IT was on a beautiful evening in June, when the thirteenth century was but a few years old, and when John wore the crown of England, that a girl of some twenty summers was seated in a vaulted room of a ruinous old Saxon castle, surrounded by her bower-maidens, chattering and laughing, and busily employed on some embroidery work. The castle stood on a slight eminence, some three or four miles from the sea-coast of Yorkshire, and commanding a glorious view of the uplands of Cleveland, the wide expanse of ocean, the only recently completed towers of St. Hilda's Abbey, as they stood proudly on the beetling cliff, and the clustering of fishermen's huts on the margin of the bay below, then called the village of Presteby, formerly Streoneshalh, and now Whitby. It had been built by the half-mythical Saxon noble, Wada, as a defence against the marauding Picts, who came over the border, and more particularly against the Danish Vikings, who were wont to land at Flamborough, and harry the land. In the year 867, they had destroyed the Lady Hilda's monastery, and it lay in ruins until after the Conquest, when it was re-built and re-endowed by William de Percy, ancestor of the potent Earls of Northumberland, and about half a century before the period of our narrative, it had been again pillaged and the country laid waste by a Norwegian fleet. But, amid all these storms, the old castle built by Wada held its own, although it now showed in its features the ravages of time and the marks of the batterings it had undergone from the hands of a succession of foes, in the shape of fallen towers, crumbling walls, and decayed battlements. After the Conquest, the castle and barony were granted by the King to Nigel Fossard, a soldier who had fought for him at Hastings, and from whose family it passed, after two or three generations, to Robert de Turnham, by marriage with Johanna, heiress of the Fossards. They were now dead, and slept side by side within the sacred precincts of St. Hilda, having left an only child—Isabel—as heiress, and now mistress of the ruined old fortress, and the domain of pasture and moorland lying round it; the same fair girl whom we find seated at her embroidery frame. The apartment in which the youthful group were assembled was the Lady Isabel's bower, very different, however, from a modern boudoir, being of the usual Saxon type. The walls and vaulted roof were of roughly-hewn stone, with a low, stunted column in the centre, and rounded arches, slightly decorated with a zigzag ornamentation, and on one side was an unglazed opening to admit the light, more like a loophole than a window. On the walls, suspended from tenter-hooks, were arras, picturing the miracles of St. Hilda, which served to give some semblance of comfort and cheerfulness to the room; and the other furniture consisted of a table, or board resting on two trestles, and half a dozen cross-legged stools.
Sounds of merriment and laughter echoed from the roof, as the maidens plied their needles, the buoyancy of their youthful spirits, and the outlook into what appears like a fairyland of the future, imparting a sunshine which is the happy privilege of youth, but is denied to more mature age. Yet, in the midst of all this joyous mirth, Isabel occasionally sighed, as disquieting thoughts passed through her mind. She was left in an unprotected solitude, and although the good Abbot of St. Hilda's had been her father's friend, and had promised him on his death-bed to watch over her and aid her by his counsel, he could not supply the place of father and mother, of whom she had been bereft, or of sister or brother, a companionship she had never experienced. She had already begun to taste the cares and anxieties of her position, and looked forward with some degree of apprehension, having learnt that the King, as absolute lord of the soil of England, had the right and power to dispose of the hands of heiresses of any portion of that soil which was only held of him by baronial or knightly tenure.
"The sun goes down apace," said Isabel, rising and going to look forth from the window, "fold up the altar-cloth, we shall have time to complete the embroidery before the obit of St. Hilda." She gazed out upon the sea, sparkling with the glitter of the setting sun, and looked upon the abbey tower on the cliff, still radiant with brightness—an out-post, as it seemed to her, of the realms of heaven, and she felt a peaceful calm steal over her mind. Suddenly her eyes gleamed with joy, and her heart began to throb with passionate gladness. These emotions were awakened by the sight of a youth of noble bearing, pacing with rapid steps the road leading to the castle. This youth was Jasper de Percy, a scion of the afterwards illustrious house of that name. He had long been affianced to Isabel, with the consent and full approbation of their parents, and they loved each other dearly and passionately. It was not long ere he was ushered into her presence by the old seneschal of the castle, but with their soft whisperings we have nothing to do, save that we know they consisted of protestations of eternal love and anticipations of a happy future. Whilst they were together the sun went down, and, as the bell of compline rang out sweetly over the water, they knelt together and uttered their evening prayer to the Holy Virgin, after which he departed.
"Pax vobiscum!" said the Abbot, as he entered the room soon after, "how fares it with my daughter?" She replied that she was well in health, but somewhat disquieted in soul, and told him what she had heard about the King having the disposal of the hands of heiresses, and asking him if it were so. He explained the law to her, and knowing and approving of her love for young Percy, expressed a hope that His Majesty would not interfere in her case, but, added he, "King John is a bad man, unscrupulous in his actions, and an arch-heretic, even to the defying of the Holy Father at Rome—the Vicegerent of God upon earth, saying that he will allow no foreign priest to meddle in his dominion." After some further conversation, Isabel knelt at his feet, confessed her little faults, received absolution, and the Abbot returned to St. Hilda's. So the days and weeks went on in their usual routine, with nothing to disturb their serenity, until at length a thunderbolt, as it were, fell suddenly in the midst of the little community, utterly destroying all their fond hopes of happiness.
The scene now changes to Normandy. King Henry II. of England had four sons, of whom William, the eldest, d.v.p., and Richard, the second, succeeded, who d.s.p. The third, Geoffrey, married Constance, daughter and heiress of Conan le Petit, Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond, and had issue, Arthur, who was heir to the throne of England on the death of his uncle Richard, but, being absent in Brittany, John, fourth son of Henry, usurped the throne, and when Philip of France espoused the cause of Arthur, he invaded France with an army, to maintain the position he had assumed, and with the intention of removing the obstacle to his legal right to the throne. He captured his nephew, after patching up a peace with King Philip, and sent him to Falaise, with instructions to Hubert de Burgh to put his eyes out. Hubert, however, compassionated the boy, and saved him from that fate, upon which King John removed Arthur from his custody, and had him taken to Rouen, and placed in safe keeping. The midnight bell at St. Ouen had rung out over the Norman city, and, saving that, all was still in its tortuous streets, excepting the footsteps of three persons going down to the river-side. They went along stealthily, one of them, a boy, with seeming reluctance, and who appeared to be expostulating with the two men who urged him along. "I tell thee, boy," said he who was evidently the chief of the company, "that thou shalt be Duke of Bretagne and Earl of Richmond, and we are but taking thee to a place of safety wherein to abide until these untoward matters that agitate the realm of France can be arranged." "But my crown, the crown of England, my inheritance!" commenced the boy as they arrived at the water's side, when the two men forced him into a boat and pushed it off upon the Seine, and it glided down the river beyond the confines of the city. The leader of the party was King John, and the other his esquire, an ill-favoured bully, with an evil cast of the eye, a Poictevin by birth, and called, in derision, Peter de Malo-lacu, afterwards softened down to Maulac, and eventually to De Mauley. He was one of the tools and evil counsellors of John, and was ever ready to commit any crime provided he were well paid for it. Their companion was the boy Prince, Arthur. The night was dreary and murky, and the wind wailed a mournful cadence through the trees, well befitting the contemplated deed of blood. The boat had passed some distance down the river, and Arthur, fearing some foul design, was imploring his uncle to be taken back to Rouen, when the Poictevin, in reply to a signal from the King, suddenly plunged his dagger up to the hilt in the boy's breast, and at the same moment seized him by the legs, and pitched him over the side of the boat into the river, to pass down to the sea with the ebbing tide.
"'Twas well done," said John to his companion in guilt, "that obstacle to our ambition is removed for ever; and as for thee, Peter, thou shalt be great amongst the nobles of our realm. It will be hard if I cannot find an heiress lacking a husband, and thou shalt be a baron of England."
Again are we among the merry hills and dales of Cleveland. The summer has passed away, the leaves of autumn have fallen, the fierce blasts of the wintry winds of North Yorkshire have toned down into the gentle gales of spring, and a glad sunshine pervades land and sea. But there is wailing and lamentation within the walls of Wada's old castle, and saddened hearts beneath the shadow of St. Hilda's tower. The marriage of Isabel and Jasper had been arranged, and nothing was wanting for its consummation but the sanction of the King. A messenger had been despatched to the Court of John to obtain his consent, but he replied that it could not be, as he had other views in regard to the heiress, and purposed, by giving her hand to a brave warrior of Poictou, to raise her to a dignity far above anything ever attained by the Turnhams or the Fossards; in short, that he intended giving her in marriage to his friend and companion-in-arms, Peter de Maulac. Hence those tears and lamentations, as there was no resisting the King's will.
A few months, and there stood before the altar of St. Hilda, decorated with the embroidery from the deft fingers of Isabel and her bower-maidens, an ill-assorted couple. On the one side a forbidding-looking man, with a ferocious cast of countenance and an eye of ill omen; on the other, a gentle, delicate girl, of symmetrical figure and beautifully chiselled features, but pale as a corpse, and with eyes swollen and bloodshot with weeping. Nevertheless, it mattered not, the mandate of the King must be obeyed, and they became man and wife.
Peter de Mauley, as he now chose to style himself, thus became, by right of his wife, feudal lord of Isabel's demesnes, situated at Egton, Juby-Park-Houses, and Newbiggin, near Whitby; Mauley Cross, near Pickering; Bainton, near Driffield; Ellerton, near Pocklington; and Seaton, near Hornsea; but the King compelled him to pay for the livery of these estates a fine of 7,000 marks. He built a new castle near the old one, and called it, from the beauty of the situation, Moult-grace, but which the people, in consequence of his oppression, transformed, by the change of a single letter, into Moult-grave, since then corrupted into Mulgrave. He was a firm adherent of John in his troubles with the Pope and the Barons, and was rewarded for his services with other considerable grants of lands, the Sheriffdoms of Dorset and Somerset, and, under Henry III., with the Governorship of Sherborne Castle. He died in 1221, and the ill-fated Isabel pre-deceased him, whose body he buried in Meaux Abbey, near Beverley, giving with it a grant of land.
They had a son—Peter—who succeeded, who was followed by six other Peters in unbroken succession, all of whom enjoyed the estates, excepting the seventh, who died v.p. The fourth was created a baron by writ of summons in 1295; but Peter the eighth, fourth in the barony, dying without issue in 1415, the dignity fell in abeyance between his sisters and co-heiresses—Constance, who married, first, William Fairfax, secondly, Sir John Bigot, and who succeeded to Moult-grave, and Elizabeth, who married George Salvin. The title was revived in 1838, as a barony by patent, in the person of the Hon. W. F. Spencer Ponsonby, third son of the Earl of Bessborough, a descendant, through females, of Elizabeth Salvin; but the old barony by writ still lies in abeyance among the representatives of the above co-heiresses.
The death of Prince Arthur is still shrouded in mystery, the English chroniclers giving different versions of it, and Shakspeare representing him as being killed by a fall from the walls of his prison when attempting to escape; but the French historians, who are more likely to be correct, coincide in attributing it to the hand of Peter de Malo-lacu, in the presence of John, or even to that of the King himself.