



Produced by Emma Wong Shee, John Bickers, and Dagny







PEVERIL OF THE PEAK

By Sir Walter Scott, Bart.





PEVERIL OF THE PEAK




CHAPTER I

               When civil dudgeon first grew high,
               And men fell out, they knew not why;
               When foul words, jealousies, and fears,
               Set folk together by the ears--
                                             --BUTLER.

William, the Conqueror of England, was, or supposed himself to be, the
father of a certain William Peveril, who attended him to the battle of
Hastings, and there distinguished himself. The liberal-minded monarch,
who assumed in his charters the veritable title of Gulielmus Bastardus,
was not likely to let his son's illegitimacy be any bar to the course of
his royal favour, when the laws of England were issued from the mouth
of the Norman victor, and the lands of the Saxons were at his unlimited
disposal. William Peveril obtained a liberal grant of property and
lordships in Derbyshire, and became the erecter of that Gothic fortress,
which, hanging over the mouth of the Devil's Cavern, so well known to
tourists, gives the name of Castleton to the adjacent village.

From this feudal Baron, who chose his nest upon the principles on which
an eagle selects her eyry, and built it in such a fashion as if he had
intended it, as an Irishman said of the Martello towers, for the sole
purpose of puzzling posterity, there was, or conceived themselves to be,
descended (for their pedigree was rather hypothetical) an opulent
family of knightly rank, in the same county of Derby. The great fief
of Castleton, with its adjacent wastes and forests, and all the wonders
which they contain, had been forfeited in King John's stormy days, by
one William Peveril, and had been granted anew to the Lord Ferrers of
that day. Yet this William's descendants, though no longer possessed
of what they alleged to have been their original property, were long
distinguished by the proud title of Peverils of the Peak, which served
to mark their high descent and lofty pretensions.

In Charles the Second's time, the representative of this ancient family
was Sir Geoffrey Peveril, a man who had many of the ordinary attributes
of an old-fashioned country gentleman, and very few individual traits
to distinguish him from the general portrait of that worthy class
of mankind. He was proud of small advantages, angry at small
disappointments, incapable of forming any resolution or opinion
abstracted from his own prejudices--he was proud of his birth, lavish
in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who
would allow his superiority in rank--contentious and quarrelsome with
all that crossed his pretensions--kind to the poor, except when they
plundered his game--a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who
detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion
Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, of so exalted a strain that many
thought he still nourished in private the Roman Catholic tenets, which
his family had only renounced in his father's time, and that he had a
dispensation for conforming in outward observances to the Protestant
faith. There was at least such a scandal amongst the Puritans, and
the influence which Sir Geoffrey Peveril certainly appeared to possess
amongst the Catholic gentlemen of Derbyshire and Cheshire, seemed to
give countenance to the rumour.

Such was Sir Geoffrey, who might have passed to his grave without
further distinction than a brass-plate in the chancel, had he not lived
in times which forced the most inactive spirits into exertion, as a
tempest influences the sluggish waters of the deadest mere. When the
Civil Wars broke out, Peveril of the Peak, proud from pedigree, and
brave by constitution, raised a regiment for the King, and showed upon
several occasions more capacity for command than men had heretofore
given him credit for.

Even in the midst of the civil turmoil, he fell in love with, and
married, a beautiful and amiable young lady of the noble house of
Stanley; and from that time had the more merit in his loyalty, as it
divorced him from her society, unless at very brief intervals, when his
duty permitted an occasional visit to his home. Scorning to be allured
from his military duty by domestic inducements, Peveril of the Peak
fought on for several rough years of civil war, and performed his part
with sufficient gallantry, until his regiment was surprised and cut
to pieces by Poyntz, Cromwell's enterprising and successful general of
cavalry. The defeated Cavalier escaped from the field of battle, and,
like a true descendant of William the Conqueror, disdaining submission,
threw himself into his own castellated mansion, which was attacked and
defended in a siege of that irregular kind which caused the destruction
of so many baronial residences during the course of those unhappy wars.
Martindale Castle, after having suffered severely from the cannon which
Cromwell himself brought against it, was at length surrendered when in
the last extremity. Sir Geoffrey himself became a prisoner, and while
his liberty was only restored upon a promise of remaining a peaceful
subject to the Commonwealth in future, his former delinquencies, as
they were termed by the ruling party, were severely punished by fine and
sequestration.

But neither his forced promise, nor the fear of farther unpleasant
consequences to his person or property, could prevent Peveril of the
Peak from joining the gallant Earl of Derby the night before the fatal
engagement in Wiggan Lane, where the Earl's forces were dispersed. Sir
Geoffrey having had his share in that action, escaped with the relics
of the Royalists after the defeat, to join Charles II. He witnessed also
the final defeat of Worcester, where he was a second time made prisoner;
and as, in the opinion of Cromwell and the language of the times, he
was regarded as an obstinate malignant, he was in great danger of having
shared with the Earl of Derby his execution at Bolton-le-Moor, having
partaken with him the dangers of two actions. But Sir Geoffrey's life
was preserved by the interest of a friend, who possessed influence in
the councils of Oliver.--This was a Mr. Bridgenorth, a gentleman of
middling quality, whose father had been successful in some commercial
adventure during the peaceful reign of James I.; and who had bequeathed
his son a considerable sum of money, in addition to the moderate
patrimony which he inherited from his father.

The substantial, though small-sized, brick building of Moultrassie
Hall, was but two miles distant from Martindale Castle, and the young
Bridgenorth attended the same school with the heir of the Peverils. A
sort of companionship, if not intimacy, took place betwixt them, which
continued during their youthful sports--the rather that Bridgenorth,
though he did not at heart admit Sir Geoffrey's claims of superiority to
the extent which the other's vanity would have exacted, paid deference
in a reasonable degree to the representative of a family so much more
ancient and important than his own, without conceiving that he in any
respect degraded himself by doing so.

Mr. Bridgenorth did not, however, carry his complaisance so far as to
embrace Sir Geoffrey's side during the Civil War. On the contrary, as an
active Justice of the Peace, he rendered much assistance in arraying
the militia in the cause of the Parliament, and for some time held
a military commission in that service. This was partly owing to his
religious principles, for he was a zealous Presbyterian, partly to his
political ideas, which, without being absolutely democratical, favoured
the popular side of the great national question. Besides, he was a
moneyed man, and to a certain extent had a shrewd eye to his worldly
interest. He understood how