Duke's Winton, a chronicle of Sedgemoor

Front matter

DUKE'S WINTON dl Chronicle of Stbgwuror H__ Bis J. E. HENSLOWE APTHOE OP "DOEOTHY COMPTON," " WHITE AND EED," ETC. LONDON JOHN AND ROBERT MAXWELL MILTON HOUSE, ST. BRIDE STREET, LTJDGATE CIRCUS AND SHOE LANE, FLEET STREET, E.C. [All rights reserved^ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PEOLOGUE 1 I. TWO SISTERS 7 II. LE ROI EST MORT; VIVE LE ROI . . .23 III. NICHOLAS VENTON 37 IV. SOWING THE SEED . . . . .51 V. WAYSIDE FLOWERS 58 VI. THE DRAGON'S TEETH . . . . .69 VII. EUSTACE HERON ...... 93 VIII. CROSS CURRENTS . . . . . .106 IX. THE BEGINNING OP THE HARVEST . . .116 X. KING MONMOUTH . . . . . .130 XI. NEW THOUGHTS 141 XII. THE RENEGADE . . . . . .160 XIII. THE NIGHT ATTACK . . . . .167 XIV. SEDGEMOOR FIELD . . . . .172 xv. pernel's vigil . . . . . .182 j XVI. THE REPRISAL . . . .' . .192 XVII. FROM STAWELL'S OAK . . . . .196 j CONTENTS iv CHAPTEE PAGE XVIII.

FOR temperance' sake .... 202 XIX. AN ERRANT DAMSEL ..... 208 XX. A MADNESS OF FAREWELLS' . . .221 XXI. THE FUGITIVE ...... 228 XXII. A DREAM AND AN AWAKENING . . .231 XXIII. THE BLOODY ASSIZE ..... 247 XXIV. RUE FOR REMEMBRANCE . . . .263 XXV. NEWS FROM THE WEST . . . .270 XXVI. THE PROGRESS OF EVENTS . . . .278 XXVII. HOME AGAIN ...... 282 XXVIII. duke's WINTON ONCE MORE . . . 288 XXIX. TREASON 293 XXX. A PREUX CHEVALIER . . . .299 XXXI. A QUONDAM RIVAL ..... 306 XXXII. THE COUNCIL 310 XXXIII. A LONG GOOD-NIGHT . . . . .315 XXXIV. THE NIGHT RIDE • . . . . .321 XXXV. THE LAST OF THE CAVALIERS . . .328 xxxvi. lost 333 XXXVII. UNTIL THE DA¥3^i3S4S!^ . . . .344 ( 7 OC 86 ! a Gijromcle of SeBgemoor

Prologue

Gray swamps and pools, waste places of the hern. Enid.— Tennyson. MONG all the changes which have swept over this England of ours in the lapse of years, altering, slowly but surely, the features of the country, and effacing the old landmarks one by one, there are few which have effected such marked and complete alterations as the drainage of the great marshes. There was a wild beauty in those lonely morasses in their very desolation, which cultiva tion has removed for ever. Nay, more, the natural history of England has lost by the drainage of such land a distinct flora and fauna also. ■ There were flowers on those marsh islands, B which bloom nowhere else; strange, lovely moths and butterflies hovered over them, whose wings paint the summer air no more ; birds who, if not absolutely extinct, grow rarer every year.

Doubtless it is right that it should be so, for in the eternal order of things, it is fitting that use should be evolved out of uselessness ; but it is one of the saddest, as well as the truest, things in nature that, wherever man sets his stamp and attests his presence, he withers the divine beauty that was God's first seal upon the place. But it is not with the great fens of the north eastern counties that we have to do, but with that long, irregular tract of reclaimed marsh-land known as Sedgemoor. Deep in the heart of the west it lies, fenced with a natural rampart of hills, stretching round it in distinct chains. To the north-west lies the Quantock range, beyond which is Exmoor and the home of the red deer; eastward are the loftier Mendips with their strange caverns and wild passes and chasms, rent in some prehistoric age; and to the south is another lesser ridge, while here and there steep wooded slopes intersect the level marsh like the coast promontories they may once have been.

PROLOGUE.

3 It is a country rich in history and tradition, misty legend and undoubted truth, for the bones of Saxon England lie under the surface, and at every step they are disinterred. Here, in the centre of that dreary flat, is Athelney, an island in the ninth century, where Alfred, in the bitter winter-tide, pressed by the Danes and sore bestead, found a refuge — as the old school-tale tells us — among the reed-bound huts of the ceorls there, and left an imperishable token of his presence in the famous jewel found hard by. A few miles southward is the spot where he, victorious at last and Kiug of southern England, brought Guthruu and many jarls to the baptismal font in token of a mightier victory still. Here, too, to go back to still remoter times and to a region of dim tradition, is the home of the great Arthurian epic which, in Sir Thomas Malory's stately prose, exercised a stronger in fluence on the mediæval mind than we, perhaps, at this day can appreciate, but which has been brought home to us in most musical verse.

For, says the legend, on the Tone, as it flows through Sedgemoor, stood Astolat, the lonely tower wherein the " lily maid " guarded the scarred and dinted shield of Lancelot; and at the edge of the moor b is the mediæval Glastonbury, Avillion, " the island valley," where rest, after their unquiet lives, Arthur and Guinevere, and where, says old Giraldus Cambrensis, their bones and the golden tresses of the " great queen " were found in the days of the first Plantagenet king. Here, in those low-lying marshy villages, the power and wealth of the English Church of the middle ages is attested by those glorious churches, lifting tower and battlement, pinnacle and fret work, above the level landscape with a lavishness of detail and beauty nowhere surpassed, yet bear ing piteous marks of that relentless fury of de vastation which wrecked so much in the rebellion of the seventeenth century.

And in spite of all "improvements," of roads and drainage and all the rest of it, Sedgemoor has still a beauty of its own — strange, dreamy, melan choly. In winter it may be, and is, unutterably sad and dreary ; but in summer a soft magical haze sleeps upon it, and it is touched with sweet ness such as the peaceful landscape beneath the windows of Shalott. On either side the river lie Long fields of barley and of rye ; Willows whiten, aspens quiver, Little breezes dusk and shiver.

PROLOGUE.

5 In the rank grass the pale cuckoo-flower erects its delicate ethereal blossoms, and on the shorter turf the bird's-foot trefoil spangles the earth with its innocent golden petals. Down by the long straight rhines are ragged-robins and marsh mallow, and, standing out of the dark still water, blooms the real forget-me-not of the poets and the tall spiked bulrush. Over them, in the ambient air, the dragon-fly hovers, refracting prismatic lights from his gauzy wings, and the kingfisher darts like a many-coloured arrow. Now and agaiu a moorhen comes sailing down, less often still the bittern utters its wild cry over the flat, and, stateliest of all, the great gray heron stands and broods, or floats slowly away on the wing, recalling other times, when knight and dame came riding down to the water-side, with gyr-falcon on fist, to win those dun plumes as their proudest guerdon.

Nowhere does the great king-fern grow more lavishly than on the dreary expanse of peat stretching round Edington, which is, some say, the Essendune of Alfred's crowning victory. And round the moor the hills close in, cleft with deep lanes which wind up and down, here and there, and end abruptly, as often as not, in a field or a barton. Lanes, bordered with high, wild hedges — thorn to begin with, but that sub stratum is hidden under the wealth of foliage that has overgrown it. The nightshade wreathes its purple bells ; the bryony clasps its tenacious hold, with dull-green flowers in summer and scarlet strings of beads in autumn ; and the old-man's beard showers down its soft fleece of downy fila ment over all. The little starry herb-robert looks forth placidly ; the lords-and-ladies lift their purple spear-heads; and the germander speedwell spreads its blue masses on the banks.

Over all rise the great elm-trees — noblest of all trees of the west country; and within are endless orchards, deep and cool. Trees gnarled, and bent, and aged, many of them, covered with gray and golden lichen, and tufted with mistletoe; but with a glory of beauty that nothing can rival in the flush of their Maytide blossom, as well as in the perfection of their crimson, and russet, and golden fruit, whose in-gathering is looked for with such keen anxiety.

Chapter I. Two Sisters

A shady freshness, chafers whirring ; A little piping of leaf-hid birds, A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to the eastward, snowy as curds. Divided. — Jean Ingelow. OME back with me two hundred years. Reverse the glass of Time, and see what Mid-Somerset shows us in the year of grace 1685. Forty years have passed since Fairfax and the " brewer of Huntingdon " dogged the Cavaliers along the Ivel, from Ilchester to Langport ; since the Ironsides thundered down, holster to holster, on Aller Drove, and after one desperate stand there, wild Lord Goring fled through Chard to Barnstaple, never more to make head for the King he had served with a tarnished faith ; since Bridgwater fell, and Rupert surrendered Bristol, forgetting, before that scathing ordeal, the hot valour which had led the victorious charge on many a stricken field.

All these things have passed away; the new generation thinks little of them, and already listens to the recital as to some old-world story of dim and remote ages. For five-and-twenty years all has gone on, as far as this country is concerned, in a peaceful groove. The ruined churches were made air-tight at the Restoration, the painted windows were mended with common glass where broken and defaced, and the people mostly were satisfied. Only a few would speak of the ancient beauty regretfully — of sculptured tomb and pinnacle now broken down ; but for the rest, the folk are contented with what they see. It is very much out of the world, down here in Sedgemoor, and the storms of these five-and twenty years have not penetrated so far. The Rye House and the Popish Plot are not much nearer nor more real than the Wars of the Roses, and the fact of the Dutch fleet in the Channel is a matter of very remote interest here.

There is a village in a cleft of one of the ridges running down to the level ; one of many such, approached by elm-bordered lanes, knee deep in the lias mud in winter, rough and deep rutted at the best of times. The orchards climb up the hill, and the cottages stand here and there by the side of the lanes; poor, and low, and mud-built, many of them, but picturesque never theless. Down in the hollow, yet much above the level of the moor, hard by the church with its battlemented clerestory and tall perpendicular tower, is an old house — old even in the seventeenth century. It is of no use looking for it now, for it was turned into a farmhouse somewhere about 1760, and has degenerated, I believe, within the last ten years into two or three tenements for labourers. The last farmer's wife who inhabited it considered it dark and the rooms low.

It was pleasant enough, Duke's Winton, in the days of Charles II. , and its inmates did not find fault with it. There was an old story that Pro tector Somerset had built it out of a small part of that splendid prey he laid his clutches on, over yonder, at Glastonbury, whence its name. The Ashbridges, it seems, had bought it after the attainder of the hapless Seymour, and migrated from another parish a few miles off in Queen Mary's time. But all that was long ago, and at any rate there had been Ashbridges about these parts time out of mind. In the year of grace 1685, Duke's Winton Manor was a long irregular house with a gable towards the church, and though much more modern, built like it, naturally, of blue lias with Tudor mullions of Ham Hill stone. Over the door way, which was not by any means lofty, was an escutcheon carved, rudely enough, in the same material, with a stag garbed and collared.

Egress to the lane was afforded by a tall, elaborate iron gate, flanked by stone pillars, crowned with balls even then moss-grown, while ivy clambered up the pillars in thick profusion. The house itself was backed by elm-trees, and behind them, by the orchard sloping steeply up the hill; but at the front, which faced north-west towards the level, was a long walled garden. The walls were high at the sides, but at the end permitted a full view over that part of the hamlet which lay below, and beyond, over the wide champaign and its boundary hills on the other side. If the house was pleasant, that garden was a pleasanter place still. Flowers which we have almost forgotten, or which blow in these days only in such old-world spots and remote corners, flourish there : monthly and cabbage roses ; laven der in great abundance, for the autumn distilling of sweet waters ; rosemary, almost as luxuriant ; love-lies-bleeding, camomile, and southernwood ; and in one corner, the unfailing plot of herbs, for the supply not only of the kitchen, but chiefly of the homely medicines and simples — thought, and probably with good reason, sovereign in many cases of need.

The spring flowers were not out yet, nor even thinking of it, for it was early February, although this winter had been nothing to compare in severity with the preceding one, when the frost had been such as no man living could remember, when cattle and flocks innumerable had died, and even floating ice on the Bristol Channel had, it was said, permitted certain to cross it to Penarth on foot. It was a clear fresh morning this, a fore taste of spring, and the early snowdrops, the fair maids of February, were hanging their white bells among the spiked leaves in the borders, and the birds were beginning to make them selves heard. The day was waking up with a sense of cheerful life, and the morning mist had cleared away from Sedgemoor. Joshua Sawtell, the gardener, opened the door from the courtyard and emerged into the garden, stopping for an instant to draw the back of his hand across his mouth, to consider himself and make up his mind what be should begin upon.

This was always, apparently, a mental operation which required thought and time, for no mortal ever saw Joshua in a hurry nor even in much haste. He took things sadly as a rule, being of a melancholic disposition, and even when on rare occasions he unbent to mirth, it assumed a sardonic tinge. He had no very high opinion of any one but himself, and for that individual he entertained a respect approaching to veneration. He was the terror of his subordinates, regarded by his superiors with mingled resignation and respect, and contradicted by but one person in the world. The individual in question was coming, at this moment, up the garden alley, out of sight so far, but sending her voice before her, clear, full, and mellow. Joshua gave a prolonged sniff of disapprobation. " Singin', eh ? " he said crossly.

" She be always a-tuning up, she be ; and whatever good be um ? " But he stood still to listen nevertheless, and presently the singer turned into the straight walk facing Joshua, and came towards him. It was an old song she sang, old even then — at least some eighty years or so — but it was well-known and popular, or had been till Waller and Cowley had somewhat displaced its author from his pedestal, in less remote regions than Duke's Winton. Who doth ambition shun And loves to live i' the sun, Seeking the food he eats And pleas'd with what he gets, Come hither, come hither, come hither Here shall he see No enemy, But winter and rough weather. She broke off in her song as she advanced and nodded to Joshua. She was a tall, lithe girl, dressed in a gown of dull green silk, pulled through the pocket holes for the convenience of walking, a long lawn apron edged with Flanders lace, and an overlay to match.

On her head was a black satin hood, but it was pushed back, and her dark curling hair fell over her forehead and round her neck. She was not handsome, nor even particularly good-looking in any way; in fact she had nothing to boast of, except an erect figure, with a stately and yet resolute gait, very beautiful hands and feet, and a pair of eyes that went far to redeem her other shortcomings. One could forgive irregular features and defective com plexion looking into those, for they were the eyes of a poet, though an unconscious one ; gray, clear, and liquid, they were soft, yet full of fire; tender, yet passionate. They were full of good humoured amusement now, as their owner came quickly up. " Good morrow, Joshua," she said lightly, " and there's a song for a greeting to you." Joshua endeavoured vainly to wreathe his features into an engaging smile.

" I hearkened to un, missus, but there, I don't know nothin' 'bout all they songs and things, and I don't hold with so much of it to once." "So much, Joshua? Sure, you mistake, 'I am advised to give music o' mornings; they say it will penetrate : first, a very excellent, good conceited thing; after, a wonderful sweet air, with admirable rich words to it ; and then ' " But Joshua shouldered his spade in desperation. " There, I ain't got no time to bide along here. 'Tis all foolishness, I do know very well; out o' they books, I warrant un." The girl laughed. "Yes, sure, and a very fine book too. But see, good Joshua, I have been down the lane, and I found this — the first this year. I know that, for I went yesterday morning, and there was not one open." This was a little bunch of primroses, just two or three, cool, fresh, and dewy, which she held up before Joshua Sawtell's nose.

He eyed them with strong contempt. He might be the gardener, but he did not approve of hedgerow flowers. "A p'imrose," he said disdainfully, "and for you to drive such work over a little thing of a flower like that there." " Truly yes," she persisted, " for the primroses mean spring, Joshua, and before long the black thorn will be come and past, and maybuds will show, and we can gather maydew to our liking. And then — then the summer will be upon us, a brave time. There is Temperance calling. Go thy ways, Joshua, you will find nothing sweeter than my primrose knot to-day, search the garden round." " Pernel, Pernel," came from the house again. "Yes — I'm coming," she answered in a raised key, and she turned, walking swiftly and lightly away. Joshua Sawtell stood still, and looked after her retreating figure.

He snubbed her steadily on principle, and disagreed with her invariably ; but he would have gone through fire and water for her with a certain rugged fidelity. He had carried her about as a baby, and to this day loved her better than any other of the Ashbridges, whom in their turn he put before any other race on earth. She teased and worried and mystified him, but in his own morose way he enjoyed it. She ran across to the garden porch, arranging her flowers. " ' Faint primrose beds ' suit my Temperance better than Joshua, 'tis true," she said to herself, smiling. " See you, sister, these are for you ; they set you well," she added aloud, as she reached the door. If Pernel had little outward comeliness but that of youth, Temperance Ashbridge had absorbed her full share of that dower which is a woman's best, and lacking which, all long for.

There was no mistake about her beauty, at any rate ; eyes, features, colouring, all harmonious, and forming a very seductive whole. She came out from the shadow of the porch into the sunshine, and put up a white hand to shade her eyes as she turned, while the morning light, that merciless investi gator, could find no flaw in that complexion of milk and roses, no harsh line to mar that oval contour. " Ah, that is sweet," she said in a very clear soft voice, taking the flowers held out to her. " Can I pin them here, Pernel ? Think you they suit with these knots ? " She busied herself with her new adornment, putting her pretty head on one side, and sticking her dimpled chin into her neck to get a general view of the effect thereof. Pernel stood before her sister with loosely clasped hands, contem plating her with a quiet satisfaction that had something of the affectionate pride of a mother beyond the ordinary sentiments of a sister, and a younger sister, too.

But Pernel adored Tempe rance, setting her up in her own mind on a pinnacle from which nothing could dislodge her. The elder sister's beauty was to the younger a constant revelation of delight, and she would have walked barefoot to Bridgwater and back had Tem perance fancied a decoration for her comely person which could be secured by such means. Pernel c had spent, nay, still did spend, dreamy hours alone in the orchard or the meadow by the stream ; with the brown calf-bound Shakespeare or the " Polyolbion," or the "Faerie Queene," or even the " Purple Island," or, as often as not, with no book in her hand, but those fair creations hovering in her brain. And Temperance, albeit absent in the body, always figured in those dreams. Una or Miranda, Britomart or Desdemon, nay, even she of Belmont or Rosalind, tender and true, who made an Arden of that Somerset wood — each in her turn was clothed in the outward seeming of Temperance, and it was Temperance's soft curved lips that uttered those musical words which have no death.

As to the elder sister, she troubled herself little about the web of romance the younger's fond imagination wove round her. She was essentially practical in her views of life, and regarded all poets and their admirers, if with a certain respect enforced by general opinion, at least as more or less crack-brained. She scarcely knew of these dreams which formed so large a part of her sister's life, or if she was conscious of their existence, they were just "Pernel's fancies" and nothing more. She accepted Pernel's devotion placidly, as she did everything else. Of course she was perfectly aware of her own beauty, and without being unduly vain, she knew that she was very charming and universally admired. What then ? Some folks were so, she reasoned, others were not so fortunate; Pernel was not, for in stance.

She was very fond of Pernel, but she appraised the difference between them quite can didly, and would have been a good deal surprised had their lot iu life turned out to be equal. Temperance got her own way with every one by means of her fair face, her winning manner, and a certain obstinacy under the surface ; Pernel neither got, nor tried to get hers with any one, except Joshua Sawtell. " They do not set me well," said Temperance after due consideration, pulling out the primroses. " There ; you may have them, Pernel ; and come in quickly, breakfast waits." She turned into the hall within, whither Pernel followed her. I have said that the rooms in Duke's Winton were low, and this hall was no exception. It gained nothing in height by its dark oak panel ling, carved roughly enough, but carefully polished, and inscribed here and there with pithy sentences.

Over the stone fireplace, where a wood fire burnt c cheerily on the iron dogs, was an achievement of arms, the garbed stag impaled with another bearing and fixing the date of that part of the house, at any rate. On one side hung a dinted morion which had seen the wars of the Irish pale under St. Leger; and on the other the shining head piece which had kept Master Ashbridge's head, a lad of twenty or so, at Worcester fight, thirty five years back ; above, the sword his father had drawn at Lansdowne and Langport. For good Master Ashbridge had had small sympathies and no dealings with the " Clubmen " who had hampered proceedings in Somerset so sorely in the Rebellion days. He had been a hot Cavalier in those old times, ready to don buff coat and helm and strike for the King. He had sobered down now into a very peaceable gentleman and justice of the peace.

He drank the King's health loyally, with a hand on the pommel of his sword, every day; he flew his hawks merrily down by the willows, and bustled about his farm, the conduct whereof he had never been able to master, though he firmly believed his talents to lie a good deal that way ; and altogether was quite contented with his life. He loved his two girls dearly, and was very proud of Temperance. Pernel he did not profess to understand, but he did not interfere with her pursuits. If she chose to mope over a mort of old song-books, 'twas her affair, and not his, he would remark in confidence to her mother ; and perhaps 'twas all as well, as her face, poor maid, was not a relish to the eye like Temperance's. As to Mistress Ashbridge, she looked at matters in a different light, though she seldom said so.

She was a Vere of the " fighting Veres," but she had inherited very little of the bellicose temperament which had distinguished so many of that famous race, and, not least, that fearless dame who had dared to beard Bradshaw and all the regicides in Westminster Hall, and vindicate her husband's honour, rebel though he was. Mistress Ashbridge had far more akin to the daughter of Anne, Lady Fairfax, the sad forsaken Duchess Mary. She was a quiet, devout woman, with more than the remains of great beauty which had won the stout heart of young Ralph Ashbridge in other days. She was, moreover, strongly imbued with the broad healthy school of piety of the early Carolian doctors — Sherlock, Sanderson, Hammond, and Taylor's Kare and altar-twining roses, Coloured with the summer of his touch. George Herbert was a text-book to be reverently used, and side by side with the " Country Parson," among her chief treasures, was " Icon Basilike."

We think little of it now; it has long been a vexed question whether it was really the " King's Portraicture " at all ; but in those days its author ship was an article of faith, and many sweet souls found sustenance and comfort in those thoughtful chapters, believing them the outcome of much suffering; the fruit of infinite pain endured with royal patience. Such then were Ralph Ashbridge and his wife Patience, the two persons who sat in the dining parlour at Duke's Winton on this February morning, and to whom their daughters presently entered, each curtsying respectfully as she did so, and inquiring for her parents' health before she ventured to sit down.

Chapter II. Le Roi Est Mort

; VIVE LE ROI 1 Cit. Good morrow, neighbour ; Whither away so fast ? 2 Cit. I promise you, I scarcely know myself : Hear you the news abroad 1 1 Git. Tes ; that the King is dead. 2 Cit. Ill news, by'r lady ; seldom comes the better : I fear, I fear, 'twill prove a giddy world. King Richard III., Act II. " UlSlYmS HAT is that ? " says Mistress Ashbridge, AllKK looking up. txa^^ " What was what ? " asks the Squire, with his mouth full. " A mere nothing, madam," says Pernel, nodding at Temperance opposite to her, "only Humphrey Braden came to breakfast by chance." " And how can you tell, my maid ? " asks her mother ; " your back is turned to the window." " By Tempie's face," said Pernel, laughing ; " her back is not turned." The elder sister's apple-blossom complexion assumes a deeper pink, but she retorts with an air of displeasure so deep that it must be assumed : "You are malapert, Sister Pernel; what is it to me if fifty Humphrey Bradens come ?

" Pernel makes no rejoinder. She knows that Temperance rather enjoys that sort of badinage than otherwise, and, moreover, there is no time for argument, for the door is opened, and Elijah Sawtell (Joshua's son, by the way) makes the comprehensive announcement : " Mast' Braden over to Winslade." Mast' Braden over to Winslade is a personage in these parts. His father was astute enough to make common cause with the Clubmen in the Rebellion — a fact which Ralph Ashbridge cannot comfortably forget — and, during the Common wealth, further testified to his talents by marrying a Puritan heiress from Bath. Humphrey Braden, their son, is rich as times go, and has never dissi pated any of his patrimony. He has been to London for a short time, it is true, has thrown a main with Etherege and Rochester, and lounged in the Mall with Sedley to watch King Charles feed his ducks or play pell-mell.