THE BOY CRUSADERS,

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CHAPTER I.

A FEUDAL CASTLE.

T was the age of chain armour and tournaments —
of iron barons and barons’ wars—of pilgrims
and armed pilgrimages—of forests and forest out-
Jaws—when HenryeIII. reigned as King of Eng-
land, and the feudal system, though no longer ram-
pant, was still full of hfe and energy; when Louis
King of France, afterwards canonised as St. Louis,
undertook one of the last and most celebrated of
those expeditions known as the Crusades, and de-
scribed as ‘feudalism’s great adventure, and popular
wlory.’

At the time when Henry was King of England
and when Louis of France was about to embark for
the East, with the object of rescuing the Holy
Sepulchre from the Saracens, there stood on the very
verge of Northumberland a strong baronial edifice,
known as the Castle of Wark, occupying a circular