Fond adventures Author:Maurice Henry Hewlett Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BRAZENHEAD THE GREAT I. How Captain Brazenhead Won A Recruit Pilgrimage to Canterbury and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, which is in some a piety, in some a c... more »ourteous act, for some salvation, for some a frolic, in others may very well be the covering of statecraft, of policy, of deep design. So it was with Captain Salomon Brazenhead in the month of May and year of our Lord God fourteen hundred and fifty. With him,' late of Burgundy, formerly of Milan'—a lean man of six feet two inches, of inordinate thirst, of two scars on his face, a notched forefinger, a majestic nose, of a long sword, two daggers, and a stolen horse, of experience in divers kinds of villainy, yet of simple tastes—with this free routier, I allow, pilgrimage was certainly a cloak of dissembling, while none the less a congenial and (as he would have been the first to admit) wholesome exercise. If he had served too long in Italy not to loveconspiracy, he had not been to Compostella and Jerusalem for nothing. Indeed, he had skirted in his time too close to the rocks of Death not to respect those who (for honourable reasons) had cast themselves upon them. Therefore he was by no means without devotion in seeking the Head of Thomas and the Golden Shrine, for all that he had business, and high business, on the road. For firstly, in this reign of King Henry the Sixth, he was a Duke of York's man, a White Rose man. Secondly, he was one of those who had sworn to have Jack Nape's head on a charger.1 Lastly, he was bosom friend of another Jack, whom he hoped to meet in Kent; I mean Jack Mend-all, Jack Cade, Jack Mortimer—call him as you will—that promising young man, who promised himself a kingdom and Englishmen a charter, who actually fought a battle on Blackheath, held London Bridge against the Mayor, Aldermen, and Citi...« less