The lower part of this ample apartment was filled with squires and yeomen, who made way not without some difficulty for Rebecca, attended by the Preceptor and Mont-Fitchet, and followed by the guard of halberdiers, to move forward to the seat appointed for her. As she passed through the crowd, her arms folded and her head depressed, a scrap of paper was thrust into her hand, which she received almost unconsciously, and continued to hold without examining its contents. The assurance that she possessed some friend in this awful assembly gave her courage to look around, and to mark into whose presence she had been conducted. She gazed, accordingly, upon the scene, which we shall endeavour to describe in the next chapter.

Stern was the law which bade its vot’ries leave

At human woes with human hearts to grieve;

Stern was the law, which at the winning wile

Of frank and harmless mirth forbade to smile;

But sterner still, when high the iron-rod

Of tyrant power she shook, and call’d that power of God.

“The Middle Ages”