Traditions of Lancashire Volume I Part 62

"Gilbert Hodgon--your servant?"

"The same. To what purpose, sir, are these questions?" angrily inquired my uncle.

"Merely matters of form--a habit we lawyers cannot easily throw aside whenever we get a sight of musty parchments. I hope you will pardon my freedom?"

"Oh! as for that you are welcome to ask as many questions as you think proper; they will be easily answered, I take it."

"Doubtless," said the persevering man of words. "Whenever I take up a deed, for instance,--it is just the habit of the thing, Mr S----,--I always look at it as a banker looks at a note. He could not for the life of him gather one up without first ascertaining that it was genuine."

"Genuine!" exclaimed my uncle, thrown off his guard. "You do not suspect that I have forged it?"

"Forged it! why, how could that enter your head, Mr S----? I should as soon suspect you of forging a bank-note or coining a guinea. Ringing a guinea, sir, does not at all imply that the payee suspects the payer to be an adept in that ingenious and much-abused art. We should be prodigously surprised if the payer were to start up in a tantrum, and say, 'Do you suspect me, sir, of having coined it?'"

"Sir, if you came hither for the purpose of insulting _me_"----

"I came upon no such business, Mr S----; but, as you seem disposed to be captious, I _will_ make free to say, and it would be the opinion of ninety-nine hundredths of the profession, that it might possibly have been a little more satisfactory to the heir-apparent had the witnesses to this, the most solemn and important act of a man's life, been any other than, firstly, a defunct sister to the party claiming the whole residue: and secondly, Mr Gilbert Hodgon, his servant. Nay, sir," said the pertinacious lawyer, rising, "I do not wish to use more circ.u.mlocution than is necessary; I have stated my suspicions, and if you are an honest man, you can have no objections, at least, to satisfy your nephew on the subject, who seems, to say the truth, much astonished at our accidental parley."

"And pray who made you a ruler and a judge between us?"

"_I_ have no business with it, I own; but as you seemed rather angry, I made bold to give an opinion on the little technicalities aforesaid. If you choose, sir," addressing himself to me, "the matter is now at rest."

"Of course," I replied, "Mr S---- will be ready to give every satisfaction that may be required as regards the validity of the witnesses. I request, uncle, that you will not lose one moment in reb.u.t.ting these insinuations. For your own sake and mine, it is not proper that your conduct should go forth to the world in the shape in which this gentleman may think fit to represent it."

"If he dare speak one word"----

"Nay, uncle, that is not the way to stop folks' mouth now-a-days.

Nothing but the actual gag, or a line of conduct that courts no favour and requires no concealment, will pa.s.s current with the world. I request, sir," addressing myself to the attorney, "that you will not leave this house until you have given Mr S---- the opportunity of clearing himself from any blame in this transaction."

"As matters have a.s.sumed this posture," said Mr L----, "I should be deficient in respect to the profession of which I have the honour to be a member, did I not justify my conduct in the best manner I am able.

Have I liberty to proceed?"

"Proceed as you like, you will not prove the testament to be a forgery.

The signing and witnessing were done in my presence," said my uncle. He rose from his chair, instinctively locked up his bureau; and, if such stern features could a.s.sume an aspect of still greater asperity, it was when the interrogator thus continued:--"You were, as you observe, Mr S----, an eye-witness to the due subscription of this deed. If I am to clear myself from the imputation of unjustifiable curiosity, I must beg leave to examine yourself and the surviving witness apart, merely as to the minutiae of the circ.u.mstances under which it was finally completed: for instance, was the late Mr---- in bed, or was he sick or well, when the deed was executed?"

A cadaverous hue stole over the dark features of the culprit; their aspect varying and distorted, in which fear and deadly anger painfully strove for pre-eminence.

"And wherefore apart?" said he, with a hideous grin. He stamped suddenly on the floor.

"If that summons be for your servant, you might have saved yourself the trouble, sir," said his tormentor, with great coolness and intrepidity.

"Gilbert is at my office, whither I sent him on an errand, thinking he would be best out of the way for a while. I find, however, that we shall have need of him. It is as well, nevertheless, that he is out of the way of signals."

"A base conspiracy!" roared the infuriated villain. "Nephew, how is this? And in my own house,--bullied--baited! But I will be revenged--I will."

Here he became exhausted with rage, and sat down. On Mr L---- attempting to speak, he cried out--"I will answer no questions, and I defy you.

Gilbert may say what he likes; but he cannot contradict my words. I'll speak none."

"These would be strange words, indeed, Mr S------, from an innocent man. Know you that WILL?" said the lawyer, in a voice of thunder, and at the same time exhibiting the real instrument so miraculously preserved from destruction. I shall never forget his first look of horror and astonishment. Had a spectre risen up, arrayed in all the terrors of the prison-house, he could not have exhibited more appalling symptoms of unmitigated despair. He shuddered audibly. It was the very crisis of his agony. A portentous silence ensued. Some minutes elapsed before it was interrupted. Mr L---- was the first to break so disagreeable a pause.

"Mr S----, it is useless to carry on this scene of duplicity: neither party would be benefited by it. _You have forged that deed!_ We have sufficient evidence of your attempt to destroy this doc.u.ment I now hold, in the very mansion which your unhallowed hands would, but for the direct interposition of Providence, have levelled with the dust. On one condition, and on one only, your conduct shall be concealed from the knowledge of your fellow-men. The eye of Providence alone has. .h.i.therto tracked the tortuous course of your villany. On one condition, I say, the past is for ever concealed from the eye of the world." Another pause. My uncle groaned in the agony of his spirit. Had his heart's blood been at stake, he could not have evinced a greater reluctance than he now showed at the thoughts of relinquishing his ill-gotten wealth.

"What is it?"

"Destroy with your own hands that forged testimony of your guilt. Your nephew does not wish to bring an old man's grey hairs to an ignominious grave."

He took the deed, and, turning aside his head, committed it to the flames. He appeared to breathe more freely when it was consumed; but the struggle had been too severe even for his unyielding frame, iron-bound though it seemed. As he turned trembling from the hearth, he sank into his chair, threw his hands over his face, and groaned deeply. The next moment he fixed his eyes steadily on me. A gla.s.sy brightness suddenly shot over them; a dimness followed like the shadows of death. He held out his hand; his head bowed; and he bade adieu to the world and its interests for ever!

c.l.i.tHEROE CASTLE;

OR,

THE LAST OF THE LACIES.

"By that painful way they pa.s.s Forth to an hill that was both steep and high; On top whereof a sacred chapel was, And eke a little hermitage thereby."

--SPENSER'S _Fairy Queen_.

c.l.i.theroe, _the hill ly the-waters_, the ancient seat of the Lacies, carries back the mind to earlier periods and events--to a rude and barbarous age--where justice was dispensed, and tribute paid, by the feudatories to their lords, whose power, little less than arbitrary, was held directly from the crown.

The Lacies came over with the Conqueror; and, on the defection of Robert de Poictou, obtained, as their share of the spoil, sixty knights' fees, princ.i.p.ally in Yorkshire and Lancashire. For the better maintainence of their dignity they built two castles, one at Pontefract, the princ.i.p.al residence, and another at c.l.i.theroe. A _great fee_, or great lordship, as Pontefract was a possession of the highest order; an honour, or seigniory, like c.l.i.theroe, consisting of a number of manors, was the next in rank; and these manors were severally held by their subordinate lords in dependence on the lord paramount, the lord of the fee or honour.

[Ill.u.s.tration: c.l.i.tHEROE CASTLE.

_Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]

What was the precise aspect of our county when the Normans possessed themselves of the land, it might be deemed an effort of the imagination perhaps to portray. "Yet," says Dr Whitaker, in one of his happier moods, "could a curious observer of the present day carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and, ranging the summit of Pendle, survey the forked Calder on one side, and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hodder on the other, instead of populous towns and villages, the castle, the old tower-built house, the elegant modern mansion, the artificial plantation, the park and pleasure ground, or instead of uninterrupted enclosures, which have driven sterility almost to the summit of the fells; how great must then have been the contrast, when, ranging either at a distance or immediately beneath, his eye must have caught vast tracts of forest ground stagnating with bog or darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the wolf had scarcely learned the supremacy of man--when, directing his view to the intermediate s.p.a.ces, to the windings of the valleys, or the expanse of plain beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary independence, owning no superior but his sovereign.

"This was undoubtedly a state of great simplicity and freedom, such as admirers of uncultivated nature may affect to applaud. But although revolutions in civil society seldom produce anything better than a change of vices, yet surely no wise or good man can lament the subversion of Saxon polity for that which followed. Their laws were contemptible for imbecility, their habits odious for intemperance; and if we can for a moment persuade ourselves that their language has any charm, that proceeds less, perhaps, from anything harmonious and expressive in itself, or anything valuable in the information it conveys, than that it is rare and not of very easy attainment; that it forms the rugged basis of our own tongue; and, above all, that we hear it loudly echoed in the dialect of our own vulgar. Indeed, the manners as well as language of a Lancashire clown often suggest the idea of a Saxon peasant; and prove, with respect to remote tracts like these, little affected by foreign admixtures, how strong is the power of traduction, how faithfully character and propensities may be transmitted through more than twenty generations."

The Normans were a more polished, a more abstemious people; as scribes and architects they were men to whom this district was greatly indebted.

Our only castle, our oldest remaining churches, our most curious and valuable records, are all Norman.

"Such was the state of property and manners when the house of Lacy became possessed of Blackburnshire." The simplicity of the Saxon tenures was destroyed. A tract of country, which had been parcelled out among twenty-eight lords, now became subject to one; and all the intricacies of feodal dependence, all the rigours of feodal exaction, wardships, reliefs, escheats, &c., were introduced at once. Yet the Saxon lords, though dependent, were not in general actually stripped of their fees.

By successive steps, however, the origin of all landed property within the hundred, some later copyholds excepted, is to be traced to voluntary concessions from the Lacies, or their successors of the house of Lancaster; not grants of pure beneficence, but requiring personal service from the owners, and yearly customs or payments, equivalent at that time to their value. Their present worth grew out of the operation of causes little understood in these ages either by lord or va.s.sal--namely, the certainty of the possession, the diminishing value of money, and the perpetuity of the t.i.tle.

In four generations, or little more than one hundred years, the line of the Lacies became extinct; Roger Fitz-Eustace, lord of Halton and constable of Chester, coming into possession by right of his grandmother Awbrey, uterine sister of Robert de Lacy, the last of this ill.u.s.trious race. Fitz-Eustace, however, took the t.i.tle of De Lacy; but in the fourth descent from him the very name was lost. Henry de Lacy, the last and greatest man of his line, dying the 5th February 1310, left one daughter only, who had married, during her father's lifetime, Thomas Plantagenet, Earl of Lancaster--and carried along with her an inheritance even then estimated at 10,000 marks per annum. On the earl's attainder, the honour of c.l.i.theroe, with the rest of his possessions, were forfeited to the crown. After undergoing many changes while it continued a member of the Duchy of Lancaster--that is, until the restoration of Charles II.--that prince, in consideration of the great services of General Monk, whom he created Duke of Albemarle, bestowed it upon him and his heirs for ever. Christopher, his son, dying without issue, left his estates to his wife, daughter and co-heiress of Henry Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle; by her they were bequeathed to her second husband, Ralph, Duke of Montague, whose grand-daughter Mary, married George, Earl of Cardigan, afterwards Duke of Montague. Elizabeth, his daughter, married Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, in whose family the honour of c.l.i.theroe is now vested.

c.l.i.theroe Castle is described by Grose as "situated on the summit of a conical insulated crag of rugged limestone rock, which suddenly rises from a fine vale, in which towards the north, at the distance of half-a-mile, runs the Ribble, and a mile to the south stands Pendle Hill, which seems to lift its head above the clouds."

In the time of the Commonwealth it was dismantled by order of Parliament; the chapel has totally disappeared; and nothing now remains but the square keep and some portions of the strong wall by which the building was surrounded.[49] The tower, though much undermined, remains firm as the rock on which it was built, and forms the princ.i.p.al object in our engraving.

It was midnight; and the priest was chanting the service and requiem for the dead in the little chapel or chantry of St Michael, which was built within the walls of Clyderhow or c.l.i.theroe Castle. The _Dies irae_ from the surrounding worshippers rose in a simple monotone, like the sound of some distant river, now caught on the wing of the tempest, and flung far away into the dim and distant void, now rushing on the ear in one deep gush of harmony--the voice of Nature, as if her thousand tongues were blended in one universal peal of praise and adoration to the great Power that called her into being. Many a heart quailed with apprehension, many a bosom was oppressed with doubtful and anxious forebodings. Robert de Lacy, the last of this ill.u.s.trious race, fourth in descent from Ilbert de Lacy, on whom the Conqueror bestowed the great fee of Pontefract, the owner of twenty-eight manors and lord of the honour of c.l.i.theroe, was no longer numbered with the living; and here in the chapel of this lone fortress, before the dim altar, all that remained of this powerful baron, the clay no longer instinct with spirit, was soon to be enveloped in the dust, the darkness, and the degradation of its kindred earth.

Many circ.u.mstances rendered this scene more than usually solemn and affecting. Robert de Lacy had died without issue to inherit these princely domains, the feudal inheritance of a family whose power had so wide a grasp, that it was currently said the Lacies might pa.s.s from c.l.i.theroe Castle to their fortress at Pontefract, a journey of some fifty miles, and rest in a house or hostelrie of their own at every pause during their progress.

With him ended the male line of this great family. Failing in issue, he had devised all these vast estates to Awbrey, his uterine sister, daughter of Robert de Lizours, married to Richard Fitz-Eustace, lord of Halton and constable of Chester.