"Fellows, these are the tidings; even while our priest was speaking we
heard a horn blow far off; so I bade the sergeant we have taken, and
who is now our fellow-in-arms, to tell me where away it was that there
would be folk a-gathering, and what they were; and he did me to wit
that mayhappen Sir John Newton was stirring from Rochester Castle; or,
maybe, it was the sheriff and Rafe Hopton with him; so I rode off what
I might towards Hartlip, and I rode warily, and that was well, for as
I came through a little wood between Hartlip and Guildstead, I saw
beyond it a gleam of steel, and lo in the field there a company, and a
pennon of Rafe Hopton's arms, and that is blue and thereon three
silver fish: and a pennon of the sheriff's arms, and that is a green
tree; and withal another pennon of three red kine, and whose they be I
know not.[1]


[1] Probably one of the Calverlys, a Cheshire family, one of whom was
a noted captain in the French wars.


"There tied I my horse in the middle of the wood, and myself I crept
along the dyke to see more and to hear somewhat; and no talk I heard
to tell of save at whiles a big knight talking to five or six others,
and saying somewhat, wherein came the words London and Nicholas
Bramber, and King Richard; but I saw that of men-at-arms and sergeants
there might be a hundred, and of bows not many, but of those outland
arbalests maybe a fifty; and so, what with one and another of servants
and tipstaves and lads, some three hundred, well armed, and the
men-at-arms of the best. Forsooth, my masters, there had I been but a
minute, ere the big knight broke off his talk, and cried out to the