THE LAST SQUIRE.
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In a certain wild and picturesque region of the west, which commands
a noble prospect of Dartmoor, in a small but antique mansion, which
we will call Grimstone, lived for generations a family called Grym.
This family rose to consequence after the last heralds' visitation,
consequently did not belong to the aboriginal gentry of the county. It
produced a chancellor, and an Archbishop of Canterbury.
[Illustration: Grimstone.]
The family mansion is still standing, with granite mullioned windows
and quaint projecting porch, over which is a parvise. A pair of carved
stone gate-posts give access to the turf plot in front of the house.
The mighty kitchen with three fireplaces shows that the Gryms were a
hospitable race, who would on high days feed a large number of guests,
and the ample cellars show that they did more than feed them. I cannot
recall any library in the house, unless, perhaps, the porch-room were
intended for books; if so, it continued to be intended for them only.
The first man of note in the family who lived at Grimstone was
Brigadier John Grym of the Guards, born in 1699, a fine man and a
gallant soldier. He had one son, of the same name as himself, a
man amiable, weakly in mind, and of no moral force and decision of
character. His father and mother were a little uneasy about him because
he was so infirm of purpose; they put their heads together, and
concluded that the best thing to do for him was to marry him to a woman
who had in abundance those qualities in which their son was deficient.
Now there lived about four miles off, in a similar quaint old mansion,
a young lady of very remarkable decision of character. She was poor,
and one of a large family. She at once accepted the offer made her in
John Grym's name by the Brigadier and his wife, and became Madame John
Grym, and on the death of the Brigadier, Madame Grym, and despotic
reigning queen of Grimstone, who took the reins of government into her
firm hands, and never let them out of them. The saying goes, when woman
drives she drives to the devil, and madame did not prove an exception.
The marriage had taken place in 1794; the husband died six years later,
but madame survived till 1835. Throughout the minority of her eldest
son John, that is to say, for sixteen or seventeen years, she had the
entire, uncontrolled management of the property, and she managed pretty
well in that time to ruin the estate.
She was a litigious woman, always at strife with her neighbours, proud
and ambitious. Her ambition was to extend the bounds of the property,
but she had not the capital to dispose of to enable her to pay for
the lands she purchased, and which were mortgaged to two-thirds of
their value. She borrowed money at five and six per cent., and bought
property with it that rendered only three and a half.
[Illustration: Madame Grym.]
She attended the parish vestries, where she made her will felt, and
pursued with implacable animosity such farmers or landowners as did
not submit to her dictation. She drove a pair of ponies herself, but
whilst driving had her mind so engaged in her schemes that she forgot
to attend to the beasts; they sometimes ran away with her, upset her,
and she was found on more than one occasion senseless by the roadside,
and her carriage shattered hard by.
As her affairs became worse, more and more intricately involved, she
began to be alarmed lest she should be arrested for debt. For security
she had a house or pavilion erected in which to take refuge should the
officers of the law come for her. This had a secret chamber, or well,
made in the thickness of the walls, accessible from an upper loft
through a trap-door. When she had received warning that she was being
looked for, she fled to the loft. The trap was raised, and madame was
lowered into the well on a carpet or sheet, then the trap was closed
and covered with a mat. She had recourse to this place of concealment
on several occasions, and the secret of the hiding-nest was not
revealed till after her death.
The pavilion still stands, but has been converted into a barn, and all
the internal arrangements have been altered.
When defeated in an action against a neighbour, on success in which she
had greatly set her heart, she brought an action against the lawyer who
had conducted her case, charging him with having wilfully understated
her claims, withheld evidence, and acted in collusion with the other
side. She lost, of course, and being unable to pay costs, escaped to
London; there she died. It is said that when the judgment was given
against her the church bells were rung, so unpopular had she become.
In London she died, and her son, fearing lest her body should be
arrested for debt, had her packed in bran, in a grand-piano case, and
sent down by water to Plymouth, whence it was conveyed by waggon, as
a piano, to Grimstone. The bill for the packing of madame in bran in
a piano case is still extant. The waggoner who drove her in this case
from Plymouth did not die till the other day.
At the time when she was in constant alarm of a warrant and execution,
the portable plate of the house, to the weight of about fifty pounds,
was daily intrusted to one of the labourers on the farm, who carried
it about with him, and when at work put it in the hedge, and threw his
jacket over it.
On one occasion, when the bailiffs were expected, she was afraid lest
her gig should be taken, and before retiring into her well, she had it
lifted by ropes and concealed under hay above the stable.
[Illustration: A Group of Gryms.]
She left two sons, John, the elder, the heir to Grimstone, and Ralph,
the younger. Both inherited the self-will, strength of character, and
vindictiveness of the mother, but the younger assuredly in double
measure. No sooner was she dead, than the brothers flew at each other's
throats, or, to be more exact, Ralph flew at that of his more fortunate
brother, if it can be called fortunate to inherit an encumbered estate,
mortgaged almost to its value. Ralph instituted a Chancery suit
against John. The younger brother remained in the parish, residing in
another house, and occasionally accompanied his brother John when out
shooting, and they met in the hunting-field.
One day when they were out rabbiting together, Ralph's gun suddenly
went off, and riddled his brother's beaver hat. John vowed that a
deliberate attempt had been made on his life by his brother. He
forbade him his house, and thenceforth would no more associate with
him in field sports. Ralph before his mother's death had been put in
a solicitor's office, but had been dismissed from it for falling on a
fellow-clerk with a pistol and attempting to shoot him. John remembered
this, and if he mistrusted his brother, it was not altogether without
cause.
Now that he could no longer go to Grimstone, and found himself regarded
askance by the neighbours, Ralph went up to town, where, having
connexions in good position, he got introduced into society, and he
made the acquaintance of a very charming girl with a small fortune at
her own disposal, of six thousand pounds. He was a remarkably handsome
young man, with flashing blue eyes, and bold, well-chiselled features,
an erect bearing, and a brusque, haughty manner. It is perhaps hardly
to be wondered at that, with his personal good looks, and with his
indomitable will, he should bear down all opposition on the part of the
young lady's friends, and induce her to throw in her lot with him.
According to the marriage settlement, half the wife's fortune was to
be at his disposal. It is almost unnecessary to say, that he managed
to get rid of that within a twelvemonth. Thereupon ensued a series of
persecutions as mean as they were cruel. His object was to force her
to surrender the second three thousand pounds. He attempted to cajole
her out of this, and when he failed by this means, he endeavoured to
frighten her into submission. To do this he put a pistol under the
pillow, and when she was asleep at his side, discharged the pistol over
her head. Then he pretended that he had missed his mark, but assured
her he would not fail another time.
She had, fortunately, sufficient resolution to resist intimidation.
Whether she would have succumbed in the end we cannot say, but,
luckily for her, he was arrested for costs in the Chancery suit
against his brother, and was lodged in the prison of King's Bench,
where he remained for seven years. Bethell, afterwards Lord Westbury,
was counsel against him. Ralph Grym conducted his own case. Every now
and then he was brought from prison into court, as some fresh stage
of the case was entered upon, and then returned to his detention. One
day Bethell informed the judge that he moved for an "abatement," owing
to the death of one of the parties involved in the suit. This was the
first tidings Ralph Grym received of the decease of his brother-in-law,
who with his brother John was party in the suit. His brother now
abandoned the action, and Ralph was let out of King's Bench. He at once
returned to the neighbourhood of Grimstone, and sent a message to his
brother on the very first night of his return that he had a gun; that
he was passionately fond of shooting; that for seven or eight years he
had been debarred the pleasure; that his hand had become shaky; and
that--in all human probability, when he was out shooting, should John
come in sight, his gun would go off accidentally, and on this occasion
_not_ perforate the beaver.
John took the hint and remained indoors, whilst Ralph shot when and
what he liked over his brother's grounds. But this was a condition of
affairs so intolerable, that John deemed it expedient to come to terms
with his brother, give him five hundred pounds, and pack him off to
London.
Furnished with this sum, Ralph returned to town, and there set up
livery stables. He was himself a first-rate rider, and he taught
ladies riding, and conducted riding parties in Epping forest. He made
money by purchasing good-looking horses that were faulty in one or two
particulars, at some ten pounds or fifteen pounds, and as his horses
were well turned out, and well bred, he had the credit of mounting his
customers well. And he was not indisposed to sell some of these for
very considerable sums.
Thus passed three or four years, the happiest in his life, and he
might have continued his livery stables, had he not quarrelled with
a groom and fought him. He was thrown, and dislocated his hip. This
was badly set; it was a long job, and he was never again able to ride
comfortably. His business went back, he lost his customers, and failed.
Then, without a penny in his pocket, he returned to Devon, and to the
neighbourhood of Grimstone, and lodged with the tenants on the estate.
Utterly ruined in means and in credit, he became a burden to his hosts.
They declined to entertain him wholly and severally, so he slept in one
farmhouse, and had his meals in one or another of the neighbouring
farms. His brother refused to see him, defied his threats, and denied
him money.
This went on for some time. At length his hosts plainly informed him
that he was no longer welcome. He was not an agreeable guest, was
exacting, insolent, and violent. They met in consultation, sent round
the hat, collected a small subvention; and then a gig was got ready,
the money thrust into his hand, and he was mounted in the trap to
be driven off to the nearest railway station, where he might take a
ticket for London, or Jericho. The gig was at the door, and Ralph was
settling himself into it, when a man, breathless and without a hat,
arrived running from Grimstone, to say that John Grym, his brother,
had suddenly fallen down dead. The trap that was to take Ralph away
now conveyed him to the mansion of his ancestors, to take possession
as heir, and he carried off with him the proceeds of the subscription
among the tenants.
John had died without issue, and intestate. Ralph found in the house
five hundred pounds in gold, a thousand pounds' worth of stock was on
the farm, three hundred pounds' worth of wool was in store, and there
was much family plate and some family jewels.
Ralph's character from this moment underwent a change. When in town
he had lived as a prodigal, and squandered his money as it came in,
was freehanded and genial. In the year of Bloomsbury, when the Derby
was run in snow, he won three thousand pounds by a bet, when he had
not three-halfpence of his own. Next year he won on the turf fifteen
hundred pounds; but money thus made slipped through his fingers. No
sooner, however, was he squire of Grimstone than he became a miser, and
that so suddenly, that he had to be sued in the County Court for the
cheap calico he had ordered for a shroud for his brother. He became the
hardest of landlords and the harshest of masters.
With his wife he was not reconciled. Repeated efforts were made by
well-intentioned persons to re-unite them. He protested his willingness
to receive her, but only on the condition that she made over to him the
remaining three thousand pounds of her property. To this condition she
had the wisdom not to accede. Before he was imprisoned she had borne
him a daughter, whom we will call Rosalind. He made many attempts to
get possession of the child, in the hopes of thereby extorting the
money from the mother.
Before he became squire, Mrs. Grym lived in a small house near
Grimstone, on the interest of the three thousand pounds, of course in a
very small way. On one occasion she was called to town, and was unable
to take little Rosalind with her. She accordingly conveyed the child
to the house of a neighbouring rector, and entreated that she might be
kept there till her return, and be on no account surrendered to the
father should he attempt to claim her.
A couple of Sundays after her departure, between ten and eleven in the
morning, Ralph Grym appeared at the parsonage, and asked to see the
rector. He was admitted, and after a little preliminary conversation,
stated his desire to have an interview with his child, then aged five.
This could not be refused. The little girl was introduced, and Ralph
talked to her, and played with her.
In the meantime the bells for service were ringing. The bell changed to
the last single toll, five minutes before divine worship began, and Mr.
Grym made no signs of being in a hurry to depart.
The rector, obliged to attend to his sacred duties, drew his son aside,
a boy of sixteen, and said to him, "Harry, keep your eye on Rosalind,
and on no account suffer Mr. Grym to carry her off."
The boy accordingly remained at home.
"Well, young shaver," said Ralph, "what are you staying here for?"
"My father does not wish me to go to church this morning."
"Rosalind," said her father, "go, fetch your bonnet, and come a walk
with me. I have some peppermints in my pocket."
The child, highly elated, got herself ready. Henry, the rector's son,
also prepared to go out.
"Young shaver, we don't want you," said Ralph, rudely.
"My father ordered me to take a walk this morning, sir."
"There are two ways--I and Rosalind go one, and you the other," said
Ralph.
"My father bade me on no account leave Rosalind."
Ralph growled and went on, the boy following. Mr. Grym led the way for
six miles, and the child became utterly wearied. The father made every
effort to shake off the boy. He swore at him, he threatened him, money
he had not got to offer him; all was in vain. At last, when the little
girl sat down exhausted, and began to cry, the father with an oath left
her.
"That," said Henry, in after life, "was the first time I had to do
with Ralph Grym, and then I beat him."
Many years after he had again to stand as Rosalind's protector against
Ralph, then striking at his child with a dead hand, and again he beat
him.
After her mother's death Ralph invited his daughter to Grimstone, but
only with the object of extorting from her the three thousand pounds
she had inherited from her mother. When she refused to surrender this,
he let her understand that her presence was irksome to him. He shifted
the hour of dinner from seven to nine, then to ten, and finally gave
orders that no dinner was to be served for a week. Still she did not go.
"I want your room, Rosalind," he said roughly; "I have a friend coming."
"The house is large, there are plenty of apartments; he shall have
mine, I will move into another."
"I want all the rooms."
"I see you want to drive me away."
"I beg you will suit yourself as to the precise hour to-morrow when you
leave."
Again, after some years, was Rosalind invited to Grimstone; but it
was with the same object, never abandoned. On this occasion, when old
Ralph found that she was resolute not to surrender the three thousand
pounds, he turned her out of doors at night, and she was forced to take
refuge at the poor little village tavern. He never forgave her.
Squire Grym was rough to his tenants. One man, the village clerk, had a
field of his, and Ralph suddenly demanded of him two pounds above the
rent the man had hitherto paid. As he refused, Ralph abruptly produced
a horse-pistol, presented it at the man's head, and said,
"Put down the extra two pounds, or I will blow your brains out."
The clerk was a sturdy fellow, and was undaunted. He looked the squire
steadily in the eye, and answered--
"I reckon _her_ (_i. e._ the pistol), though old and risty, won't miss,
for if her _does_, I reckon your brains 'll make a purty mess on the
carpet."
Ralph lowered the pistol with an oath, and said no more. He was a
suspicious man, and fancied that all those about him conspired to rob
him. When he bore a grudge against a man, or suspected him, he required
some of his tenants to give evidence against the man; he himself
prepared the story they were to swear to, and drilled them into the
evidence they were to give. The tenant who refused to do as he bid was
never forgiven.
He was never able to keep a bailiff over a twelvemonth. When he died,
at an age over eighty, in his vindictiveness against his daughter,
because she had refused him the three thousand pounds, he left
everything of which he was possessed to the bailiff then in his house.
How the boy who had saved Rosalind from being carried off by her father
many years before, and who was now a solicitor, came to her aid, and
secured for her something out of the spoils, is history too recent to
be told here.
Thus ended the family of Grym of Grimstone, and thus did the old house
and old acres pass away into new hands.
Such is the story of the extinction of one family. Others have been
snuffed out, or have snuffed themselves out, in other ways; strangely
true it is, that of the multitudes of old county families that once
lived in England, few remain on their paternal inheritance.
As I have told the story of the ruin of one family, I will conclude
this chapter with that of the saving of another when trembling on the
brink of ruin. Again I will give fictitious names. The St. Pierres
were divided into two main branches, the one seated on a considerable
estate on the Dart, near Ashburton, the other on a modest property near
the Tamar, on the Devonshire side. In 1736 died Edward St. Pierre, the
last male representative of the elder branch, when he left his property
to the representative of the junior, William Drake St. Pierre. This
latter had an only son, Edward, and a daughter. He was married to a
woman of considerable force of character. On his death in 1766, Edward,
then aged twenty-six, came in for a very large property indeed; he was
in the Dragoons, and a dare-devil, gambling fellow. He eloped with a
married lady, and lived with her for some years. She died, and was
buried at Bath Abbey. He never married, but continued his mad career
till his death.
One day he had been gambling till late, and had lost every guinea he
had about him. Then he rode off, put a black mask over his face, and
waylaid the man who had won the money of him, and on his appearance
challenged him to deliver. The man recognized him, and incautiously
exclaimed, "Oh, Edward St. Pierre! I did not think this of you!"
"You know me, do you?" was the reply, and Edward St. Pierre shot him
dead.
Now there had been a witness, a man who had seen Captain Edward take up
his position, and who, believing him to be a highwayman, had secreted
himself, and waited his time to escape.
Edward St. Pierre was tried for the murder. Dunning of Ashburton, then
a rising lawyer, was retained to defend him. It was essential to weaken
or destroy the testimony of the witness. Dunning had recourse to an
ingenious though dishonest device. The murder had been committed when
the moon was full, or nearly full, so that in the brilliant white light
every object was as clear as by day.
Dunning procured a pocket almanack, removed the sheet in which was the
calendar of the month of the murder, and had it reprinted at the same
press, or at all events with exactly similar type, altering the moons,
so as to make no moon on the night in question.
On the day of trial he left this almanack in his great-coat pocket,
hanging up in the ante-room of the court. The trial took place, and the
witness gave his evidence.
"How could you be sure that the man on horseback was Captain St.
Pierre?" asked the judge.
"My Lord, the full moon shone on him. I knew his horse; I knew his
coat. Besides, when he had shot the other he took off his mask."
"The full moon was shining, do you say?"
"Yes, my Lord; I saw his face by the clear moonlight."
"Pass me a calendar. Who has got a calendar?" asked the judge.
At that time almanacks were not so plentiful as they are now. As it
happened no one present had one. Then Dunning stood up, and said,--
"My Lord, I had one yesterday, and I put it, I think, in the pocket of
my overcoat. If your Lordship will send an apparitor into the ante-room
to search my pocket, it may there be found."
The calendar was produced--there was no moon. The evidence against the
accused broke down, and he was acquitted.
This was considered at the time a clever move of Mr. Dunning; it
occurred to no one that it was immoral. Captain St. Pierre had to pay
Dunning heavily; in fact, he made over to him a portion of the estate
in lieu of paying in cash, and later, when he became further involved,
he sold the property to the Barings. Dunning was created Baron
Ashburton, but the title became extinct with his son, who bequeathed
his property to Alexander Baring, his first cousin, who was elevated
to the peerage under the title of Baron Ashburton, and the St. Pierre
property now belongs to Lord Ashburton.
Captain Edward St. Pierre died in 1788, without issue, and his sister
became his heir; but he had got rid of everything he could get rid of.
Only the estate near the Tamar had been saved from sale by his mother
taking it of him on a lease for ninety-nine years. She was residing on
it when the news reached her that her good-for-nothing son was dead.
He had died at Shaldon, near Teignmouth, on the 29th June, and his last
request was that he might be carried to Bath, and laid by the side of
the woman he had wronged.
When his mother received the tidings of his death she was in
uncertainty what to do. All the last night of June to the dawn of July
1, she sat in one tall-backed arm-chair, musing what to do with the
rest of her life. Should she go to Bath, and spend the remainder of her
days at cards, amusing herself? or should she devote it to a country
life, and to repairing the shattered fortunes of the family?
When morning broke her mind was made up. She would adopt the nobler,
the better cause; and she carried it out to the end. As each farm fell
vacant in the parish she took it into her own hands, and farmed it
herself, and succeeded so well, that when the rival gentle family in
the parish, owning a handsome barton there, fell into difficulties,
she bought their estate, so as to make some amends for the loss of the
Ashburton property. That the chair in which the old lady sat meets with
respect _ça va sans dire_.
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