he had left Lizzie Locke.
‘That was beautiful, Larry,’ she exclaimed, with glowing cheeks. ‘I
could hear the sound of your feet and Miss Rosa’s above all the
others, even when you went to the further end of the barn. It must be
lovely to be able to dance like that. But it has made you thirsty, Larry.
That’s the third glass, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, lass, it’s made me thirsty. But don’t you keep counting my
glasses all the evening, or I shall move your chair a bit further off.’
She laughed quietly, and he flung himself upon the ground and
rested his arm upon her knee. He seemed to feel safer and more at
peace when by Lizzie’s side, and she was quite happy in the
knowledge that he was there. The Mavis Farm party did not dance
again after the ball had been opened, at least Miss Rosa did not. But
she moved about the barn restlessly. Sometimes she was in, and
sometimes she was out. She did not seem to know her own mind for
two minutes together.
‘Why is that fellow Darley skulking about here, Larry?’ demanded
Isaac Barnes of his nephew. ‘I’ve seen his ugly face peeping into the
barn a dozen times. Why don’t he come in or stay out? I hate such
half-and-half sneaking ways.’
Larry muttered an oath, and was about to make some reply, when
George Murray came up to them.
‘Is that Mr Darley I see hanging about the barn door, Isaac?’ he
inquired of their own keeper.
‘That it be, Master George; and as I was just saying to Larry here,
why not in or out? What need of dodging? He don’t want to catch no
one here, I suppose?’
‘He’d better try. I’d soon teach him who the barn belongs to.’
‘And I’d back you, Master George,’ cried Larry resolutely. The
strong-brewed Norfolk ale was giving him a dash of Dutch courage.
‘Would you, Larry? That’s right! Well, I can’t be in all parts of the
barn at once, and father wants me to take the bottom of the supper-
table, so you keep your eye on Mr Darley for me, will you? and if he
looks up to anything, let me know.’
‘I’m your man, Master George,’ replied Larry heartily.
Rosa was near enough to them to overhear what had passed. Her
brother had intended she should do so. But when he set his wit
against that of a woman he reckoned without his host. Rosa had
been on the look-out for Frederick Darley from the beginning of the
evening, and during the first greeting, had managed to slip a little
note into his hand, warning him of her brother’s animosity, and
begging him to keep as much as possible out of their sight until an
opportunity occurred for her joining him in the apple copse. Now, she
felt afraid of what might happen if there were an encounter between
the two young men, and decided at once that her best plan would
be, as soon as she saw George safely disposed of at the supper-
table, to tamper with his spy. And unfortunately Rosa Murray knew
but too well how to accomplish this. Young Barnes’ infatuation had
not been unnoticed by her. She would have been aware of it if a cat
had admired her. She knew his hand trembled when he took her foot
to place her in the saddle, and that he became so nervous and
agitated when she entered the stable as often to have to be recalled
to a sense of his duty by a sharp rebuke from the head groom. She
had known it all for months past, and it had pleased her. She was so
vain and heartless that she thought nothing of what pain the poor
fellow might be undergoing. She laughed at his presumption, and
only considered it another feather in her cap. But now she saw her
way to make use of it. The dancing had recommenced, and was
proceeding with vigour, and the huge rounds of beef and legs of
mutton on the supper-table were beginning to be served out. George
was in full action, leading the onslaught with his carving-knife, when
Rosa Murray approached Laurence Barnes.
‘Won’t you dance again, nor go and have your supper, Larry
dear?’ Lizzie was asking, with a soft caress of her hand upon the
head laid on her knee.
‘I don’t want to dance no more,’ said Larry, ‘and I sha’n’t sup till the
table’s clearer and you can sup with me, Liz.’
‘That’s very good of you, Barnes,’ said Rosa, who had caught the
words; ‘but if you’ll take Lizzie to the table now, I’m sure George will
find room for you both.’
‘No thank you, miss,’ he answered; ‘I promised Master George to
bide here till he came back, and I mustn’t break my word.’
‘Then I shall sit here with you, and we’ll all have supper together
by-and-by,’ replied Rosa. ‘Have you been gathering cockles again
this afternoon, Lizzie?’
‘Oh no, miss!’ said Lizzie, blushing at the recollection of how her
afternoon had been employed; ‘it’s high tide at four o’clock now, and
I haven’t been out of the house again to-day.’
‘Did your cousin tell you how she scolded me for riding in the salt
marshes, Barnes?’
‘Well! it is dangerous, miss, for such as don’t know the place. I
mind me when Whisker’s grandfather strayed out there by himself—’
‘Oh, Larry!’ cried Lizzie, ‘don’t go to tell that terrible tale. It always
turns me sick!’
‘Is that what they call the Marsh Ghost, Barnes? Oh! I must know
all about it. I love ghost stories, and I have never been able to hear
the whole of this one. Where does it appear, and when?’
‘Lizzie here can tell you better than me, miss—she knows the
story right through.’
‘It’s a horrible tale, Miss Rosa. You’ll never forget it, once heard.’
‘That’s just why I want to hear it; so, Lizzie, you must tell it me
directly. Don’t move, Barnes, you don’t inconvenience me. I can sit
up in this corner quite well.’
‘Well, miss, if you must hear it,’ began the blind girl, ‘it happened
now nigh upon twenty years ago. Whisker’s grandfather, that used to
keep the lodge at Rooklands, had grown so old and feeble the late
lord pensioned him off and sent him home to his own people. He
hadn’t no son in Corston then, miss, because they was both working
in the south, but his daughter-in-law, his first son’s widdy, that had
married Skewton the baker, she offered to take the old man in and
do for him. Lord Worcester allowed him fifty pounds a-year for life,
and Mrs Skewton wanted to take it all for his keep, but the old man
was too sharp for that, and he only gave her ten shillings a-week and
put by the rest, no one knew where nor for what. Well, miss, this
went on for three or four years may be, and then poor Whisker had
grown very feeble and was a deal of trouble, and his sons didn’t
seem to be coming back, and the Skewtons had grown tired of him,
so they neglected him shamefully. I shouldn’t like to tell you, miss, all
that’s said of their beating the poor old man and starving him, and
never giving him no comforts. At last he got quite silly and took to
wandering about alone, and he used to go out on the marshes, high
or low tide, without any sense of the danger, and everybody said
he’d come to harm some day. And so he did, for one day they
carried his body in from Corston Point quite dead, and all bruised
with the rocks and stones. The Skewtons pretended as they knew
nothing about how he’d come to his death, but they set up a cart just
afterwards, and nothing has ever been heard of the old man’s store
of money, though his sons came back and inquired and searched far
and near for it. But about six months after—Larry! ’tisn’t a fit tale for
Miss Rosa to listen to!’
‘Nonsense, Lizzie! I wouldn’t have the ghost left out for anything.
It’s just that I want to hear of.’
‘Well, miss, as I said, six months after old Whisker’s death he
began to walk again, and he’s walked ever since.’
‘Where does he walk?’
‘Round and round Corston Point every full moon, wringing his
hands and asking for his money. They say it’s terrible to see him.’
‘Have you ever seen him, Barnes?’
Larry coloured deeply and shook his head. The peasantry all over
England are very susceptible to superstition, and the Corston folk
were not behindhand in their fear of ghosts, hobgoblins, and
apparitions of all sorts. This young fellow would have stood up in a
fight with the best man there, but the idea of seeing a ghost made
his blood curdle.
‘Dear me, miss, no,’ said Lizzie, answering for him, ‘and I hope he
never may. Why, it would kill him.’
‘Nonsense, Lizzie. Barnes is not such a coward, I hope.’
Something in Miss Murray’s tone made the blood leap to her
retainer’s face.
‘I’m not a coward, miss,’ he answered quickly.
‘Of course not; I said so. But any man would be so who refused to
go to Corston Point by night for fear of seeing old Whisker’s ghost.
He walks at full moon, you say! Why, he must be at it to-night, then!
There never was a lovelier moon.’
‘Don’t, miss,’ urged Lizzie, shivering.
‘You silly goose! I don’t want you to go. But, I must say, I should
like to try the mettle of our friend here.’
‘I beg your pardon, miss; did you mean that for me?’ said Larry
quickly.
‘Yes, I did, Barnes. What harm? I should like to see some one who
had really seen this ghost, and I’ll give my gold watch chain to the
man who will go to Corston Point to-night and bring me a bunch of
the samphire that grows upon the top of it.’
Larry’s mind was in a tumult. Some wild idea of rendering himself
admirable in Rosa Murray’s eyes may have influenced his decision—
or the delight of possessing her watch chain may have urged him on
to it. Anyway, he rose up from the floor, and with chattering teeth, but
a resolute heart, exclaimed,—
‘I’ll take you at your word, miss. I’ll go to Corston Point and bring
you the samphire, and prove to you that Larry Barnes is not a
coward.’
‘Larry, Larry, you’ll never do it!’ cried Lizzie.
‘Let me alone, my girl. I’ve made up my mind, and you won’t turn
it.’
‘You are a brave fellow, Barnes,’ said Rosa. ‘I believe you’re the
only man in Corston that would have taken my wager. And, mind, it’s
a bargain. My gold watch chain for your bunch of samphire and news
of old Whisker’s ghost.’ She was delighted at the idea of getting him
out of the way.
‘But, Larry! Miss Rosa! Think of the danger,’ implored poor Lizzie.
‘Oh, he’ll never come back; I know he’ll never come back.’
‘What are you afraid of, Lizzie? Doesn’t Barnes know the sands as
well as you do? And the moonlight is as bright as day. It’s silly to try
and stop him.’
‘But he’s going to be my husband, miss,’ whispered Lizzie,
weeping, into Miss Murray’s ear.
‘Oh! if that’s the case, perhaps he’d better follow your wishes,’
rejoined Rosa coldly. ‘Mine are of no consequence, of course,
though I’d have liked Barnes to wear my chain—we’ve been such
good company together, haven’t we, Larry?’
Her smile, and the way in which she spoke his name, determined
him. He had heard the whispered conversation between her and
Lizzie, and he felt vexed—he didn’t know why—that it should have
occurred.
‘Be quiet, Liz,’ he said, authoritatively. ‘What’s to be has nothing to
do with this. I’m only too glad to oblige Miss Rosa, even with a bit of
samphire. Good-bye, my girl, and good-bye, miss; it’s close upon the
stroke of ten, so you mayn’t see me again till to-morrow morning; but
when you do, it’ll be with the bunch of samphire in my hand!’
He darted away from them as he spoke, and left the barn; whilst
Lizzie Locke, disappointed at his departure, and frightened for his
safety, wept bitterly. But the noise around them was so great, and
everyone was so much occupied with his or her own pleasure, that
little notice was taken of the girl’s emotion.
‘Come, Lizzie, don’t be foolish,’ urged Miss Murray, in a whisper,
afraid lest the errand on which she had sent Larry should become
public property. ‘Your lover will be back in an hour, at the latest.’
‘He’ll never come back, miss! You’ve sent him to his death; I feel
sure of it,’ replied Lizzie, sobbing.
‘This is too ridiculous,’ said Rosa. ‘If you intend to make such a
fool of yourself as this, Lizzie, I think you had much better go home
to your aunt. Shall I send Jane Williams back with you? You know
her; she’s a kind girl, and she’ll lead you as safely as Larry would.’
‘No; thank you, miss; Larry said he would return to the barn with
your samphire, and I must wait here till he comes—if ever he
comes,’ she added mournfully.
‘Well, you’ve quite upset me with all this nonsense, and I must
have a breath of fresh air. If Master George, or papa, should ask for
me, Lizzie, say I’ve got a headache, and gone home for a little while.
I’ll be round again before Larry’s back; but if anything should keep
me, tell him he shall have the chain to-morrow morning. For he’s a
brave fellow, Lizzie, and whether he sees the ghost or not, he shall
keep my watch chain as a wedding present.’
She patted the blind girl’s hand before she tripped away; but no
amount of encouragement could have driven the conviction from
Lizzie Locke’s breast that her lover was a doomed man; and added
to this, she had an uncomfortable feeling in her heart (though too
undefined to be called jealousy), that his alacrity in complying with
his young mistress’s request arose from something more than a
desire to maintain his character for courage in her eyes. So the poor
child sat by the beer barrel, sad and silent, with her face buried in
her hands; and so she remained till midnight had sounded from the
church clock, and the lights were put out, and the festivities
concluded, and some kind neighbour led her back to her aunt’s
house. But neither Miss Rosa nor Larry had returned.
Miss Rosa’s ‘breath of fresh air’ meant, of course, her appointment

with Frederick Darley in the apple copse. She had got Larry nicely
out of the way (notwithstanding the fears of his betrothed), and there
was no obstacle in her path as she left the barn and approached the
place of meeting. She had taken the precaution to wrap a large dark
shawl round her white dress, and, thus concealed, crept softly down
the lane and through the lower meadow unobservant or unheeding
that her father’s terrier, Trim, had followed her footsteps. Mr Darley
was in waiting for her, and a lover-like colloquy ensued. He did not
again mention the subject of marriage, at which Rosa was somewhat
disappointed; for she believed that, notwithstanding her brother’s
assertions to the contrary, Mr Murray might not refuse his consent to
her becoming Frederick Darley’s wife; and he certainly was the
handsomest man round about, Lord Worcester himself not excepted.
But in the midst of their tender conversation, as Darley was telling
Rosa he loved her better than ever man had loved woman in this
world before, Trim commenced wagging his tail and snuffing the
grass.
‘What is the matter?’ cried Rosa in alarm. ‘Down, Trim, down—be
quiet, sir! Oh, Frederick! surely no one can be coming this way.’
‘Don’t be afraid,’ said her companion; ‘throw your shawl over your
head and trust to me. I will answer for it that no one shall molest you
whilst under my protection.’
But he had not calculated upon having to make his words good in
the presence of her father and brother.
Trim would not lie down, nor be quiet, but kept on with his little
signals of warning, until two dark figures could be discerned making
their way towards them over the grass, when he bounded away to
meet them. Rosa guessed who the newcomers must be, and her
heart died within her for fear. She would have screamed, but Darley
placed his hand before her mouth. There was no escape for the
lovers, even if an attempt to escape would not have increased
suspicion, for the apple copse was a three-cornered field that had
but the one entrance through which they had come. In another
moment the four had met, and Rosa recognised her father and her
brother George. How they had guessed they would find her there
she did not stay to ask or even think. All her thought was how to
shield herself from the farmer’s anger. The fact was that George had
wished to seat his sister at the supper-table, when, finding that she
and Darley and Larry had all three mysteriously disappeared, he had
communicated his suspicions and the events of the morning to his
father, and they had sallied forth together in search of the missing
daughter, and were on their way to the farm, where they had been
told she had gone, when Trim’s unwarrantable interference led them
to the very spot.
Mr Murray’s rage was unbounded. He did not wait for any
explanations, but walked up straight to Rosa and demanded,—
‘Is this my daughter?’
The girl was too frightened to speak as she clung to her lover’s
arm, but Darley, perceiving that an amicable settlement was out of
the question, replied in the same tone,—
‘What right have you to ask, sir?’
‘The right of a father, Mr Darley, who has no intention to let
disgrace be brought into his family by such as you.’
He pulled Rosa by the arm roughly as he spoke, and dragged the
shawl from her face.
‘So it is you, you jade; and you would try and deceive your father,
who has never refused you a thing in his life. That’s the gratitude of
women. However, you’ll pay for it. You’ve had your first clandestine
meeting and your last. No more gamekeeper’s courtships for you if I
know it.’
‘By what right, Mr Murray, do you insult me, or this young lady, in
my presence? If I have persuaded her to do a foolish thing, I am
sorry for it, but you cannot give a harsher name to a lover’s
moonlight walk.’
‘I do give it a harsher name, sir, and you know it deserves it. A
lover’s moonlight walk indeed! You mean a scoundrel’s endeavour to
get an innocent girl into his clutches.’
‘Papa! papa! you are quite mistaken. Mr Darley has asked me to
marry him. He will marry me to-morrow by special licence if you will
only give your consent.’
‘Marry you to-morrow! you poor fool! You’ve been swallowing
every lie he chose to tell you. He can’t marry you to-morrow nor any
day, and for a good reason. He’s a married man already.’
Rosa screamed, George uttered an oath, and Darley darted
forward.
‘Who told you so, Mr Murray?’
‘Never mind who told me; you know it is true. Can you deny that
you left a wife down south when you came to Rooklands? Lord
Worcester does not know it, perhaps, but there are those who do.’
‘Who is your informant?’ repeated Darley.
‘I shall not tell you; but if you don’t clear out of my meadow and
Corston within half-an-hour, and promise never to show your face
here again, I’ll lay the whole story before his lordship.’
‘Are you going, or shall I kick you out?’ inquired George.
Frederick Darley thought upon the whole he’d better go. He turned
on his heel with an oath, and slunk out of the apple copse like a
beaten cur.
‘Come, my girl,’ said Farmer Murray, not unkindly, as he
commenced to walk homeward, with his hand still on Rosa’s arm;
‘you’ve been a fool, but I hope you’ve been nothing worse. Never
see nor speak to the man again, and I’ll forgive you.’
‘Oh, papa! is it really true?’ she answered, sobbing.
‘It’s as true as Heaven, Rosa! It was Larry Barnes told it me a
week ago, and he had it from one of the Whiskers, who worked near
Lord Worcester’s estate in Devon, and knew Mrs Frederick Darley by
sight. You’ve had a narrow escape, my girl, and you may thank Larry
for it.’
‘Poor Larry!’ sighed Rosa; and if she could have known what was
happening to poor Larry at that moment, she would have sighed still
deeper. He had accepted her wager, and rushed off at her bidding to
get the bunch of samphire that grew at the top of Corston Point. His
brain was rather staggered at the idea of what he had undertaken,
but he had been plentifully plied with Farmer Murray’s “Old October,”
and it was a bright, moonlight night, so that he did not find the
expedition after all so terrible as he had imagined. The salt marshes
were very lonely, it is true, and more than once Larry turned his head
fearfully over his shoulder, to find that nothing worse followed him
than his own shadow; but he reached the Point in safety, and
secured the samphire, without having encountered old Whisker’s
ghost. Then his spirits rose again, and he whistled as he
commenced to retrace his steps to the village. He knew he had been
longer over the transaction than he had expected, and that he should
be unable to see Miss Rosa that night; but he intended to be up at
the farm the very first thing in the morning, and give the bunch of
samphire into her own hands. He did not expect to receive the watch
chain; he had not seen the ghost, and had not earned it; but Larry’s
heart was all the lighter for that. He would not have exchanged a
view of the dreaded spectre even for the coveted gold chain that had
hung so long round the fair neck of his divinity. But as he turned
Corston Point again, he started back to see a figure before him. The
first moment he thought it must be old Whisker’s ghost, but the next
convinced him of his error. It was only Mr Darley—Lord Worcester’s
gamekeeper! He had been so absorbed in angry and remorseful
thought since he left the apple copse that he had unwittingly taken
the wrong turning, and now found himself upon the wide, desolate
waste of the salt marshes, and rather uncertain on which side to find
the beaten track again which led to the road to Rooklands. The two
men were equally surprised and disgusted at encountering one
another.
‘What are you doing here?’ demanded Darley, insolently.
‘What business is that of yours?’ replied the other. ‘The salt
marshes belong to me, I suppose, as much as they do to you.’
‘You’re not likely to have business here at this time of night. You’ve
been dogging my footsteps,’ said Darley, without the least
consideration for probability.
‘Follow you!’ exclaimed Larry, with a big oath; ‘it would be a long
time before I’d take the trouble to care what happened to you. And
since you ask my business here, pray what may yours be? You didn’t
think to find Farmer Murray’s daughter in the marshes at twelve
o’clock at night, did you?’
‘You insolent hound! how dare you take that young lady’s name
upon your lips in my presence?’
‘I’ve as good a right to name her as you have—perhaps better. It
was at her bidding I came here to-night. Did she send you here,
too?’
‘I shall not condescend to answer your question nor to link our
names together. Do you know what you are?’
‘I know what you are, Mr Darley, and that’s a villain!’
Poor Larry had said he would have it out with him, and he thought
his time had come. A sudden thought flashed through Darley’s brain
that here was the informer who had stopped his little game with the
farmer’s pretty daughter.
‘Are you the man,’ he demanded fiercely, ‘who has thought fit to
inform Mr Murray of my antecedents?’
‘Antecedents’ was a long word for Larry’s comprehension, but he
grasped the meaning somehow.
‘If you’d say, am I the man who told the master that you have got a
wife and children down in Devonshire, I answer “Yes;” and I hope
he’s told you of it, and kicked you out of the barn to-night for a
scoundrel, as you are, to try and make love to his daughter.’
‘You brute!’ cried Darley, throwing off his coat; ‘I’ll be revenged on
you for this if there’s any strength left in my arm.’
‘All right,’ replied the young country-man; ‘I’ve longed to punch
your head many and many a day. I’m glad it’s come at last. There’s
plenty of room for us to have it out here, and the devil take the
hindmost.’
He flew at his adversary as he spoke, and fastened his hands on
to his coat-collar. Larry was the younger and the stronger built man
of the two; but Frederick Darley had had the advantage of a politer
education, in which the use of his fists was included, so that after a
very little while it would have been evident to any bystander that
Barnes was getting the worst of it. He had energy and muscle and
right on his side, but his antagonist, unfortunately, possessed the
skill, and after he had stood on the defensive four or five times, he
seized his opportunity, and with a dexterous twist threw Larry heavily
from him on the ground. The young man fell backward, crashing his
skull against a projecting fragment of rock, and then lay there,
bleeding and unconscious. Darley glanced around him—not a
creature was in sight. The broad harvest moon looked down placidly
upon the deed of blood he had just committed, but human eyes to
see it there were none. Finding that Barnes neither stirred nor
groaned, he stooped down after a while, and laid his hand upon his
heart. It had stopped beating. The body was getting cold. The man
was dead!
Darley had not intended this, and it alarmed him terribly. His first
idea was what he should do to secure his own safety. If he left the
body there, would it be discovered, and the guilt traced home to him,
or would the in-coming tide carry it out to sea, and wash it up again,
weeks hence perhaps, as a drowned corpse upon the shore? He
thought it might. He hoped it would. He remembered Larry’s words,
that Miss Rosa had sent him there that night. It was known, then,
that he had gone to the marshes, and the fact was favourable.
He dragged the corpse a little way upon the sands that it might the
sooner be covered by the water; but finding it left deep traces of its
progress, he lifted it with some difficulty upon his shoulders, and
after carrying it perhaps a couple of dozen yards towards the sea,
flung it with all his force before him. What was his amazement at
seeing the body immediately sink in what appeared to be the solid
ground, and disappear from view? Was it magic, or did his senses
deceive him? Darley rubbed his eyes once or twice, but the miracle
remained the same. The sand, with its smooth, shining surface, was
before him, but the corpse of Larry Barnes had vanished. With a
feeling of the keenest relief—such relief as the cowardly murderer
who has cheated the gallows must experience—the gamekeeper
settled his clothes, glanced once or twice fearfully around him, and
then, retracing his steps, ran until he had gained the high road to
Rooklands. But retribution dogged his murderous feet, and he was
destined never to reach his master’s home. When the morning
dawned upon Corston, a fearful tale was going the round of its
cottages. The dead body of Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper had been
found on the borders of the estate, shot through the heart, as it was
supposed, in an encounter with poachers, as traces of a fierce
struggle were plainly visible around him.
And Laurence Barnes was missing!
The two circumstances put together seemed to provide a solution
of the mystery. Everyone in Corston knew that poor Larry had not
been entirely free from the suspicion of poaching, and most people
had heard him abuse Frederick Darley, and vow to have vengeance
upon him. What more likely, then, that Larry, having been taken at
his old tricks, had discharged his rusty gun at the gamekeeper, and
sent him out of the world to answer for all his errors. This was the
light by which Corston folk read the undiscovered tragedy. All, that is
to say, but two, and those two were the dead man’s mother and his
betrothed, who knew of his visit to the Point, and fully believed that
old Whisker had carried him off.
The murder of Frederick Darley made quite a sensation in
Corston. Lord Worcester gave his late gamekeeper a handsome
funeral, and monument in the churchyard; and Rosa Murray lost her
spirits and her looks, and wore a black ribbon on her bonnet for three
months, although she dared not let her father know the reason why.
But Darley had been so generally disliked that, when the first horror
at his death had subsided, people began to think he was a very good
riddance, and though Rosa still looked grave if anyone mentioned
his name, there was a certain young farmer who rode over from
Wells to see her every Sunday, on whom the gossips said she
seemed to look with considerable favour. And so, in due course of
time, the name of Darley appeared likely to become altogether
forgotten.
But not so Larry Barnes. Larry was a native of Corston, and had
been a general favourite there, and his mother still lived amongst
them to keep his memory green. No one in the village thought Larry
was dead, except Lizzie and Mrs Barnes. The rustics believed that,
finding he had shot Darley, he had become alarmed and ran away—
left the country, perhaps, in one of the numerous fishing smacks that
infest the coast, and gone to make his fortune in the ‘Amerikys.’
Larry would come back some day—they were assured of that—when
the present lord was dead and gone, perhaps, and the whole affair
was forgotten; but they were certain he was alive, simply because
they were. But Lizzie Locke knew otherwise—Lizzie Locke, to whom
a glimpse of heaven had been opened the day of his death, and to
whom the outer life must be as dark as the inner henceforward. She
mourned for Larry far more than his mother did. Mrs Barnes had
lived the best part of her life, and her joys and her sorrows were well-
nigh over, but the poor blind girl had only waked up to a
consciousness of what life might hold for her on the awful day on
which hope seemed blotted out for ever. From the moment her
cousin left the barn at Rosa’s bidding, Lizzie drooped like a faded
flower. That he never returned from that fatal quest was no surprise
to her. She had known that he would never return. She had waited
where he had left her till all the merry-making was over, and then she
had gone home to her aunt, meek, unrepining, but certain of her
doom. She had never been much of a talker, but she seldom opened
her mouth, except it was absolutely necessary, after that day. But
she would take her basket whenever the tide was low, and walk
down to Corston Point and sit there—sometimes gathering cockles,
but oftener talking to the dead, and telling him how much she had
loved him. The few who had occasionally overheard her soliloquies
said they were uncanny, and that Lizzie Locke was losing her wits as
well as her eyes. But the blind girl never altered her course. Corston
Point became her home, and whenever it was uncovered by the tide,
she might be seen sitting there beside her cockle basket, waiting for
—she knew not what, talking to—she knew not whom.
The autumn had passed, and the winter tides had set in. Rosa
Murray never rode upon the Corston marshes now—she was more
pleasantly engaged traversing the leafless lanes with the young
farmer from Wells. Most people would have thought the fireside a
better place to mourn one’s dead by than out on the bleak marsh; yet
Lizzie Locke, despite her cotton clothing and bare head, still took her
way there every morning, her patient, sightless eyes refusing to
reveal the depths of sorrow that lay beneath them. One day,
however, Mrs Barnes felt disposed to be impatient with the girl. She
had left the house at eight o’clock in the morning and had not
returned home since, and now it was dark, and the neighbours
began to say it was not safe that Lizzie should remain out alone on
such a bitter night, and that her aunt should enforce her authority to
prevent such lengthy rambles. Two or three of the men went out with
lanterns to try and find her, but returned unsuccessful, and they
supposed she must have taken shelter at some friend’s house for
the night. Lizzie Locke knew the marshes well, they said (no one in
Corston better), and would never be so foolish as to tempt
Providence by traversing them in the dark, for the currents were at
their worst now, and the quicksands were shifting daily. The logs and
spars of a ruined wreck of a year before had all come to the surface
again within a few days, and with them a keg of pork, preserved by
the saline properties of the ground in which it had been treasured, so
that its contents were as fresh as though they had been found
yesterday. Inquiries were made for the blind girl throughout the
village, but no one had seen anything of her, and all that her friends
could do was to search for her the first thing in the morning, when a
large party set out for Corston Point, Mrs Barnes amongst them.
Their faces were sad, for they had little hope that the cruel tide had
not crawled over the watching girl before she was aware of it, and
carried her out to sea. But as they neared the Point they discovered
something still crouched upon the sand.
‘It can’t be Lizzie,’ said the men, drawing closer to each other,
though a bright, cold sun was shining over the February morning. ‘It
can’t be nothing mortal, sitting there in the frost, with the icy waves
lapping over its feet.’
But Mrs Barnes, who had rushed forward, waved her arms wildly,
and called to them,—
‘It’s him! It’s my Larry, washed up again by the sands; and poor
Lizzie has found him out by the touch of her finger.’
The men ran up to the spot, and looked upon the sight before
them. The corpse of Larry Barnes, with not so much as a feature
changed by the hand of Time—with all his clothes intact and whole,
and a bunch of samphire in his breast—lay out upon the shining
sands, stiff as marble, but without any trace of decomposition upon
his fresh young features and stalwart limbs.[1] And beside him, with
her cheek bowed down upon his own, knelt Lizzie Locke. Lizzie, who
had braved the winter’s frost, and withstood the cold of a February
night, in order to watch beside the recovered body of her lover.
‘Lizzie!’ exclaimed Mrs Barnes. ‘Look up now; I’ve come to comfort
thee! Let us thank Heaven that he’s found again, and the evil words
they spoke of him must be took back.’
But the blind girl neither spoke nor stirred.
‘Can’t thee answer, my lass?’ said Isaac the poacher, as he shook
her by the arm.
The answer that she made was by falling backwards and
disclosing her fair, gentle face—white and rigid as her lover’s.
‘Merciful God! she is dead!’ they cried.
Yes, they were right. She was dead—she was at rest. What she
had waited for she had found. What she had striven for she had
gained. How many of us can say the same? Larry had been restored
to her. The shifting quicksand had thrown him upon earth again, and
had she not been there, his body might have been washed out to
sea, and no further knowledge gained of his fate. But she had saved
his dust for consecrated ground—more, she had saved his character
for the healing of his mother’s heart. For in his breast there still
reposed the bunch of samphire he had perilled his life to gather for
the farmer’s daughter, and, grasped tight in his hand, they found the
neckcloth of Lord Worcester’s gamekeeper—a crimson, silk
neckcloth, recognised by all three—and which Larry had seized and
held in the last deadly struggle. And the men of Corston looked on it
and knew the truth—that their comrade was no murderer, but had
fallen where he was found in a quarrel (probably pre-arranged) with
Frederick Darley; and they cursed the gamekeeper in their hearts.
But Lizzie was at rest—happy Lizzie Locke! sleeping in the quiet
churchyard at Corston, with her cheek pillowed on her Larry’s breast.
THE END.
[1] This is a fact, the corpse of a fisherman having been

preserved in like manner for some nine months when buried in
the salt marshes of Norfolk.
THE INVISIBLE TENANTS OF
RUSHMERE.
‘On the banks of the Wye, Monmouthshire.—To be Let, furnished, a
commodious Family Mansion, surrounded with park-like grounds.
Stabling and every convenience. Only two and a-half miles from
station, church, and post-office. Excellent fishing to be procured in
the neighbourhood. Rent nominal to a responsible tenant.’
Such, with a few trifling additions, was the advertisement that
caught my eye in the spring of 18—.
‘My dear Jane,’ I said, as I handed the paper over to my wife, ‘this,
I think, is the very thing we want.’
I was a London practitioner, with a numerous family and a large
circle of patients; but the two facts, though blessings in themselves,
were not without their disadvantages.
The hostages which I had given to fortune had made that
strenuous action which attention to my numerous patients supplied
incumbent on me; but the consequent anxiety and want of rest had
drawn so largely on my mental and physical resources, that there
was no need for my professional brethren to warn me of the
necessity of change and country air. I felt myself that I was breaking
down, and had already made arrangements with a friend to take my
practice for a few months, and set me at liberty to attend to my own
health. And being passionately fond of fishing, and all country
pleasures and pursuits, and looking forward with zest to a period of
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¹ See Whaley, Germany, i, 1–14.

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⁹ Kroeschell, Rechtsgeschichte, i, 254–6.

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¹⁷ Parisse, Allemagne et Empire, pp. 216–17.

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