"WITH THE SILVER HAND."
A warm sunny morning in early May, and turning our steps from the thriving and somewhat busy town of Trowbridge,—a place which, like its quieter sister of Westbury, "stondith mostly by clothiers,"—its forest of smoking chimneys, garish town-hall, and tall spire,—our path inclines by the broad south-westerly road that leads to Frome and the parts adjacent. The walk is pleasant enough in its way, but without special incident to interest the wayfarer, beyond the ordinary pedestrian and vehicular motion of the hour.
In this direction we continue for about a mile and a half, and having passed through the village of Studley, halt at a stile or gateway on our left, and looking across a meadow of some extent, discern, environed by orchards, the grey outline of a building, having the unmistakable time-worn appearance of survival from a former age, albeit not of large size, and flanked with clustering outbuildings, that betoken its present inmate to be engaged in the great primeval occupation.
Instinctively—from a memory sympathetically stored—a reverie for the moment takes possession of the thoughts, as at the sight of the unpretending structure, a large picture passes rapidly before the mental eye, and with measured emphasis we observe,—a mother unknown,—a son the most famous,—their last descendant the most unfortunate!
Why—friend of mine—say you, do we propound this enigmatic commentary as we view the old place? Gives it short clue to characters, presumably, once connected with it, whose lives have embodied striking phases of human existence, which whet the imagination to contemplate, and to divine with all its subtle ingenuity, incidents conformable to animate them?
Listen. Yonder is Suthwyke;—there, back in the middle of the fourteenth century, a scion of the great family of Stafford of mediæval fame, found his way from the county that gave them their patronymic, and he, marrying the daughter of its then possessor, settled himself within it, and became its lord and master.
Around its grey walls, so retiring and unpretentious, cluster traditions of the first importance, that lead us out into the great field of national history. From the first of this knightly race that then dwelled therein, by a mother unknown,—who may have been the comely daughter of some villain residing near,—issued a son, who, despite all the contumely of his birth, won the mitre of the adjoining See, rose to the supreme station of being the custodian of the nation's purse, the keeper of the conscience of its reigning King, and finally sat on the archiepiscopal throne of the realm, when the Church was in her best estate. Of his grandson, styled of this place, who, deputed to maintain the royal prerogative against plebeian agression, fell fighting under the fierce onslaught of Wat Tyler in distant Kent. Again, of his son, who rising high in the favour of his Sovereign, was by him dignified with a patent of nobility named after his heritage in this rural spot, with honours further increased; but who, meanly swerving by ingratitude and petty dudgeon, in the first service imposed on him by the monarch who had so recently honoured him,—to the confusion of his royal patron,—was by the same kingly hand, as suddenly and ignominiously extinguished, and with him perished also the name and race of the family, of which he was its last representative.
So we deliver the solution to our parable, as we leisurely cross the broad meadow, but as we draw near the house, or Court as it is termed,—our foot is abruptly stayed by a comparatively invisible—until we are close on its edge—but decisive hindrance to nearer approach, and indicative at once of the olden character of the habitation, a deep and wide moat, still well supplied with water, that surrounds the area on which the house stands. But no mail-clad warrior, with glance of lance and pennon, salutes us, no wimpled lady passes like a shadow around the old gable corners,—all the signs of life visible are a bevy of ducks busily disporting themselves in the water below, and a group of calves on the opposite brink, thrusting their dappled faces through the bars of the fence, and calling lustily to their foster-mother, the dairy-maid, to bring them their accustomed meal.
A short distance below, a friendly stone bridge reveals itself, which spans the chasm, and leads to a building,—that probably still perpetuates in form and size the antient gate-house,—with a large semi-circular-arched, and somewhat ornamented doorway, ghost of the original portal, with its attendant portcullis and drawbridge.