Clare Savile; or, sixty years ago. With ... illustrations

Front matter

CLARE SAVILE Baby Clare presented to Aunt Dorothy. Clare Savi le; or, SIXTY YEARS AGO. EY JULIA LUARD. Author of " The Childhood and Schoolroom Hours of Royal Children." WITH ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS. LONDON: Frederick Warne and Co. BEDFORD STREET, COVENT GARDEN. New York : SCRIBNER, WELFORD AND CO. Preface The Author of the following tale is bound to confess the obligations she is under to a number of private family letters and documents on the events of the Peninsular War, written on the spot by ey7e-witnesses and actors in that great con test. Neither does the heroine's presence with her husband's regiment belong to the realms of fiction, but was a well known incident in the life of a lady belonging to a past generation, and which is now woven into a story and brought before the notice of the public.

Contents. CHAPTER PACE I. Chapter decidedly uninteresting, but necessary . . i II. Clare's escape from becoming an Heiress . . .15 III. Clare's Childhood, and Old English Sports . . 42 IV. The Return Home . . . . . . S2 V. Danger and Anxiety . . . . . .122 VI. A Day and a Night at Oakwell Farm . . . 159 VII. The Surprise 192 VIII. Clare at Seventeen ....... 243 IX. Disappointment and Sorrow ..... 266 X. Married Life 299 XL Military Life 349 XII. Sickness and Sorrow . . . . ■ ■ 381 XIII. Clare's experience of a Battle 4°5 XIV. The Exiles 439 t^i&Gjfa&p^ C LARE SAVILE; OR, SIXTY YEARS AGO.

Chapter I. Decidedly

uninteresting, but very necessary. His list of forefathers ascended so high that they were lost in the barbarous ages of Galwegian independence. They had made war, raised rebellion, been defeated, beheaded, and hanged, as became a family of importance, for many centuries. Guy Mannering. IN the West Riding of Yorkshire, along the broad high roads that traverse the country from Huddersfield to Leeds and on to Otley and Skipton, the modern traveller may still find traces, amidst the mills and manufactories of the present day, of a more picturesque age and of a quieter and more primitive state of society. The old Yorkshire squires, who handed down from one generation to another the ancient halls in which they ruled despotically over their farm tenants, and the scattered woollen-mill holders who hacl been established in particular districts as far back as Edward III.'s reign, are now superseded by the rich nineteenth century traders of our own times, with wealth sufficient not only to buy up many of their broken-down estates, but with sufficient capital to occupy the ground with their upstart modern mansions and with countless hideous smoky chimneys and factories of staring red brick.

In this way the ancient stock of time-honoured names pass away from among us, and are remembered no more except when the antiquary or the historian stumble by chance on some ancient coat of arms, emblazoned on the coloured glass window of some obscure church, or find the motto of a family once well known and famous and engraved round their crest, sculptured on some stone moulding, finial, or bracket, which, fallen from its ' pride of place,' has been admitted as an ornament into some modern building. Seventy years have hardly passed, and I would bring my readers back to an age when this lovely part of Yorkshire was fresh and green and wholesome, untraversed by railroads, unobscured by the soot and smoke which strike the stranger's eye as a feature belong ing to it; the landlord and his poorer neighbours lived together in mutual dependence upon each other; and though restricted to fewer pleasures, and deprived of the excitement of change, they were yet happier and more easily contented than in these aspiring days, when every one is engaged in a race after business or pleasure.

In the year 1792 a younger branch of the Savile family, then re presented, in George III.'s reign, by Sir George Savile, Member for Yorkshire, was still living at Howley Priory, situated about three miles to the north-east of Leeds. Before the dissolution of mo nastic buildings it had belonged to the seigneury of the Lacys, the founders of Kirkstall Abbey and several smaller monastic esta blishments. One of the members, having built and endowed it in fulfilment ot a vow made during dangerous sickness, had then placed over it a certain number of monks and a Prior of the Cister tian Order, who continued to keep it in the same order until the whole foundation was suppressed. Afterwards it had been be stowed by Henry VIII. on one of his knights, Sir Arthur Darcy, who had paid knight's service for it, and lastly it only entered the Savile family in Elizabeth's reign by intermarrying with the Darcys.

When their cousin, the celebrated George Savile, was created Marquis of Halifax, in 1682, the Savile of Howley Priory benefited by his relation's favour, and was able to add very considerably to his landed and personal estate by the possession of various sine cures, which were held by him for life. Unlike the fine gentlemen of that day, he was a bit of a miser, and possessed a calculating, mercantile spirit, which led him to in vest some of his riches in the woollen cloth mills of Birstall, together with some rich pasture-land, stretching northward along the banks of the Aire, and ending in the pleasant woods of Oakwell. Here he rebuilt a house that had formerly belonged, with the mills, to a Captain Batt, a reprobate landholder of the Restoration, which from henceforward was known as the Dower House, and to which the dowager Mrs. Saviles used to retire in the event of their husbands' death.

This was by far the most valuable part of the estate ; but as the rest of the Saviles were brought up to look down upon manufac turers as unworthy ' to come between the wind and their nobility,' they never alluded to these cloth-mills without a sigh, and a ' thank God ! he is the only member of the Savile family that ever soiled his hands with trade.' To this Savile, however, they owed the pro sperity of the Howley part of the estate, as well as the rebuilding of the greater part of the old priory (which had been turned into the hall) in its former style, and the restoration of the nave belonging to the monastic chapel, which had long been used as the village church by the scattered inhabitants of the eighty or ninety cottages situated below the beautiful stretch of park and wood leading up from the river Aire, on which the founder, Hugh Lacy, had placed his Priory in 1156.

Howley Priory, as the mansion was still called, was in fact nothing but the gateway of the ancient monastic establishment, a strong, square, castellated building of those early times, but modernized and increased as time went on by an additional wing in the Elizabethan style. The most ancient and curious part of this house was the old hall, forty-five feet long, extending the whole length of the ancient part of it, and which, with its beautiful carved and groined stone roof, had formerly served as the entrance to the Priory itself, but which was now enclosed on both sides by the inner and outer arch having been walled up. Opening out of it was a small curious room, with an arched stone roof, called the Muniment Room, where the former records of the establishment were kept. Through the narrow slits of a window, which served 1—2 to give light, you looked full on the beautiful nave of the former church, with its large Perpendicular west window, and its orna mental figures (partly broken), and coats of arms and hatchments, &c, &c, of the departed ancestors, who had once resided or visited there, and were now lying under the green smooth sward with broken monuments over them, either in what was once the cloister cemetery, or in the lonely De Lacy chantry, whose remains were at the same time so few and so exquisite.

It was impossible to gaze upon these symbols of a religion perhaps superstitious, but full of a touching devotion and faith, without being sobered by them, and perhaps that was the reason that the family had, even under ' Miser Savile's ' reign, forsaken nearly entirely the old part of the house, and had withdrawn to the modern wing opening on one of the formal gardens of the time, with its stiff-cut yew and holly hedge in the form of the Savile crest, its high terraces with overarching trees, the odd bowers cut in some box or laurel clump, its fountain and still quainter old dial, with the pretty motto of Horas non numero nisi serenas. Ah, what a lovely English home view you could see from this side I not, perhaps, so solemn or elevating as from the other, but more soothing from the perfect harmony and fitness of the whole to the habits of a happy, honourable, domestic family of the right sort.

From the terrace that ran the whole length of the house, and was confronted by one, nay, two others that bounded the other side of the quaint flower garden, you saw the noble old park, with its grand oak and chestnut trees, the former growing high up on the rugged grit and sandstone fells, which added a bleak grand background to the picture ; the slope of grass, interspersed with thickets of the densest yew, holly, and gorse, until the sward, growing brighter and brighter, joined the river's edge, and looked as though it smiled to kiss the quiet waters — which here swept smoothly along until obstructed by the wheel of an old rustic little water-mill on the right hand side, which foamed and fretted the waters, until they broke tumultuously into a pleasing roar. The herds of deer, either stoop ing to drink, or crossing the line of the horizon with then branching antlers, as you looked up the park to their favourite coverts on the rising ground, added a finish to the picture.

The hum of distant voices increased the charm of the waters' soothing sounds ; for on the left hand the old refectory, whose gable-end could just be seen, had been turned into the village school in 1792, and when you had passed the building, you came upon the play-ground, railed in for the meiry little ones, and could hear and see them at their games, whilst on the opposite side of the river (which was there but a stream, over which the youngsters crossed by the stepping-stones) you saw their cottage homes. To add a zest of mystery, on the left side stood one of the curious, old-fashioned timber buildings, ornamented with different coloured woods, and partly covered with luxuriant ivy, which showed its handsome high-pitched roof, its overhanging eaves, its carved gables and barge-boards to the passers-by.

Here, they said, the last Prior had ended his days in disgrace. Inside the old hall, covered in by a lofty high-fretted roof, a hole might still be seen, which formerly served as the only outlet for the smoke. Here, day after day, the old monk was said to cower over the small wood fire — which was the only luxury his necessities allowed him to light — on an open hearth-stone placed in the middle of the floor. Here, too, they told how Henry VI. was hidden from the Yorkists for weeks together, and many a tradition spoke of his piety and holiness — how he cured disorders with a touch, and how, at last, hunted like one of the wild deer, he had to leap on his horse in the middle of the night, and flee for his life to Kirkstall, and how in his hurry he left his boots and gloves be hind him, with the silver spoon he always carried with him for his meals.

These sacred relics were carefully preserved by the monks in the muniment-room, where they were found by the Saviles, and from that time the old timber house was preserved, and went by the name of King Henry's Parlour. The well close by, formerly known as Lady Anne's Well, was now just as often called the 'Good King's,' from his always drinking from the water, which was ever after vene rated as a charm for every disorder. The bushes round it were often, even in modern days, ornamented by ribbons and silks and bits of bright cloth, as thank-offerings from those so much beholden to it. Lastly, the grand woods, named after the good fathers, as it CLARE SAVILE. 6 was supposed, the Holy Woods, shut in the valley on the western side, clothing so thickly the high banks — in this part so steep as to resemble cliffs — that the idea of a dense virgin forest is given, where the foot of man had never disturbed the untrodden soil.

Upon this the setting sun throws its declining beams, and lends a glory to the foliage and the foaming noisy river, which appears to rejoice below in hoarse murmurs. Such a spot as this could not be without its tra ditions and tales of ghostly mystery; but though it was said that the shade of the first Prior was to be seen at times close to the Priors' Oven on the north side of the church, yet no one could assert that he had frightened even a child. As for the Saviles' house, that was free from apparitions until the death of ' Miser Savile,' when the ghost was added. For this prosperous gentleman proved by his death the old adage, ' Count no one happy until he is dead.' He had gone up to London on important business with his eldest son, a lad of sixteen, as well as to be presented by his cousin the Marquis to the King, when some foolish quarrel with a gentleman of the Duke of Buckingham's household brought upon him a duel, and though he was supposed to be deficient in the courtly breeding of the day, he was far too brave to decline the combat, and, un accustomed to the use of his sword, fell in the duel.

He had time to breathe his last wishes into his son's ear, and to desire him to return home at once. The son obeyed, though dreading to meet his widowed mother and his brothers and sisters with thi heavy news; but to his astonishment he found they were already aware of his father's death, and were lost in grief. And this is the tale which from that time was known as the Apparition of the Miser's Ghost. The whole family left at home had been keeping as a festival the news that the father and head of their house was to be knighted on the day of his presentation at Court; so they invited their neighbours and acquaintances and some relations to feast with them, and a regular banquet ensued in the grand old hall, whilst toasts were given and sentiments went round until the noise was somewhat uproarious.

The future Lady Savile sat at the head of her table, and did the honours well, as one descended from the old Yorkshire family of Tempests should do. She had just bowed her head gracefully in answer to the motto which her principal guest had given as a sentiment before he drank her health—' Loyoux as thou fynds '—which was carved in old English letters round the walls underneath] her own coat of arms, consisting of three birds, viseaux de tcmpete, as adopted by her husband in her honour as an heiress,— when a sudden entrance attracted her attention, caused her to remain as though paralysed, with the silver cup in her hand, which she had put to her lips in return for the cheers with which her health was drunk. Her guests, following the direction of her eyes, turned round, and the document, which was at that time drawn up and signed by those present, declared solemnly that they beheld the well-known face and figure of the master of the house, slowly walking through the hall, directing his steps to the muniment-room.

His head was bare, his face deadly pale, his left hand held a handkerchief, dyed crimson, to his side. He was dressed in the splendid Court dress of the times; his right hand holding his drawn sword, and a parch ment deed as well. He looked neither to the right nor the left, and as by slow and faltering steps he passed servant after servant, as they stood in a row behind the guests, it was curious to see how they each in horror shrank away from him as far as the wall per mitted. As he gained the upper part of the room, the grave sad eyes seemed to fix themselves upon the lady of the house ; at any rate she appeared to think so, for, starting up, she rushed towards him, exclaiming, ' Francis, what is the matter ? are you ill ? are you wounded?' and stretched out her hand to arrest his steps and clasp his in return.

To the unbounded astonishment of the spec tators, he glided past her, or, as she afterwards expressed it, her hand seemed to grasp the empty air, and he was seen entering the low arched door which opened into the muniment-room. Without a moment's hesitation the lady and her brothers followed, and found the room empty ! The apparition had vanished, when or how no one could tell, since there was no exit from the muniment-room, except by the hall. They would have set it down to fancy, or to minds heated by wine, had they not found a deed lying on the table, which had been signed by the miser that very morning in London, witnessed by two of his friends, and which bore testimony to the purchase of the Birstall cloth-mills and woods, after due payment of the same by the said Francis Savile. This deed had been searched for by his eldest son, who had been in great anxiety about it, and was proportionately astonished at finding it safe at home, before he himself had begun to turn his horse's head thither.

So this ghost story was carefully handed down, with the attesting record of it, from one Savile to another, until it was firmly believed, and exercised considerable influence on their minds. Perhaps the fate of the miser's successor may have lent an additional interest to the story, for certain it is that his eldest son became a famous courtier during the remainder of Charles II. 's reign, and distin guished himself, even among the fine gentlemen of those times, by his love of dicing, fighting, and drinking. Noticed and fa voured by the rich, he even went beyond them, if that was pos sible, in wickedness and profligacy ; banished his young wife and family to Birstall Dower House, and threw open Howley Priory to company of all kinds, but whose reputation was of the worst. Living as a gallant bachelor, and eschewing the society of the neighbouring county families, he fell into disgrace with them, and was disliked and abused by the poor and the rich alike, who be stowed upon him the nickname of ' Dare-Devil Savile.' Soon his noble woods were sentenced to be cut down ; his tenants harshly and unjustly used, to force from them the money he needed to keep up his customary pleasures.

At last the climax came, and, in the superstitious belief of the peasantry, he was spirited away from a grand masked ball and banquet, held under a sumptuous building erected on purpose on the cloister green, to be judged for his cruelty to the widow and the orphan, and his irreverence for all holy things. It was said that he had actually introduced into his banquet the sacred gold and silver chalices and salvers which he had caused to be bought up from many a holy shrine abroad and at home; and that, to show his contempt for the former monastic establishment, he and some of his satellites had dressed up as the first Prior Adams and his monks, in the white Cistertian frock and cowl. Suddenly, when the music played the sweetest, and the lights shone the brightest, and dark and fair beauties were either swimming in the dance or answering with arch looks the pretty compliments of their cavaliers, Sir Charles Savile, as their host was called, suddenly left his chosen lady standing alone and ne glected, having, as she said with pouting laughing lips, forsaken her for some stupid monk belonging to the Priory.

She had watched them from curiosity, and seen them walk slowly and solemnly down past the Prior's house to the river, Sir Charles's face looking white and scared as he passed out of the moonlight, by the tall yew. She laughed then, but soon afterwards went into violent hysterics, for her wicked lover had vanished from her for ever ! His body was found at some distance down the river, in which he had apparently fallen, cold, stiff, and lifeless. Unwilling that his death should be attributed to what was then an everyday matter, viz., taking too much wine, the common people declared that Prior Adams, the original ruler over the Priory, had come to fetch him from his lady's side, and had then, with superhuman force, drowned him in the waters of the Aire, at the deepest part. From that day ' Dare-Devil Savile's ' evil life and awful death were woven into one of the favourite ballads of Craven.

Time went on, and one Savile succeeded another, the property usually descending from father . to son, but with an estate impo verished by dissipation and recklessness, and a rental gradually diminishing. At last, in William III.'s reign, the fortune of this branch of the Saviles was at its lowest ebb. The George Savile of those days followed King James to France, and adopted his Church for his own, consequently the estate was confiscated and his family left in the greatest destitution. The eldest son, however, was as keen for King William as his father was for King James, and, by his gallant conduct at the battle of the Boyne, succeeded not only in securing the King's notice, but in obtaining Howley Priory for his own, with all the land that was still left to it ; the greater part having been sold by the father.

The son, however, learnt prudence by the mis fortunes of his race. He lived very quietly for many years at Birstall, after letting the Priory, and gave his attention to the encouragement of his cloth manufactory, and the introduction of all the new modes of weaving it. He succeeded, notwithstanding the opposition of his workmen. By degrees, field after field that once belonged to the Saviles was re-purchased, and added to the estates under a strict entail. He lived to the great age of ninety, and saw George III. crowned before he died. The latter years of his life he returned to Howley Priory, and occupied himself in the management of his property and the education of his large family. He was a man of considerable ability and talent, and with great powers of manage ment ; but, like most of his race, he possessed an imperious disposition and a proud hasty temper, by which he kept both wife and children and dependents at arm's length from him, never suffering the slightest approach to familiarity, or breach of the discipline he had introduced amongst his family, even when they had grown up, and was never known to have been contradicted or opposed during the last forty years of his life.

His eldest son, John, no sooner became possessor of the estate than he threw aside, as tedious and old-fashioned, his father's regulations for the management of the property, and disregarded his last wishes for the maintenance of the family interest in the West Riding. His wife had been chosen by his father, on account of her connection with the most influential county squires, and he had trained his son to look forward to becoming a member, if not for the county, at least for one of the principal towns of the West Riding. His son, however, thought differently, though he did not dare to say so until he became his own master. He had no objection to the wife that was selected, for she was young, pretty, graceful, and docile; but he did object to what he called a humdrum life for the rest of his days.

He therefore went in for amusement, spent a season in town, came down for grouse shooting in the autumn, and hunting, kept a pack of hounds and the best stud of hunters going, threw open his house with unbounded hospitality, supported Doncaster and Haworth races by running for the cup with the racers he bred, and finished the year by residing at York with his family, as was the custom, during November and December, when he patronized the hunt balls, and gave endless dinner entertainments to his friends and acquaintances. The county influence he might have wielded he made over to his distant cousin, Sir George Savile, descended also from the famous Marquis of Halifax. He had the pleasure of see ing Sir George elected for the county, and of his being considered one of the most distinguished members of Parliament, before he died, in 1788.

Passive though Squire Savile held himself with regard to personal ambition, he was fiery and impatient to a degree when any crotchet seized upon him, or when he considered that the constitution of the country or the prerogative of the Crown were being impaired. A violent Tory, a decided opposer to any and every idea of reform, whether in the law, the Roman Catholic disabilities, or for the representation of the country, he was ready to throw himself violently into the breach, and break off from his oldest friend, if he offended in his opinions. A regular George III. man, he belonged ostensibly to the party of the King's Friends. Though he professed to swear by Pitt, and to admire every one of the measures belonging to the Tory ministry, he yet grumbled at the ' Orders in Council,' both as an owner of a factory and a farmer, and was violent against Pitt's friend Wilber force, whom he called a 'sneaking dissenter' and 'Jesuit in disguise,' that was always trying to seem better than his neighbours, and con niving at the Catholic rogues being on a level with sound Church and King's Englishmen.

Indeed, he quarrelled violently for a time with his cousin, Sir George Savile, for supporting the abolition of the penal laws, although the measure at that time was thrown out ; and when Sir George lost all his London property in the Gordon Riots, all he said was, ' Serve him right — glad to hear it ! ' though all the time he was proposing to lend his cousin any sum he might want for rebuilding his house. A keen enemy to all enthusiasm in religion, or attempt to promote the education of the poorer classes, a thorough hater of ' Bony,' as he called him, and the frog-eating Frenchmen, he yet showed himself in his daily life a generous land lord and a kind benevolent master. Charitable to excess to the physical necessities of the poor, he yet never sought to ameliorate their condition. Possessing a warm loving heart under the bluff exterior of a thorough Yorkshire squire, he yet was a gentleman in exterior and CLARE SAVILE. 12 manner, especially when his courtesy was demanded by a lady's presence.

Unlike his father, he was warmly beloved, and not feared, by his wife and children, whom he spoilt and petted as much as their hearts could desire; and no home at one time of his life could have been happier or more comfortable than the one he provided for them in his beautiful and pleasant residence of Howley Priory. But, alas ! when he was forty he lost his first wife, who had gradually but surely grown into his heart, and he found himself desolate, heart-broken, and embarrassed in money matters to a degree that would have been impossible to a man with his income and a moderate idea of prudence. Instead of retrenching at once, as his agent advised, he refused to give up even his hospitality to all comers, or his stable and his hounds. He closed his eyes to his circumstances, cut down some beautiful timber, and stopped the mouth of the noisiest of his creditors by this timely supply, and then married a portionless orphan, though of good family, to supply the want he felt so acutely.

His first family were grown up, and he had married very early both his daughters and his only son; so he turned to his second wife with gratitude as well as love, for the relief she brought with her from loneliness and sorrow; and as the years passed on, and the old hall was again brightened by tiny merry steps, his heart grew younger, his merry blue eyes resumed their careless expression, and his voice its loud jovial ring, so that no one could have guessed that even here ' a skeleton was hidden in the cupboard.' He had plumed himself on giving up his house in town, but in reality he had lost his former zest in any but the country amusements of his class and age. Yet he felt himself con siderably aggrieved when a little girl was given to him after the birth of four great boys, that he found it impossible not only to settle any landed property upon her, but also out of the question to insure his life in her behalf for any respectable sum.