The House Of Lanyon

This book is dedicated, most affectionately and gratefully, to all members of the Exmoor Society, and in particular to the members of its London Area Branch.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PART ONE:FOUNDATIONS 1458

CHAPTER ONE:QUIET AND DIGNIFIED

CHAPTER TWO:SHAPING THE FUTURE

CHAPTER THREE:THE BUSINESS OF MARRIAGE

CHAPTER FOUR:ONE MAGICAL SUMMER

CHAPTER FIVE:UNTIMELY AUTUMN

CHAPTER SIX:THE LOCKES OF LYNMOUTH

CHAPTER SEVEN:FLIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT:HUNTERS AND QUARRY

CHAPTER NINE:REARRANGING THE FUTURE

CHAPTER TEN:CLOUD BLOWING IN

CHAPTER ELEVEN:NEW BEGINNING

PART TWO:BUILDINGS AND BATTLES 1458–1472

CHAPTER TWELVE:DEMISE OF A PIG

CHAPTER THIRTEEN:THE HOWL OF THE SHE-WOLF

CHAPTER FOURTEEN:HOPE AND FEAR

CHAPTER FIFTEEN:DEAD DRUNK ON A HALF-STARVED HORSE

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:HOUSEWARMING

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:ONE COMES, ONE GOES

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:DREAMS ARE SECRET

CHAPTER NINETEEN:A GOOD SENSE OF SMELL

CHAPTER TWENTY:ESTRANGEMENT

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:REBELLION

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO:SHE-WOLF AND CUB

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:OUT OF THE PAST

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:LOVE AND DEATH

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:A MATTER OF A DOWRY

PART THREE:STORM DAMAGE 1480–1486

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:BOULDER

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:THE RISING HOUSE OF LANYON

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:WHIRLIGIG

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:HEATHER, GORSE AND HENRY TUDOR

CHAPTER THIRTY:THE RED DRAGON

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE:FRIENDS UPON A BRIDGE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO:COMING HOME

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE:FOES UPON A BRIDGE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR:FALLING APART

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE:A SENSE OF ABSENCE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX:EXTRAORDINARY CHANGES

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN:PROPOSAL

PART FOUR:RECONSTRUCTION 1487–1504

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT:SETTLED IN LIFE

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE:TAVERN TALK

CHAPTER FORTY:KICKING A PEBBLE

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE:A DUTY TO LIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO:TOKEN

AUTHOR’S NOTE

ABOUT THIS GUIDE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am most grateful to the many people who have helped me as I did the research for this book. My thanks go in particular to Dolores Clew and Father Garrett for information on the medieval church, and to Michael Grantham (Rector of St. George’s in Dunster), Laurie Hambrook (Churchwarden of St. George’s), Mrs. Joan Jordan (local historian) and Dr. Robert Dunning (County Editor) for information on west country families and fifteenth-century Dunster.

CHAPTER ONE

QUIET AND DIGNIFIED

Allerbrook House is a manor house with charm. Three attractive gables look out from its slate roof, echoed by the smaller, matching gable over its porch, and two wings, with a secluded courtyard between them, stretch back toward the moorland hillside which shelters the house from northeast winds. In front the land drops away gently, but to the right the slope plunges steeply into the wooded, green-shadowed combe where the Allerbrook River purls over its pebbly bed, flowing down from its moorland source toward the village of Clicket in the valley.

Allerbrook is far from being a great house such as Chatsworth or Hatfield, but its charm apart, it has unusual features of its own, such as a mysterious stained glass window in its chapel—no one is sure of its significance—and the Tudor roses, which nowadays are painted red-and-white as when they were first made, which are carved into the hall panelling and the window seats.

The place is a rarity, standing as it does out on Exmoor, between the towns of Withypool and Dulverton. There is no other house of its type on the moor. It is also unique because of its origins. The truth—as its creator Richard Lanyon once admitted—is that it probably wouldn’t be there at all, if one autumn day in 1458 Sir Humphrey Sweetwater and his twin sons, Reginald and Walter, had not ridden out to hunt a stag and had a most distressing encounter with a funeral.

There was no manor house there when, in the fourteenth century, the Lanyons came from Cornwall and took over Allerbrook farm. Then, the only dwelling was a farmhouse, so ancient even at that time that no one knew how long it had stood there.

Sturdily built of pinkish-grey local stone and roofed with shaggy thatch, it looked more like a natural outcrop than a construction. Around it spread a haphazard collection of fields and pastures, and its farmyard was encircled by a clutter of barns, byres, stables and assorted sheds. Inside, the main rooms were the kitchen and the big all-purpose living room. There was an impressive oak front door, but it was never used except for wedding and funeral processions and the hinges were regrettably rusty. It was a workaday place.

On a fine late September evening, though, with a golden haze softening the heathery heights of the moors and gilding the Bristol Channel to the north, there was a mellowness. That mellowness seemed even to have entered the soul of the man whose life was now drawing to a close in one of the upper bedchambers.

This was remarkable, because George Lanyon’s sixty-one years of life had scarcely been serene. He had been an aggressive child, apt to bully his two older sisters and his younger brother, for as long as they were there to bully. The Lanyons had never, for some reason, been good at raising healthy families. All George’s siblings had ailed and died before they were twenty. Only George flourished, as though he possessed all the vitality that should have been shared equally among the four of them.

As an adult, he had quarrelled with his parents, dominated his wife, Alice, and shouted at his fragile younger son, Stephen, until the boy died of lung-rot at the age of eleven. The grieving Alice, in her one solitary fit of rebellion, accused him of driving Stephen into his grave, and she herself faded out of life the following year.

Only Richard, his elder son, had been strong enough to survive and at times to stand up to him or, if necessary, stand by him. George also quarrelled with their landlord, Sir Humphrey Sweetwater, when he raised their rent. George had refused to see that this was dangerous.

“The Sweetwaters won’t throw us off our land. They know we look after it. They were glad enough to have us take it on when Granddad Petroc came here, looking for a place, back in the days of the plague when everyone who’d lived here before was dead.”

“That was then. This is now, and I don’t trust them,” said Richard. He was well aware that the Sweetwaters, although only minor gentry, were on social if not intimate terms with Thomas Courtenay, Earl of Devon, which was a double-edged blade. On the one hand, they considered themselves so far above their tenants that they could scarcely even see them. But on the other hand, if the said tenants tilled the land badly or wrangled over a rise in the rent, they were as capable of throwing the offenders out as they were capable of drowning unwanted kittens. You never knew. Richard loathed the Sweetwaters as much as George, but he was also wary.

The quarrel passed over. George gave in and paid the increase, and the Sweetwaters continued to regard the Lanyon family with disdain. Quietly the Lanyons began to prosper, though Richard considered that they could have done better still if only his father hadn’t in so many ways been so pigheaded.

But now…

Extraordinary, Richard thought as he stood looking down at his father’s sunken face and half-shut eyes. Extraordinary. All his life he had fought this man, argued with him and usually given in to him. And now, would you believe it, George was making a good Christian end.

Betsy and Kat, the two middle-aged sisters who cooked and cleaned and looked after the dairy and were so alike in their fair plumpness that people often mixed them up, were on their knees on the other side of the bed, praying quietly. At the foot stood Father Bernard, the elderly parish priest. “He’s safe enough,” Father Bernard said with some acidity. He knew George well. “He’s had the last rites. Luckily you fetched me while he was still conscious. Lucky you had that horse of yours, too, whatever your father thought!”

Richard Lanyon grinned, fleetingly. Father Bernard lived down in Clicket village, in a cottage beside St. Anne’s, the elegant little church built of pale Caen stone imported from France for the purpose by some pious bygone Sweetwater.

There was a long, sloping mile of Allerbrook combe between the farm and the priest, but George had asked for Father Bernard with pleading in his eyes and begged his son to hurry, and Richard had been able to do so, because he had a good horse at his command. George always said he had lost only three battles in his lifetime. One was the squabble over the rent. Another, a very long-running one, was the way Richard, once widowed, kept on refusing to remarry and make another attempt to raise a family. The third was over Richard’s purchase of Splash.

“Why can’t you ride a local pony like everyone else?” George raged when Richard went off to a horse fair miles away and came back leading a two-year-old colt with a most remarkable dappled coat. The dapples were dark iron-grey and much bigger than dapples usually were, overlapping and running into each other so that he looked as though someone had splashed liquid iron all over him. “The ponies round here can carry a grown man all day and never tire or put their feet in bogs by mistake. What did you spend good money on that for?” Master Lanyon senior demanded.

“He’s well made. I’m going to break him for riding and call him Splash,” said Richard.

“I give you your cut from any profits we make,” George bellowed at his unrepentant son, “but I don’t expect you to throw it away on something as ought to be in a freak show!”

But Splash, with his long legs and his undoubted dash of Arab blood, had proved his worth. He was as clever as any moorland pony at avoiding bogs and he could outdistance every horse in the parish and beyond, including the bloodstock owned by the Sweetwaters. He had got Richard down to the village and to the priest’s house so quickly that by the time Richard was hammering on Father Bernard’s door, the dust he had kicked up as he tore out of the farmyard still hung in the air.

“Get up behind me,” Richard said when the priest opened the door. “Don’t stop to saddle your mare. It’s my father. We think he’s going.”

And Splash, head lowered and nostrils wide, brought them both back up the combe nearly as fast as he had carried Richard down it, and before he drifted into his last dream, George Lanyon received the sacrament and was shriven of his sins and given, thereby, his passport into paradise.

“I couldn’t have done it without Splash,” Richard said, and glanced at his father, wondering if George could hear and secretly hoping so.

But if he did, he made no sign and when Peter, Richard’s nineteen-year-old son, came quietly into the room asking whether the patient was better, Richard could only shake his head.

“Keep your voice down now, Master Peter.” Betsy, the older of the two sisters, looked up from her prayers. “Don’t ’ee be disturbing ’un. Your granddad’s made his peace and he’s startin’ on his journey.”

Peter nervously came closer to the bed. As a child, he had seen two small brothers die, and at the age of eleven he had been taken to his parents’ bedchamber to say farewell to his mother, Joan, and the girl-child who never breathed, and every time he had been stricken with a sense of dreadful mystery, and with pity.

The pity this time was made worse by the change in his grandfather. Petroc, the Cornishman who was George’s own grandfather, had died before George was born, but his description had been handed down. He had been short and dark, a very typical Cornishman. He had, however, married a local girl, said to be big and brown haired and clear skinned. The combination had produced good-looking descendants, dark of hair and eye like Petroc, but with tall strong bodies and excellent facial bones. In life, George had been not only loud voiced and argumentative; he had also been unusually handsome.

Now his good looks had faded with his vitality. He had been getting thinner for months, and complaining of pains inside, though no one knew what ailed him, but the final collapse, into this shrunken husk, had come suddenly, taking them all by surprise. To Peter it seemed that the man on the bed was melting before their eyes.

George himself had been drifting in a misty world where nothing had substance. He could hear voices nearby, but could make no sense of what they said. His body no longer seemed to matter. For a change, nothing was hurting. He was comfortable. He was content to surrender to whatever or wherever lay before him. But in him, life had always been a powerful force. Like a candle flame just before it gutters out, it flared once more. For a few moments the mist withdrew and the voices made sense again and his eyes opened, to focus, frowningly, on the faces around him.

Father Bernard. Sharp-tongued old wretch. But he’d provided the last rites. No need to fear hell now. With difficulty he turned his head, and there was young Peter, his only surviving grandson, looking miserable. Why did the Lanyons never produce big healthy families? As for Richard…

Wayward boy. Been widowed for years; should have married again long ago. Should have listened to his father. I kept telling him. Obstinate, that’s what he is. Big ideas. Always thinks he knows better than me. Always wanting to try new things out.

Oh, well. Richard would soon be able to please himself. His father wouldn’t be able to stop him. Didn’t even want to, not now. Too tired…

Weakly he turned his head the other way, and saw the white-capped heads of Betsy and Kat. Beyond them was the window. It was shut, its leaded panes with their squares of thick, greenish glass denying him a view of the world outside. He’d had the windows glazed long ago, at more expense than he liked, but he’d always detested the fact that Sweetwater House was the only dwelling for miles that could have daylight without draughts. Yet even with glazing, the daylight was partly obscured and the view scarcely visible. “Open…window,” he said thickly. “Now. Quick.”

Betsy got up at once. Kat murmured a protest, but Betsy said, “No cold wind’s a’goin’ to hurt ’un now, silly. We’d be doing this anyway, soon.” She clicked the window latch and flung the casement back, letting cool air stream into the room.

She meant that, once he was gone, someone would open the window anyway, because people always did, to let the departing soul go free. George knew that quite well. He wanted to see where he was going.

The window gave him a glimpse of Slade, the barley field, all stubble now, because the summer had been good and they’d got all the corn in and threshed, as well. The names of his fields told themselves over in his head: Long Meadow, Slade, Quillet, Three Corner Mead…

He had been proud of them, all the more so because they were really his. He knew that in many places fields were communal, with each farmer cultivating just a strip, or perhaps more than one, but compelled to plant the same crop as everyone else and changing strips each year. Here in the southwest, it was different. Here, a man’s fields were his own.

Beyond the farmland was a dark green line, the trees of Allerbrook combe, and in the distance strode the skyline of the moorland’s highest ridge, swimming in lemon light. There were strange mounds on the hilltops of Exmoor, said to be the graves of pagan people who had lived here long, long ago. He’d like to be buried in a mound on high ground, but he’d have to be content with a grave in the churchyard of St. Anne’s. He wouldn’t even be able to hear the sound of the Allerbrook…well, no, he wouldn’t be able to hear anything, near or far, but…

He was growing confused and things were fading again. But how lovely was the light on those moors. He’d never attended to it in life. Been too damn busy trying to control that awkward son of his. Now he wanted to float away into that glorious sky, to dissolve into it, to be part of it….

His eyes closed. The voices around him became irrelevant once more and then were gone. Father Bernard, gentle now, spoke a final prayer and Richard, also gently, kissed his father’s brow and drew up the sheet.

“It was a good passing,” he said.

The priest nodded. “Yes, it was. I will make arrangements for the burial. Will you decide when the best day would be, and let me know?”

“Of course,” Richard said. “I shall have much to do.”

And organising the funeral would be only part of that. To Richard—and though he didn’t speak of it aloud, he didn’t conceal it from himself, either—the golden light of the descending sun was a sign of golden opportunity. He would give his father a respectful farewell, as a good son should. But his mental list of the people he would invite included some with whom he particularly wanted to talk, and the sooner the better. He had plans, and now, at last, he was free to put them into action.

But certainly the funeral itself would, he trusted, be long remembered as an example of well-organised, quiet dignity.

In the event, George Lanyon’s funeral was unquestionably memorable and parts of it even dignified. But from that day onward, the conflict between Richard Lanyon and the Sweetwater family was more than a simple matter of dislike. That was the day when what had been merely dislike and resentment escalated into a feud.

CHAPTER TWO

SHAPING THE FUTURE

In the village of Dunster, a dozen or so miles away on the coast of the Bristol Channel, Liza Weaver, suitably grave of face, stood among other members of the extensive Weaver family and bade farewell to her father, Nicholas, the head of the house, and her mother, Margaret, as they set off on the long ride to Allerbrook for the funeral of George Lanyon.

She was a strongly built girl with warm brown eyes and hair that matched, although at the moment it was hidden under a neat white cap. Her big, florid father said cheerfully, “I’m sorry about George, and his family will miss him, but we’ll likely bring back some good fresh bacon from the farm. It’s an ill wind, as they say,” and he leaned down from his saddle to kiss his eldest daughter. “Be a good wench. Help your little sister and—” he dropped his voice “—don’t mind Aunt Cecy’s tongue. She means no harm.” He straightened up in his saddle, took off his hat and waved it to them all. “See you all soon!” he cried. Margaret smiled and turned her sturdy pony to follow him as he set off.

So there they went, thought Liza. Off to the funeral of George Lanyon. The two families were mostly linked by business, but there had been some social contacts, too. She had been to Allerbrook now and then—to Christmas and Easter gatherings as a rule—and she had met George. She had also found him rather alarming. She felt dutifully sorry for anyone who was ill, or had died, but she was young and the passing of Master Lanyon did not mean so very much to her.

On the other hand, the departure of her parents did mean something, of which they had no inkling. She had since childhood had a habit sometimes of going for walks on her own. Here in Dunster where everyone knew everyone else, it was safe enough and no one had ever stopped her, unless there was so much to do that she couldn’t be spared. Aunt Cecy would probably say that with Nicholas and Margaret absent, there’d be too much to do just now, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to give Aunt Cecy the slip after dinner.

And in the dell beyond the mill, where bluebells had been out the first time they met there, back in the springtime, a young man called Christopher would be waiting.

Autumn had declared itself. On the moors the bracken was bronzing and the higher hillcrests were veiled in cloud. It had rained overnight and there were puddles in the farmyard at Allerbrook. In the kitchen Betsy and Kat were busy by daybreak, preparing the food which must be served to the guests. When Richard came downstairs, the stockpot was already bubbling and there were chickens on the spit. The poultry population of Allerbrook had gone down considerably in George’s honour.

Out in the byre Betsy’s husband, Higg, was milking the cows while Kat’s husband, Roger, fetched water from the well for the benefit of the kitchen and the plough oxen in their stalls. It should have been the other way around, since Higg was as broad chested as any ox while Roger was skinny and stoop backed from a lifetime of carrying full buckets and laden sacks. He carried buckets so lopsidedly that they usually slopped, but the cows, perversely, responded better to Higg.

Upstairs, guests who had had a long way to come and had arrived the previous day were still abed, but Peter was up ahead of his father and snatching a quick breakfast of small ale and bread smeared with honey. Richard sat down next to him. “Sleep all right? It’ll be a long day.”

“I didn’t sleep much, no. It’s strange without Granddad. Nothing’s ever going to be the same again, is it?” Peter said.

Richard was silent, because to him, the fact that nothing was ever going to be the same again was a matter for rejoicing, but it would be quite improper to say so.

Under George’s rule, life at Allerbrook had been the same for far too long. There were so many things that Richard would have liked to try, new ideas which he had seen put into practice on other farms, but his father was set against innovations.

It was always Take it from me—I know best. No, I don’t want to try another breed of sheep. Ours do well on the moorland grazing, so what do you want to go making experiments for? No, what’s the point of renting more valley grazing? Got enough, haven’t we? Nonsense, I never heard of anyone growing wheat on Exmoor, even if Quillet field does face south and the soil’s deep.

There were going to be changes now, and that was nothing to grieve about. He glanced at Peter again, and saw that the boy was hurrying his meal. “Take your time,” he said. “Our guests’ll be a while yet. Ned Crowham’s never been one for early rising, I’ve noticed.”

For a short time, Peter had been to school in the east of the county and Ned had been one of his fellow pupils. They had become friends, although they had little in common. A complete contrast to the Lanyons to look at, Ned was short, plump, pink skinned and fair as a newly hatched chick. He was also the son of a man as wealthy as Sir Humphrey, owner of several Somerset farms and a manor house twenty miles away, toward the town of Bridgwater. At home, young Ned was indulged. He had spent nights at Allerbrook before and shown himself to be a terrible layabed.

“And the Weavers didn’t get here till after dark last night,” Richard added. “Mistress Margaret was tired. It’s only twelve miles from Dunster as the crow flies, but it’s a heck of a lot more as a pony plods and she’s not young. It was good of her to come. I hoped Nicholas Weaver would, for I’ve business with him, but I’m touched that his wife came, too.”

“We’ll have a crowd here soon,” Peter said, swallowing his final mouthful. “Just as well Master Nicholas didn’t bring his whole family! Poor Granddad used to envy the Weavers, didn’t he, because of their big families? Father, why did you never marry again after my mother died? I’ve often wondered.” Richard frowned and Peter hastily added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything I shouldn’t.”