ing due allowance for accidents and
irregularities, young Stanley, as the second son, could not then have
proceeded beyond his third year! a precocity unprecedented, we believe,
even in the annals of that fighting era. The conflicting statements we
meet with about this time, both traditionary and recorded, we cannot
attempt to reconcile. Sufficient information happily exists, however,
on which no doubt arises; and by the aid of that we proceed with our
narrative.

Stanley, according to some, having been a great traveller, had improved
himself diligently in the art of war; and, as the old chronicles
quaintly relate, "he visited most of the courts of Europe, even as far
as Constantinople; wherein he made such advances in the school of Mars,
that his superior skill in arms was generally applauded in every country
he passed through." So distinguished and widely-extended a reputation
for bravery could not fail to provoke the pride and envy of all
Christendom, whereupon the young Admiral of Hainault, one of the bravest
men of his time, together with divers gentlemen of the French court,
defied the whole kingdom to a passage of arms, the result of which
challenge has been shown.

Great was the confluence and resort to the city of Winchester, it being
noised abroad as though the king would distinguish the affray by his
presence; wondrous the stir and bustle of the soldiers, guards, and
attendants, with hordes of idlers and hangers-on, from the vast array of
knights and nobles, who came either to see or to share in the
approaching trial. The splendid banners, the heraldic pomp and barbaric
grandeur of their retinues, augmenting with every fresh arrival, made
the streets one ever-moving pageant for many days before the conflict
began. Isabella had full leisure to observe, from her own lattice, the
gay and costly garniture, and the glittering appointments of the
warriors, with the pageants and puerile diversions suited to the taste
and capacity of the ignorant crowds by which they were followed. The
king's mummers were arrived, together with many other marvels in the
shape of puppet-shows and "motions" enacting the "old vice;" Jonas and
the whale, Nineveh, the Creation, and a thousand unintelligible but
equally gratifying and instructive devices; one of which, we are told,
was "four giants, a unicorn, a camel, an ass, a dragon, a hobby-horse,
and sixteen naked boys!"

The crowds attracted by these spectacles were immense, and t