CHAPTER VII.
CASTLE REDFYRNE.
It is necessary, for the fuller elucidation of our veracious narrative, that the reader should here be made acquainted with the earlier history of the Redfyrne family.
About twenty miles, or a little more, to the south-east of Glastonbury, over the Dorsetshire border, and not far from Sturminster, stood, three centuries ago, an old and mouldering castle, built in the days of the Barons’ wars.
It was surrounded by a wide moat, fed from the river Stour, which rolled its deep and sluggish flood in mazy windings through the ancient park, which, rich with hoary oak and mossy beech, surrounded the castle.
A part of the massive buildings had been adapted to the ideas of the sixteenth century, and fashioned so as to form a convenient dwelling for the family, while the Keep and other portions were left to decay. It formed a picturesque group, the modern dwelling, with its airy windows and open aspect, contrasting the venerable towers, which suggested dungeons, as deep as the walls were high; wherein the captives of past generations once wept, and “appealed from tyranny to God.”
Here, in the early days of “Bluff King Hal,” dwelt the good knight Sir Geoffrey Redfyrne, with his lady and their four children.