University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.

In one of those sweet glens, half-pastoral, half-sylvan, which
may be found in hundreds channelling the steep sides of the
moorland hills, and sending down the tribute of their pure limestone
springs to the broad rivers which fertilize, no less than
they adorn, the lovely vales of western Yorkshire, there may
be seen to this day the ruins of an old dwelling-house, situate
on a spot so picturesque, so wild, and yet so soft in its romantic
features, that they would well repay the traveller for a brief
halt, who but too often hurries onward in search of more remote
yet certainly not greater beauties.

The gorge, within the mouth of which the venerable pile
was seated, opens into the broader valley of Wharfdale from
the northeastern side, enjoying the full light and warmth of the
southern sunshine; and although very narrow at its origin,
where its crystal rivulet springs up from the lonely well-head,
fringed by a few low shrubs of birch and alder, expands here
at its mouth into a pretty amphitheatre or basin of a few acres'
circuit.

A wild and feathery coppice of oak, and birch, and hazel,
with here and there a mountain-ash showing its bright-red berries

through the red foliage, clothes all the lower part of the
surrounding slopes; while, far above, the seamed and shattered
faces of the gray slaty limestone rise up like artificial walls,
their summits crowned with the fair purple heather, and every
nook and cranny in their sides crowded with odorous wild
flowers. Within the circuits of these natural limits, sheltering
it from every wind of heaven except the gentle south, the turf
lies smooth and even, as if it were a cultured lawn; while a
few rare exotic shrubs, now all run out of shape, and bare and
straggling, indicate yet the time when it was a fair shrubbery,
tended by gentle hands, and visited by young and lovely beings,
now cold in their untimely sepulchres.

The streamlet, which comes gushing down the glen with its
clear, copious flow, boiling and murmuring about the large gray
boulders, which everywhere obstruct its channel, making a
thousand mimic cataracts, and wakening ever a wild, mirthful
music, sweeps here quite close to the foot of the eastern cliff,
the feathery branches of the oakwood dipping their foliage in
its eddies; and then, just as it issues forth into the open champaign,
wheels round in a half-circle, completely isolating the
little amphitheatre above mentioned, except at one point, hard
beneath the opposite hill-face, where a small, winding horse-track,
engrossing the whole space between the streamlet and
the limestone rock, gives access to the lone demesne.

A small, green hillock, sloping down gently to the southward,
fills the embracing arms of the bright brook, around the northern
base of which is scattered a little grove of the most magnificent
and noblest sycamores that I have ever seen; but on
the other side, which yet retains its pristine character of a
smooth, open lawn, there are no obstacles to the view over the
wide valley, except three old gnarled thorn-bushes, uncommon
from their size, and the dense luxuriance of their matted
greenery.

It was upon the summit of this little knoll that the old homestead
stood, whose massive ruins of red freestone, all overgrown
with briers and tall, rank grass and dock-leaves, deface the spot
which they adorned of old; and, when it was erect, in all its
fair proportions, the scene which it overlooked and its own
natural attractiveness rendered it one of the loveliest residences
in all the north of England.

The wide, rich, gentle valley, all meadow-land and pasture,
without one brown, ploughed field to mar its velvet green; the
tall, thick hawthorn hedges, with their long lines of hedgerow
timber, oak, ash, and elm, waving above the smooth enclosures;
the broad, clear, tranquil river, flashing out like a silver mirror
through the green foliage; the scattered farmhouses, each nestled
as it were among its sheltering orchards; the village spire
shooting up from the clump of giant elms, which overshadowed
the old graveyard; the steep, long slope on the other side of
the vale, or strath as it would be called in Scotland, all mapped
out to the eye with its green fences and wide, hanging woods;
and far beyond the rounded summits of the huge moorland hills,
ridge above ridge, purple, and grand, and massive, but less and
less distinct as they recede from the eye, and melt away at last
into the far blue distance — such was the picture which its windows
overlooked of old, and which still laughs as gayly as of
yore, in the glad sunshine, around its mouldering walls and
lonely hearthstone.

But if it is fair now, and lovely, what was it, as it showed in
the good old days of King Charles, before the iron hand of civil
war had pressed so heavily upon England? The groves of
sycamores stood there, as they stand now in the prime and
luxuriance of their sylvan manhood; for they are now waxing
aged, and somewhat gray and stag-horned; and the thorn-bushes
sheltered, as they do now, whole choirs of thrushes and
blackbirds; but all the turf, beneath the scattered trees, and

on the sunny slope, was so shorn, and rolled, and watered, that
it was smooth and even, and far softer than the most costly
carpet that ever wooed the step of Persian beauty.

The hall was a square building, not very large, and of the
old Elizabethan style, with two irregular additions — wings as
they might be called — of the same architecture, though of a
later period; and its deep-embayed oriel windows, with their
fantastic millions of carved freestone, its tall, quaint chimneys,
and its low porch with overhanging canopy and clustered columns,
rendered it singularly picturesque and striking.

The little green within the gorge of the upper glen, which is
so wildly beautiful in its present situation, left as it is to the
unaided hand of nature, was then a perfect paradise; for an
exquisite taste had superintended its conversion into a sort of
untrained garden. An eye, well used to note effects, had
marked its natural capabilities, and, adding artificial beauties,
had never trenched upon the character of the spot by anything
incongruous or startling.

Rare plants, rich-flowering shrubs, and scented herbs, were
indeed scattered with a lavish hand about its precincts, but were
so scattered that they seemed the genuine production of the
soil. The Spanish cistus had been taught to carpet the wild
crags, in conjunction with the native thyme and heather; the
arbutus and laurestinus had been brought from afar, to vie with
the mountain-ash and holly; the clematis and the sweet-scented
vine blended their tendrils with the rich English honeysuckle
and the luxuriant ivy; rare lotuses might be seen floating, with
their azure-colored cups and broad green leaves, upon the glassy
basins into which the mountain streamlet had been taught to
expand, among the white wild water-lilies and the bright-yellow
clusters of the marsh-marigolds; roses of every hue and scent,
from the dark-crimson of Damascus to the pale blush of soft
Provence, grew side by side with the wild wood-brier and eglantine;

and many a rustic seat of mossy stone, or roots and
unbarked branches, invited the loitering visiter in every shadowy
angle.

There was no spot, in all the north of England, whereon the
winter frowned so lightly as on those sheltered precincts —
there was no spot whereon spring smiled so early, and with
so bright an aspect — wherein the summer so long lingered,
pouring her gorgeous flowers, rich with her spicy breath, into
the very lap of autumn. It was indeed a sweet spot, and as
happy as it was sweet and beautiful — before the curse of civil
war was poured upon the groaning land, with its dread train of
foul and fiendish ministers: and yet it was not war, nor any of
its direct consequences, that turned that happy home into a ruin
and desolation.

It was not war — unless the struggles of the human heart —
the conflict of the fierce and turbulent passions — the strife of
principles, of motives, of desires, within the secret soul, may
be called war — as indeed they might, and that with no figurative
tongue; for they are the hottest, the most devastating, the
most fatal, of all that bear that ominous and cruel appellation.

Such was the aspect then of Ingleborough hall, at the period
when it was perhaps the most beautiful, and when, as is but
too often the case, its beauties were on the very point of being
brought to a close for ever. The family which owned the manor
— for the possessions attached to the old homestead were
large, and the authority arising from them extended over a great
part of Upper Wharfdale — was one of those old English races
which, though not noble in the literal sense of the word, are
yet so ancient, and so indissolubly connected with the soil, that
they may justly be comprised among the aristocracy of the land.
The name was Saxon; and it was generally believed, and probably
with truth, that the date of the name and of its connection
with that estate was at the least coeval with the Conquest. To

what circumstances it was owing that the Hawkwoods — for
such was the time-honored appellation of the race — had retained
possession of their fair demesne, when all the land was
allotted out to feudal barons and fat priests, can never now be
ascertained, nor does it indeed signify; yet that it was to some
honorable cause, some service rendered, or some high exploit,
may be fairly presumed from the fact that the mitred potentate
of Bolton abbey, who levied his tithes far and near, throughout
those fertile valleys, had no claim on the fruits of Ingleborough.
During the ages that had passed since the advent of the Norman
William, the Hawkwoods had never lacked male representatives
to sustain the dignity of their race; and gallantly
had they sustained it: for in full many a lay and legend, ay!
and in grave, cold history itself, the name of Hawkwood might
be found side by side with the more sonorous appellations of
the Norman feudatories — the Ardens, and Mauleverers, and
Vavasours — which fill the chronicles of border warfare.

At the period of which I write, however, the family had no
male scion. The last heir-male, Ralph Hawkwood, had died
some years before, full of years and of domestic honors — a
zealous sportsman, a loyal subject, a kind landlord, a good
friend. His lot had fallen in quiet times and pleasant places;
and he lived happily, and died in the arms of his family, at
peace with all men. His wife, a calm, placid dame, who had
in her young days been the beauty of the shire, survived him;
and spent her whole time, as she devoted her whole mind and
spirit, in educating the two daughters, joint heiresses of the old
manor-house, who were left by their father's death — two bright-eyed,
fair-haired prattlers — dependent for protection on the
strong love, but frail support, of their widowhood mother.