generous disposition. Wotton's "Baronetage," art. Hilyard, or
Hildyard, of Pattrington.] our family took its rise. But under these
Norman barons we sank with the nation to which we belonged. Still
were we called gentlemen, and still were dubbed knights. But as I
grew up to man's estate, I felt myself more Saxon than gentleman, and,
as one of a subject and vassal race, I was a son of the Saxon people.
My father, like thee, was a man of thought and bookcraft. I dare own
to thee that he was a Lollard; and with the religion of those bold
foes to priest-vice, goes a spirit that asks why the people should be
evermore the spoil and prey of lords and kings. Early in my youth, my
father, fearing rack and fagot in England, sought refuge in the Hans
town of Lubeck. There I learned grave truths,--how liberty can be won
and guarded. Later in life I saw the republics of Italy, and I asked
why they were so glorious in all the arts and craft of civil life,
while the braver men of France and England seemed as savages by the
side of the Florentine burgess, nay, of the Lombard vine-dresser. I
saw that, even when those republics fell a victim to some tyrant or
podesta, their men still preserved rights and uttered thoughts which
left them more free and more great than the Commons of England after
all their boasted wars. I came back to my native land and settled in
the North, as my franklin ancestry before me. The broad lands of my
forefathers had devolved on the elder line, and gave a knight's fee to
Sir Robert Hilyard, who fell afterwards at Towton for the
Lancastrians. But I had won gold in the far countree, and I took farm
and homestead near Lord Warwick's tower of Middleham. The feud
between Lancaster and York broke forth; Earl Warwick summoned his
retainers, myself amongst them, since I lived upon his land; I sought
the great earl, and I told him boldly--him whom the Commons deemed a
friend, and a foe to all malfaisance and abuse--I told him that the
war he asked me to join seemed to me but a war of ambitious lords, and