From Kingdom to Colony

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

When William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England in 1066, and achieved for himself the title of "Conqueror," one of those who accompanied him was Robert D'Evreux, younger son of Walter, Earl of Rosmar, feudal owner and ruler of the town of his name in Normandy.

After the battle of Hastings, in which William won so great a victory, he, wishing to honor the memory of the noblemen and knights by whose aid it had been accomplished, placed their names upon a roll which was suspended in a stately pile, called "Battle Abbey," erected by him upon the field of battle.

In the several exemplifications of "Battle Abbey Roll," as it was termed, the name of Robert D'Evreux is variously expressed as "Daveros," "Deverous," "Conte Devreux," and "Counte Devereux."

It was the close of an early May day in 1639. Charles I. was reigning monarch of England, and the Scotch Covenanters were disturbing his kingdom's peace.

Against these malcontents Charles had sent his army, and Robert Devereux, only son of the beheaded favorite of Elizabeth, and now third Earl of Essex, had been made Lieutenant-General, he having already, by his resolution and activity no less than by his personal courage, done good service to the King and won much honor for himself.

On this May day, in Warwick, far from all scenes of war or rumors from court, Bromwich Castle, the home of Sir Walter Devereux, Baronet—cousin and present heir of the King's unmarried Lieutenant-General—lifted its turrets, about whose clinging ivy the late afternoon sunshine played golden and warm.

It was a huge pile, massively irregular in architecture, and its thick walls bore traces of those times when a Baron of England was a power in the land,—monarch of his domain, and chief of his own people.

A rugged old tower was its keep, flanked by four symmetrical turrets, and crowned by a battlement overlooking the whole country around. About these clung ivy in a thousand thick wreaths; and here and there, where it was not, the centuries had woven a fantastic tracery of moss, green as the ivy itself, and delicate as frost-work.

What had been the moat was now but a pleasant grassy hollow, carpeted thickly with golden cowslips and fragrant violets, their growing lipped by a tiny stream of purest water.

The castle was surrounded almost to its walls by the forest of ancient oaks, spreading in all directions, and becoming denser and more wild as it stretched miles away. And here were the deer, numerous and fat, that well supplied the larder for Sir Walter's board, or cooled their sides amid the rankly growing brake and ferns, where naught troubled the intense silence of the dusky aisles save the whir of the pheasant, or the foot of the hare, light as the leaf dropping from the green arch overhead.

Sir Walter was in the forest this day, and with him were his three goodly sons, besides several retainers. The notes of the horn had come faintly to the castle now and again, as they pursued the chase; and up in her apartments Anne, the seventeen-year-old wife of Sir Walter's youngest son, sat watching for a first glimpse of the returning huntsmen....