A FEUDAL LORD.
And joy is mine
When the strong castles besieged shake,
And walls uprooted, totter and quake,
And I see the foemen join,
On the moated shore all compass'd round
With palisade and guarded mound.
LAYS OF THE MINNESINGERS.
The result of this conversation, the wild and daring schemes of
ambition and revenge it unfolded,--schemes of which she was to be made
the tool and the victim, filled Murielle with alarm, and made her more
than ever resolve to seek refuge in a convent; but an escape from the
guarded castle of Thrave was not a matter to be easily accomplished,
as its garrison, formed of the earl's most faithful "retainers, was (as
we are told in the third of volume of 'Caledonia'), never less than
_one thousand armed men_."
A recent writer says, "in Scotland, but a hundred years ago, the head
of a family was paramount, and household discipline was wielded without
mercy." If such was the case a hundred years ago, it was exercised with
greater rigour in the days of the second James.
So poor little Murielle found Thrave with all its splendour, a
veritable prison, and the earl, her brother-in-law, a haughty and
exacting tyrant.
Thrave, his greatest stronghold, was built upon an island of twenty
acres in extent, formed by the rough and rapid Dee, situated about ten
miles above its estuary, and thirty from its source, which is among the
wooded hills of Minnigaff.
There on that islet the crusader Alan IV., lord of Galloway and
constable of Scotland, had a fortress, and thereon, in after times, the
Black Knight of Liddesdale, the comrade of Wallace and Bruce, reared
the present castle of Thrave, a vast pile, the donjon of which is yet
seventy feet in height, with walls eight feet in thickness, built of
common stone from the adjacent moors.
The first story of this great pile consisted of the larder, the
arsenals, and the dungeon, where many a chained wretch has wept during
the hours that intervened between time and eternity.
In the second story were the apartments of the men-at-arms, the
warders, grooms, and pages.
The third contained the apartments of the baron, his family, their
guests, and the ladies' bower-chamber, with one apartment long
secluded, that in which Archibald, earl of Douglas and lord of
Galloway,--he whose second son won by his valour the titles of duke of
Spruce and prince of Dantzig, died on the 3rd of February, 1400. Small
Gothic windows gave light to these upper chambers, and narrow slits and
loopholes to the lower.
A square barbican and four round flanking towers, with a deep fosse
and drawbridge, formed the external barrier. After passing these, the
only entrance to the keep was by a door placed so high in the wall that
it opened on the _second_ floor, and this strange mode of access was
farther secured by a small portcullis, grooved into the solid stone,
the work of "the Brawny MacKim," the hereditary smith of the family.
To victual this stronghold each of the twenty-eight parishes which form
the stewardry of Kirkcudbright had to contribute a _Lardner-mart-cow_
at Martinmas, for winter provisions; and the last attempt to levy these
twenty-eight cattle was made in 1747, by William Maxwell, of Nithsdale.
In the front wall of the great tower, and immediately above the
gateway, which bore all the armorial achievements of the proud and
lordly owners, there still projects a large granite block, named the
_gallows knob_, or hanging-stone, which, in the olden time, was seldom
without its _tassel_, as the moss-troopers phrased it.
"Lest this barbarous emblem of feudal power should be minus its
usual decoration," says a local historian, "when putrefaction became
offensive before the corpse was cut down, if a malefactor was not in
custody to be tucked up, it was replenished by some unoffending vassal.
The charnel into which these victims were thrown is to this day named
the 'gallows slot,' and notwithstanding the time that has elapsed since
the downfall of the house of Douglas in Galloway, human bones in
abundance were turned up when the present highway was made through it
there in the year 1800."
Such was the grim feudal dwelling where now Murielle Douglas found
herself an inmate,--almost a prisoner,--foredoomed to be the tool,
perhaps the victim, of the dark plots and of the ambition and pride of
its lord and owner, whose general character the following anecdote will
amply illustrate.
As Steward of Kirkcudbright and Lord Warden of the Western Marches, he
ordered James Achanna, with a strong and well-armed band, to apprehend
Sir Herbert Herries of Terregles, a gentleman of ancient family, who
had large possessions in the stewardry, and bring him prisoner to
Thrave, despite the tears of his daughter, Lady Maxwell, of Carlaveroc,
and the entreaties of his youngest son, who was rector of Kirkpatrick.
He was oddly charged with "daring to recover a portion of his _own_
property, which had been appropriated by Achanna and other lawless
followers of the house of Douglas, and further, of resisting them in
arms."
Sir Herbert was a man of high courage and probity, who had given
himself as a hostage to England for the ransom of James I. He had been
a commissioner for the trial of Murdoch, duke of Albany, father of that
Duke Robert who was now the _bête noir_ of Murielle; and he had lately
been one of the ambassadors who had gone to France to arrange the
marriage of the gentle and unfortunate Margaret of Scotland with the
Dauphin, afterwards Louis XI, the French Nero, of terrible memory.
When brought before Douglas, in the hall, he was surveyed with stern
and haughty malevolence.
"Your little blockhouse of Terregles," said the earl, mockingly, as he
lounged in his canopied chair, "in common with other fortlets of the
petty barons of Galloway, is only occasionally decked with a dangling
villain, whereas our gallows knob of Thrave has not been without _a
tassel for fifty years_, and so it shall be while Dalbeattie wood grows
and the Urr water runs!"
"True," replied Terregles; "and one who was my henchman, my
foster-brother, and my most faithful friend, taken by your ruthless
wretch Achanna, is hanging there at this moment."
"And having hung the usual time, he shall now be removed to make way
for his master."
"Earl Douglas, you dare not!" exclaimed Sir Herbert, starting forward.
"Dare not! ha! ha! and why?"
"I am the king's liege man, and a baron of parliament!"
"Is that all you can urge?" asked Douglas, still mocking.
"No----"
"What more?"
"Even now a royal herald is at the gate, with an express order for my
release."
"Mahoun! its coming has sealed your doom. Achanna, tear off his ruff,
and replace it with a hempen cravat," was the stern order of Douglas;
so the unfortunate Sir Herbert was instantly hanged in his armour from
the gallows knob, while the king's herald was ignominiously expelled.
Yet this fierce and unscrupulous lord paid large sums to the Church
for masses for the souls of his ancestors, and had periodical fits of
prayer and fasting, which were very troublesome, alike to his cooks
and hungry retainers. At times he trembled for bad news if he saw a
crow in his path, and crossed himself if he saw the new moon for the
first time through a window. He smeared himself, like Achanna, with
ashes on Ash Wednesday, and ate hot cross-buns with due reverence on
Good Friday; and to him the abbot of Tongland, as keeper of the avenue
to heaven, or the _other_ place, was alternately a demigod to worship
or a bugbear to avoid. Yet, withal, he had connived with Crichton
and the regent in the destruction of his kinsmen, and wedded the
wealthy widow of Earl William, but consoled himself with the solemn
dispensation of Pope Eugene IV., who, however, was then _deposed_ by
the Council of Basle.