The Country of Sir Walter Scott

by Charles S. Olcott

[[2]] John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.

[[3]] Edmund Dudley, the notorious agent of King Henry VII.

CHAPTER XXIII
PEVERIL OF THE PEAK

'Old Peveril' was one of the pet nicknames with which Scott was dubbed by some of his young legal friends in Parliament House, and he carried the sobriquet for the remainder of his life, taking great delight in it. He did not, however, take much pleasure from the composition of the novel, finding it a tiresome task from which he could only find relief by planning its successor. It marks the beginning of a malady which ultimately proved fatal. Scott concealed the symptoms from his family, but confided to a friend that he feared Peveril 'will smell of the apoplexy.' It proved a heavy undertaking, covering a period of twenty years of exciting history and three distinct, but widely differing, localities, namely, Derbyshire, the Isle of Man, and London in the time of Charles II.

In the high Peak country of Derbyshire, about fifteen miles west of Sheffield, lies the village of Castleton, nestling snugly at the foot of a somewhat precipitous hill. Away back in the time of William the Conqueror, a son of that monarch received a grant of large estates in Derbyshire, and selected the very summit of this steep and almost inaccessible rock as the site of his castle. His name was William Peveril and the bit of a ruin which still remains, high in the air above the village, is called Peveril Castle. We reached it after a very hard climb, by a steep path running zigzag across the face of a long grassy slope. It was scarcely worth the effort, for the 'castle' is now only a small square tower, of no interest whatever, except from the fact that it gave the name to one of the Waverley Novels.

The domain of this William Peveril seems to have extended far to the south of Castleton, and included in it was the site of Haddon Hall, a fine mediæval mansion, picturesquely situated on the river Wye, between Bakewell and Rowsley, and still in wonderfully good repair. The Peverils held the property for about a century, when they were deprived of the lands by King Henry II. In 1195, Haddon came into the possession of the Vernon family, who continued to reside there for nearly four centuries. The last of the name was Sir George Vernon, who became celebrated as the 'King of the Peak.' His large possessions passed into the hands of his youngest daughter, Dorothy, whose elopement and marriage with John Manners, youngest son of the Earl of Rutland, threw about the old mansion that atmosphere of poetry and romance which has ever since been associated with it. To me, the most pleasing part of the old hall is the terrace and lawn, back of the house. A flight of broad stairs, with stone balustrades, leads to Dorothy Vernon's Walk, which is shaded by the thick foliage of oaks, limes, sycamores, and other forest trees, for which the park was once famous. Grassy mounds mark the boundaries of the lawn, and the castle walls, with their wide windows and luxurious mantle of deep green ivy, add a delightful charm to the picture. This is further enhanced by the romantic associations of the place. Traditions say that John Manners, who, for some reason, was forbidden the opportunity to visit the fair Dorothy openly, hovered about these terraces disguised as a forester, seeking brief interviews in secret. On the night of a ball in celebration of her sister's wedding, Dorothy slipped into the garden, and passing through the terrace made her way across the Wye over a quaint little bridge, built just large enough for a single pack-horse, and now known as the 'Pack-Horse Bridge.' On the other side, John waited with horses, and the two rode away to be married. Whatever may have been the objection to the marriage, events soon adjusted the affair and Dorothy Vernon became the sole owner of the mansion. It has remained ever since in the possession of the Manners family, the Earls and Dukes of Rutland.

In his description of Martindale Castle, the seat of Sir Geoffrey Peveril, Scott doubtless had in mind, to some extent at least, this more pretentious mansion on the original property of the Peverils, rather than the uninteresting tower at Castleton. He refers to Haddon Hall in one of his notes as having suggested a certain arrangement of rooms, and in his account of Lady Peveril's dinner to the Cavaliers and Roundheads, in honour of the restoration of King Charles II, he makes use of two large dining-rooms, which Haddon Hall could readily supply, but which might be difficult to find in any ordinary mansion of the period.