Chapter I: Preface

The author has accomplished a desire of many years in writing a story of Wallingford Castle and Dorchester Abbey. They are the two chief historical landmarks of a country familiar to him in his boyhood, and now again his home. The first was the most important stronghold on the Thames during the calamitous civil war of King Stephen's days. The second was founded at the commencement of the twelfth century, and was built with the stones which came from the Bishop's palace in Dorchester, abandoned when Remigius in 1092 removed the seat of the Bishopric to Lincoln.

The tale is all too true to mediæval life in its darker features. The reader has only to turn to the last pages of the _Anglo-Saxon Chronicle_ to justify the terrible description of the dungeons of the Castle, and the sufferings inflicted therein. Brian Fitz-Count was a real personage. The writer has recorded his dark deeds, but has striven to speak gently of him, especially of his tardy repentance; his faults were those of most Norman barons.

The critic may object that the plot of the story, so far as the secret of Osric's birth is concerned, is too soon revealed--nay, is clear from the outset. It was the writer's intention, that the fact should be patent to the attentive reader, although unknown at the time to the parties most concerned. Many an intricate story is more interesting the second time of reading than the first, from the fact that the reader, having the key, can better understand the irony of fate in the tale, and the hearing of the events upon the situation.

In painting the religious system of the day, he may be thought by zealous Protestants too charitable to the Church of our forefathers; for he has always brought into prominence the evangelical features which, amidst much superstition, ever existed within her, and which in her deepest corruption was still _the salt_ which kept society from utter ruin and degradation. But, as he has said elsewhere, it is a far nobler thing to seek points of agreement in controversy, and to make the best of things, than to be gloating over "corruptions" or exaggerating the faults of our Christian ancestors. At the same time the author must not be supposed to sympathise with all the opinions and sentiments which, in consistency with the period, he puts into the mouth of theologians of the twelfth century.

There has been no attempt to introduce archaisms in language, save that the Domesday names of places are sometimes given in place of the modern ones where it seemed appropriate or interesting to use them. The speakers spoke either in Anglo-Saxon or Norman-French: the present diction is simply translation. The original was quite as free from stiffness, so far as we can judge.

The roads, the river, the hills, all the details of the scenery have been familiar to the writer since his youth, and are therefore described from personal knowledge. The Lazar-House at Byfield yet lingers in tradition. Driving by the "Pond" one day years ago, the dreary sheet of water was pointed out as the spot where the lepers once bathed; and the informant added that to that day the natives shrank from bathing therein. A strange instance of the long life of oral tradition--which is, however, paralleled at Bensington, where the author in his youth found traditions of the battle of the year 777 yet in existence, although the fight does not find a place, or did not then, in the short histories read in schools.

The author dedicates this book, with great respect, to the present owner of the site and remains of Wallingford Castle, John Kirby Hedges, Esq., who with great kindness granted him free access to the Castle-grounds at all times for the purposes of the story; and whose valuable work, _The History of Wallingford_, has supplied the topographical details and the special history of the Castle. For the history of Dorchester Abbey, he is especially indebted to the notes of his lamented friend, the late vicar of Dorchester.

A. D. C.

CHRISTMAS 1887.

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE
I. THE LORD OF THE CASTLE 1

II. THE CHASE 8

III. WHO STRUCK THE STAG? 16

IV. IN THE GREENWOOD 24

V. CWICHELM'S HLAWE 32

VI. ON THE DOWNS 40

VII. DORCHESTER ABBEY 48

VIII. THE BARON AND HIS PRISONERS 56

IX. THE LEPERS 64

X. THE NEW NOVICE 72

XI. OSRIC'S FIRST RIDE 79

XII. THE HERMITAGE 87

XIII. OSRIC AT HOME 95

XIV. THE HERMITAGE 104

XV. THE ESCAPE FROM OXFORD CASTLE 117

XVI. AFTER THE ESCAPE 131

XVII. LIFE AT WALLINGFORD CASTLE 141

XVIII. BROTHER ALPHEGE 150

XIX. IN THE LOWEST DEPTHS 158

XX. MEINHOLD AND HIS PUPILS 170

XXI. A DEATHBED DISCLOSURE 178

XXII. THE OUTLAWS 189

XXIII. THE PESTILENCE (AT BYFIELD) 200

XXIV. THE OPENING OF THE PRISON HOUSE 206

XXV. THE SANCTUARY 216

XXVI. SWEET SISTER DEATH 226

XXVII. FRUSTRATED 234

XXVIII. FATHER AND SON 244

XXIX. IN THE HOLY LAND 257