With his enemies on his track, and afraid to trust even his friends, he made his way alone to his own house and entered it under cover of the darkness. Then, not daring to trust even his oldest servants, lest they might be tempted to betray him, he quietly stole to a secret underground chamber, and there immured himself, thinking to lie hidden within until he could find some means of escape from the country. What actually happened no man will ever know, but it is easy to surmise. It would appear that Lovel, from some cause or other, was unable to open the door by which he had entered his hiding-place, and having told no one of his intention to make use of the chamber—or else through treachery—he was perforce left to his fate, and died of starvation. In all probability when he found out his predicament he attempted to set some record of it down on paper, but, if so, his story was destined never to be read. He disappeared from the sight of his own generation, and the world had well-nigh forgotten him. But in the Eighteenth Century—several hundred years after his death—a party of workmen broke into the remains of an underground chamber at Minster Lovel, and to their great surprise came across a skeleton. It was thought that this skeleton was the frame of the once powerful noble—Lord Lovel.
It is said that when the workmen broke into the vault, the skeleton was found sitting at a table, the hand resting on a bundle of papers, but that with the admission of air it soon crumbled into dust.
After the Battle of Stoke, Lovel’s lands were confiscated, and in 1409 were granted to Sir Wm. Stanley, who had turned the fortunes of the day at Bosworth Field. With this change of ownership Longdendale passed out of the hands of the Lovels for ever.
[XII.]
The Raiders from the Border-Side.
THERE was once a time when it was considered the height of fashionable conduct for the Scotch who lived upon the border, to dash into the Northern Counties of England, put the men they met with to the sword, burn their homesteads and stores, and carry off the women and cattle. It is quite true that the English, on their part, considered it fit and proper to cross the Scottish border, to raid the lands, and carry off women and cattle from the lower shires of “Bonnie Scotland;” and so on the score of fairness neither side had any cause for complaint. But then, both parties never thought of that; the nature of their own conduct was never questioned, it was always the other side that was in the wrong. Their opponents were “thieves and marauders,” their own forays were characterized by the high sounding title of “military expeditions.” For such is the way of the world.