The House Of Lanyon. Valerie Anand

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the HOUSE of LANYON

      The House of Lanyon

      Valerie Anand

      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.

the HOUSE of LANYON PART ONE

      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