The manor-house of Bletsoe stood on the north side of the parish church of St. Margaret, about a mile from the point where the river makes a sharp bend from east to south. Of the manor-house, and of the castle which succeeded it, no traces remain, but portions of a seventeenth century mansion, now a farm-house, mark its site. The Pateshulles had come into Bedfordshire from Staffordshire, where is situated the village of Pateshulle, from which they took their name. From them Bletsoe passed to the De Beauchamps, another branch of the family to which Ralph belonged. Their heiress married into the family of St. John, who possess Bletsoe to this day.
But in the early part of the thirteenth century, when the Pateshulles first possessed it, Bletsoe was but a small place, not even fortified, till in 1327, more than a century later, John de Pateshulle obtained from the king a license to crenellate his mansion--that is, to erect defensive parapets on the walls.
The house to which Sir Ralph de Beauchamp made his way was therefore built in the usual fashion of a gentleman's residence at that period--timber-framed, and of no architectural pretensions. At one end of a central hall were the private apartments of the family, at the other the domestic offices and the rooms of the servants and retainers. In front of the hall was a gate-house, where a porter watched continually in his lodge; and from this gate-house flanking wooden palisades ran on either side to the private apartments and servants' offices, enclosing a small courtyard.
As Ralph rode through the gate, a round, white-haired face peeped from the lodge door.
"Soho! Dicky Dumpling," cried the young knight, springing from his gray mare with a ringing of his spurs upon the pavement.
The individual thus accosted emerged from the doorway of his dwelling. Many years of service and of good living in the porter's lodge of the De Pateshulles, combined with very little active exercise, had caused Dicky's figure to assume the rotund proportions not inaptly expressed by the nickname by which he was universally known. When he perceived Sir Ralph, his broad countenance lighted up with a grin of satisfaction, which caused his twinkling eyes almost to disappear among wrinkles of fat, and he waddled forward with as much alacrity as he was capable of and seized the horse's bridle. As he did so, his eyes rested on Ralph's still moist and mire-stained surcoat and dripping hose.
"By St. Dunstan!" exclaimed the old servitor, speaking with the freedom of having known Ralph ever since the latter was a page in his uncle Sir William's service, and came often in his train to Bletsoe Manor--"by St. Dunstan, Sir Knight, and beshrew me if I don't think you choose a cold season to go swimming in the Ouse at flood time!"
"You speak with your usual wisdom, O Dumpling mine," responded Ralph, laughing; "but I've been a-fishing."
Dumpling opened his wide mouth to it fullest extent.
"A-fishing, good my lord?"