Tag: manorhouse

1501 06-34i Robert and Margaret’s Fairytale Wedding^
1502 06-34 Robert and Margaret’s Fairy Tale Life^
1503 06-34 Stormfall colon Hell in a Red Dress^
1504 06-34 The Earl’s Second Wedding, to Lady Anne^
1505 06-34 Mortified sisters at the second wedding^

Everything began the autumn of the haunting.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, fortune beamed on the Defalais family with a generous light reserved only for the luckiest.  Lord Robert, the Earl of Warwick, was one of the most powerful and prominent men in England, politically astute and well-esteemed by King Henry VIII.  Lady Margaret Mordaunt’s grace, charm, and beauty had been celebrated even before her debut at court, and even before tragedy and piety had cleared a path through her six older sisters to her marriage.  Her family’s title had gone to her younger half-brother; but she had brought estates of her own to join those of her husband’s.  Both families had joined the Tudor pretender at the Battle of Bosworth Field, and been richly rewarded with the plunder despoiled from those who had kept their oath. 

The couple’s courtship had been the talk of the court; their wedding, the event of the season; and their affection manifest, in the form of seven accomplished and (mostly) proper daughters:  Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, Catherine, Adelais, Beatrice, and Hellinore.  The eldest were well-wed, the middle children hopeful, and the youngest naïve.  They enjoyed the best tutors their mother could arrange from among the faculty of nearby Cambridge University.

The family dwelt in splendor at Fensmere Manor, a newly-built seat ahead of its time, more luxurious and pleasant country estate, than drafty fortress for hiding in.  Blessed with health, wealth, education, position, strength, and even family, which all considered their birthright, their destiny was to blossom and grow, crowding out the needs and ambitions of lesser bloods.

Or so it appeared, until a tragic fall robbed the Countess of her life, the family of its joy, and England of one of its most precious gems.  The daughters lost their role model, their most ardent advocate, their fiercest defender, and their loving, attentive mother.  The Earl was distraught, distant, and thoughtless in his own grief, practically a second parent lost to them even as he lost his own way, leaving his daughters in the capable but uninspired hands of his servants.

Then SHE appeared:  Anne Batonnoir, a Lady of obscure family origins but great charity somewhere far to the West—Devon, Cornwall, or even the Pale.  Her brother Jerome was a Herald of Arms in service to the King, and she was well-respected throughout the English clergy as a charitable woman who helped them care for orphans of quality and piety.  Jerome had slowly achieved some minor influence at the royal court, and now she quickly achieved even greater influence at the Earl’s. 

None could deny her extraordinary beauty, magnetic charisma, or easy self-assurance.  Her spirit, body, and manner were indisputable evidence of her gentle birth and high prospects.  And men not inclined towards the counsel of their mothers pursued her with as much focus and intensity as their mothers displayed in trying to steer them towards more-eligible, less-interesting women like the Earl’s daughters.

Her first appearance in Cambridgeshire, like Lady Margaret’s final tragedy, coincided with an autumn of ill winds, momentous storms, and inexplicable losses.  As the weather grew colder, crops wilted; cattle were mutilated; people disappeared; and rumors spread, of fires spied and chants heard deep in the woods.  Of remote dances and orgies on the darkest nights, and unholy ceremonies when the full moon was in zenith.  Tales of demons and witchcraft rattled the unsteady and inflamed the superstitious.  And some—among them, it must be said, the most jealous and least charitable of women—whispered that Robert’s alacritous courtship of Anne was more than unseemly:  it was unnatural.

Still, less-suspicious women, and virtually all men, took one look at Lady Batonnoir and dismissed supernatural explanations.  Not that the men were likely to share those thoughts with their wives, but they did with one another.

If Lord Robert’s first wedding was a fairy tale, his second was a delicious scandal; and definitely the subject of as much gossip as his first.  Soon after they took their leave of the celebration, the guests near the stairs to the Great Chamber became excited, drawing other guests to them.

From above came the unmistakable sounds of a very passionate woman, being aroused and then, in turn, bitterly disappointed by her groom.  Within ten minutes the gentry of the whole county, and those few of their peers from elsewhere who had been able to attend the quick ceremony, learned not only that the new Countess was as expressive and hard-working as she was attractive, but also that the Earl was a quickjack who had already been accommodated twice today by his energetic new wife before their marriage was thirty minutes’ old.

As best the attentive crowd could gather, he had attempted to defile her just before the ceremony, only sparing her wedding dress by ruining his own breeches before he could get them off.  Even so, he had just barely and technically managed to consummate the marriage by penetrating her (ineptly and painfully, it seemed) before spending himself.  The guests, embarrassed, scattered to report their news to everyone they might come across, carefully avoiding the Earl’s mortified older daughters who were struggling to maintain their dignity in the presence of their father’s vassals.

Fensmere Manor is the silent host and witness to most of the events in ARPc and some of those in ARPh.  It was effectively the seat of the Earl and Countess of Warwick during that title’s creation for the Defalais family, which held the title between the creations for the Nevilles and the Dudleys.  The second Earl, Robert Defalais, resided there partly out of deference for his first wife, Margaret; but probably more so, because by comparison, Warwick Castle was a joyless bunker that would require a fortune to upgrade.

Fensmere was located on the Gog Magog hills of Cambridgeshire, overlooking Cambridge, within a half-mile of the Babraham Road, around the area now occupied by Wandlebury Country Park.  It was one of the earliest country houses in England, begun by Margaret’s father with money her maternal grandfather had acquired under circumstances that were not well-known, and consequently still remained a subject of gossip.  While easily overshadowed by Cardinal Wolsey’s magnificent Hampton Court, construction at Fensmere Hall began about a decade earlier, in the final years of Henry VII’s reign or the earliest ones of Henry VIII.  Fensmere Hall remained ahead of its time until the dissolution of the monasteries enriched the Tudor nobility and led to the building boom of the later Tudor and early Stuart periods.  Although not fully one of the so-called “prodigy houses” of those later eras, like Hampton Court it was more than a precursor to them:  a house designed to demonstrate the wealth and prestige of its builder, especially through the use of glass, extensive craftsmanship, and expansive amenities.

The new style of building was inspired by the Italian Renaissance, fueled by prosperity, and enabled by dramatic changes in Western Europe that allowed construction to focus on residential rather than defensive purposes for the first time since antiquity.  While gunpowder and cannon were eroding the advantages of armor and residential fortresses, trade, commerce, and education were knitting together nations from isolated fiefdoms ruled by battling warlords.  Where once the Royal Progress through the land had been as a heavily-armed military convoy traveling from loyal castle to loyal castle for protection, it was now beginning its evolution toward the Mardi Gras parade roving from one palace to the next, that it would become by Elizabeth I’s reign.

By the time of ARPc, Fensmere Hall was, for all intents and purposes, finished.  Its design had changed over time, most notably after Margaret took over construction after her father’s death; but also incrementally as new construction materials and ideas filtered into England.  As a result, it was a bit of a hodgepodge, but it contained most or all of the elements found in later prodigy houses. Margaret’s daughters loved the house and all it symbolized—partly because of their love for her and her untimely death; partly because the house was so advanced for its time; partly because it was ripped away from them prematurely and traumatically; but perhaps mainly because it had been such a labor of love for Margaret’s father that it became a matter of the family’s mythology and identity.