The Founding

Book 1: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

The twenty-three volumes of the Morland Dynasty series has been completely repackaged in the most elegant style, using contemporaneous artwork for each period.

This wonderful series opens with the back drop of the Wars of the Roses with the marriage between Eleanor Morland and a scion of the influential house of Beaufort. It is a union which establishes the powerful Morland dynasty and in the succeeding volumes of this rich tapestry of English life, we follow their fortunes through war and peace, political upheaval and social revolution, times of pestilence and periods of plenty, and through the vicissitudes which afflict every family – love and passion, envy and betrayal, birth and death, great fortune and miserable penury.

The Morland Dynasty is entertainment of the most addictive kind.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 528

Sample

‘We leave before dawn tomorrow,’ said Edward Morland through a mouthful of mutton. He was a tall, gaunt man of uncompromising
aspect who had acquired manners too late in life for them to sit entirely easy on him. His movements as he helped himself
to supper at the high table had a barely controlled violence about them and, but for his evidently expensive clothes, a casual
observer might have been forgiven for thinking he had strayed by accident to the high table from the low.


His son Robert, the only other occupant of the high table since his wife and elder son had died, was quite different. Tall,
like his father, and thin, and still with the gawkiness of youth upon him, he yet had an air of refinement about him: a gentler
cast to his features, a quietness to his movements, an appearance of ease with the social aspects of eating. He was his mother’s
son, though he could hardly remember her; Edward Morland more coarsely said that he should sit to the distaff side of the
fire – he resented, as far as it was possible to resent the ways of the Almighty, that it was the elder son that had died
of the belly-gripes, and not the younger.


And now Robert looked up with that typically vague gaze and said to his father, ‘Why such an early start? Where are we going?’

‘We take the road to Leicester, my son. We are going south, and you know what the roads are like at this time of year. If
we get stuck behind a wool train we’ll be a fortnight on the road.’


‘South?’ Robert said in perplexity. ‘South? What for? Not with the clip –?’

Morland smiled sardonically. ‘No, not with the clip, boy. The clip will take care of itself. No, we are going south to get you a wife.’


Robert’s mouth opened at that, but he could find no word to say.

‘Well may you look surprised, boy,’ Morland went on unkindly. ‘For all the interest you’ve shewn in women I might as well
have found you a husband as a wife. Why God in his wisdom took my son and left me a daughter I’ll never know.’


Robert stiffened and clenched his teeth at the familiar, cruel words, but bore them in silence as he must. He wanted to ask
a lot of questions, but he was afraid of his father, and could only wait and hope that they would be answered without his
prompting.


‘You don’t shew much interest, boy,’ Morland said irritably. He flung a scrap of fat to his dog, but the dog was too slow
and the scrap disappeared under a welter of flying, growling bodies. ‘Don’t you want to know who it is I’ve managed to get
for you?’


‘Oh yes, of course, Father –’

‘Yes, of course, Father,’ Morland imitated. ‘You’ve got a bleat like a eunuch. I hope you can manage to do your duty by this
girl at any rate. Perhaps you’d better go and practise on the yows.’ He laughed heartily at his own joke, and Robert forced
a sickly grin to his face, knowing that if he didn’t appear to laugh he would be cursed and perhaps cuffed for being sullen
– and being cuffed by his father was rather like being kicked by a horse. ‘Well, I’ll tell you, since you press me so hard,’
Morland went on when he had wiped the tears of laughter from his eyes. ‘She’s the ward of Lord Edmund Beaufort – a girl called
Eleanor Courteney. She’s an orphan – one brother – estate encumbered. She hasn’t a groat by way of dowry, but she brings Lord
Edmund’s patronage, and she’s cousin to the Earl of Devon. Do you understand?’


‘Yes, Father,’ Robert said automatically, though he didn’t, quite.

‘Think, boy, think,’ Morland prompted him. ‘The girl’s got family and patronage. I’ve got money. It’s a fair exchange, isn’t it? Lord Edmund’s
trying to raise money for the wars, and he wants to keep on the good side of me. And I – well, I’ve got plans.’


Robert understood. It was the way of the world he lived in. Edward Morland had made a lot of money during the wars under King
Harry the Fifth, as had so many people who followed the young King into battle. He had bought up land and stocked the land
with sheep, and he was now one of the biggest sheep farmers in Yorkshire, and one of the richest. And on the throne was a
boy King, while the kingdom was ruled by his uncles, my lord of Bedford, and the good Duke Humphrey.


And amongst the powerful men who helped to rule was the great Beaufort family, also kin to the King. To them had fallen the
task of carrying on the war they had inherited from the former King; not a profitable war any more, but a very expensive one.


These great men needed money: Morland had money. It was the Earl of Somerset himself who suggested to his brother Edmund that
his young ward would make a suitable wife for Morland’s son. The marriage would ally Morland to one of the great families
of the land, and would give him the right to the protection and patronage of the Beaufort family – the ‘good-lordship’ as
it was called. On the other side, it would hitch Morland and his gold firmly to the Beaufort wagon, give them the right to
his money and service whenever they needed it. That’s how bargains were made: that was what marriage was for, as both Robert
and the unknown Eleanor Courteney had been aware since early childhood.


‘Aye, I’ve got plans,’ Morland went on. He banged his wooden cup on the table and at the signal one of the kitchen boys who
did duty as page ran to fill it again with ale. ‘I’m a rich man. I’ve got land, sheep and gold. And I’ve one son, just one
son. What do you think I want for that son, eh boy? Do you think I want to see him a rough country farmer like me? Do you think that’s what your mother – God
rest her soul –’ he crossed himself piously and Robert followed suit automatically – ‘what your mother wanted? No, lad, no
Robert. It’s too late for me – but before I die, I’ll see you a gentleman.’


‘A gentleman?’ Robert said.

His father cuffed the side of his head, but gently. ‘Stop repeating everything I say. Yes, a gentleman. Why do you think I’ve
chosen this girl for you, instead of a rich farmer’s daughter to bring me more land? Because this girl will bring you family.’
He mused for a moment, and then said with unwonted gentleness, ‘Aye, and maybe it was for the best it was you who lived. You
can read and write and play music. Edward couldn’t. Mayhap you’ll make a better gentleman than he would. Your sons will be
gentlemen born. Too late for me – you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Your mother did right to teach you to read.’


‘Lots of gentlemen can’t read, Father. And lots of yeoman can.’

‘Well, well,’ Morland said impatiently. He didn’t like to be comforted by his own son. ‘Anyway, this girl can read, so I’m
told. So you’ll have a lot to talk about. But never forget where your wealth came from.’ Robert knew what was coming next.
His father would quote the little rhyming tag dear to the heart of all sheepmen. ‘ “I thanke God, and ever shall; it is the
sheep has payed for all”.’


‘Yes, Father,’ Robert said dutifully.

There was a frost in the night, first sign of the declining year, and Robert shivered as he was woken in the dark by William,
the butler. Robert’s little truckle bed was under the window, and the shutters were not tight, and let in a dribble of cold
air. His father slept in the big bed, and that had curtains that drew right round it. He would have slept warm.


Breakfast was waiting for them in the hall – bacon cooked in oatmeal, and ale and bread – and by the time they had eaten the
horses were tacked up and waiting in the inner yard. There were six of them, five riding horses for Robert and his father
and three servants, and a pack horse to carry their own gear and the presents for the bride and her guardian. Seeing his father
was not in sight, Robert hurried across to one of the tackle sheds and was greeted as he ducked inside by a gentle whine.
His bitch, Lady Brach, was in there on a bed of straw with her new family – though the family was not so new now, and Brach
often deserted them to their own devices to follow at her master’s heels. The whelps ought by rights to be weaned now, he
thought. He missed Brach’s padding sound behind him.


‘Robert! Where in heaven’s name is that boy?’ It was Morland’s voice out in the yard.

‘I have to go,’ he said to his bitch, and she beat her tail against the ground at the sound of his voice. ‘I wish you could
come with me, Lady Brach, but it can’t be. Still, when I come back, there’ll be a new mistress for you to love – and I hope
you won’t be jealous and snarl at her.’


‘Robert!’ The voice was growing irate. He caressed the bitch’s head hastily and got to his feet, and then paused. A wonderful
idea had come to him. In a frantic hurry now he stooped and felt about amongst Brach’s litter, and picked out the biggest
and strongest of the whelps: he would take it as a present to his bride-to-be. He pushed the puppy down inside his shirt for
the warmth and ran out into the yard just as he was about to be called for the third time.


A minute later they were trotting out on to the road in a dark, only just tinged with grey. At this time of the year – the
time of the summer shearing – there were wool trains every day loaded down with the county’s clip and heading south for the
great market and port of London. The trains were sometimes a hundred or two hundred horses long, and they moved barely at
foot-pace, filling the road with their bulky, swaying bodies and raising behind them such a dust that anyone travelling behind could scarcely breathe. There were in fact people who waited for the wool trains and
rode with them, those travellers who wanted the company or felt they needed the protection of numbers. The Morlands were not
travellers of this kind. Five men, armed and well mounted, were not likely to be attacked. The wool trains started out at
dawn; the Morland party must set off before dawn if they were to get on the road ahead of them. When the first rim of the
sun appeared over the horizon, they were already more than five miles from home.


Eleanor Courteney sat on the carved oak window seat in the south window of the solar, trying to get the last of the good light
on the embroidery she was doing. It was a shirt for her master, and the delicate frocking at the neck needed the finest white
silk and the tiniest needle. When the light grew too bad she would put it aside and take up some plainer work. From time to
time she lifted her head and gazed out of the window. It was a perfect late summer day, and all around her, under the inverted
blue bowl of the sky, were the rolling green hills of the Isle of Purbeck.


She loved it here at Corfe, the summer castle. She had lived all her life within sight of those hills and she could not imagine
ever leaving. Across the room from her, sitting on a stool by the unlit fire, was her mistress, another Eleanor: once Eleanor
Beauchamp, now Lady Eleanor Beaufort, wife of Lord Edmund Beaufort, and nicknamed Belle for her fair beauty. Belle was pregnant
again and hoping for a son this time. The summer’s heat had tired her, and her hands moved slowly amongst the coloured silks.
Eleanor would probably finish the task for her. Many a time when they had been girls together Eleanor had done double her
task of spinning or weaving to keep Belle out of trouble.


The two girls had been brought up together from the time Eleanor’s parents died. Belle was two years the elder, but Eleanor was forward and well-grown, so they never felt the
difference, and together they had been taught to read, to write and to reckon; they had learnt French and Latin and dancing
and music; they had learnt to use the needle and had done their daily task of spinning and weaving. Belle, small and fair
and pretty, was generous and kind-hearted and lazy. Eleanor, taller and dark, was energetic, sharp and clever. They had perfectly
complimented each other.


When Belle had married Lord Edmund she had begged to take Eleanor with her, and the plea had been admitted, and Lord Edmund
had bought her wardship from Belle’s father. To Eleanor it had seemed to seal her fate. She would stay here for ever, tending
poor fretful Belle through her interminable pregnancies and later, she hoped, become lady-governess to the results of those
pregnancies. That was the summit of her ambition. She hoped for nothing more.


No, that was not quite true. There was something, something she longed for and hardly dared to hope for, something over which
her mind plunged and soared from wild hope to deep despair and back again, so that she hardly knew any longer whether it was
a hope or the most distant of dreams. As she thought about it, her busy fingers, all unknown to her, slowed and stopped and
lay idle in her lap. Her eyes went again to the window and gazed out, over the little stone houses of the village with their
lichen-gilded roof-tops, past the outfields and common land and the fringes of woods to the great wild hills, where the wind
bent the trees and snatched the clouds into fronds.


His name was Richard. He was twenty-three, and unmarried, a soldier, with a soldier’s broad shoulders and light step. He was
not tall, and rather stocky, broad-chested and strong; he had a square, good-humoured face, sun-bronzed, and fair hair burnt
white as barley at the front from the weather. His eyes were blue, and had a piercing gaze that seemed to see into your soul. He didn’t smile often,
not because he was dour but because he thought deeply about things; but when he did smile, it lit his whole face, and made
you feel that the sun had come back after a long winter. It was a smile that warmed your heart, that made you willing to lay
down your life for him.


He and Lord Edmund had been in France together three years ago for the trial of Joan the Maid at Rouen and the coronation
of the boy King at Paris. That was in December, and the following spring they had come back and stayed for a while in the
home of the newly-wed Lord Edmund, where there was feasting and games, dancing and music. Where Eleanor had first met him,
and fallen in love with him. Like any soldier home from France he had a will to enjoy himself and an eye for a pretty girl.
Eleanor was beautiful, and he danced with her, teased her and complimented her, praised her singing and her dark eyes. And
one day, as they walked in the pleasaunce just out of earshot of the rest of the party, he had drawn her into the shadow of
a bower and kissed her.


Eleanor’s young heart, all unguarded, had no chance. His voice, his smile, even the brush of his sleeve against her hand as
they sat at the high table, were all that filled her mind and heart day after day, and she knew even in the heady excesses
of her love that she was mad to let herself love him. For he was no ordinary Richard – he was Richard Plantagenet, the Duke
of York.


He was rich, powerful, a general and a statesman, the head of his family, a Duke and some said more royal than the King himself,
for he was descended by his mother from the second son of Edward the Third and by his father from the fourth son. And she
was Eleanor Courteney, a penniless orphan. Sometimes she was in the depths of despair, knowing how disparate were their positions.
At other times she was hopeful, for if he loved her, he might marry her – there was no one to gainsay him, and he might do as he chose.


She clung to her hope and her dreams, and to the one tangible memento she had of him: last Christmastide he had sent gifts
to the family, and had remembered Eleanor too. He had sent her a small, leather-covered missal with her device – a white running
hare – embossed on the cover. It was an expensive gift even from a duke, but she treasured it more because he had sent it
than because it was valuable. She wore it attached to a chain which hung from her belt, and at night it was under her pillow.
She was never without it – it was her talisman.


A noise at the door drew her back suddenly from her reverie, and she realized that the light had almost gone and she would
not be able to finish her fine work. The next moment the door was flung open, and her master entered, followed by a servant
carrying his chair. Lord Edmund had two chairs, and he was justly proud of them. This one, in red velvet with gold cords and
embroidery, went everywhere with him, even to war, where it occupied pride of place in his tent; the other, in green velvet
with silver embroidery, kept its place on the dais in the hall and was used by honoured guests or, when there were none, his
wife.


Eleanor and Belle had risen at his entrance, and he signed them to sit as he himself sat down and sent the servant away. Belle
sat again on her stool, and at a sign from her master Eleanor left the window and took a cushion on the floor beside Belle.


‘For it was really you I came to see, mistress Eleanor,’ Lord Edmund said. He treated her to an unaccustomed scrutiny, and
was apparently satisfied at what he saw, for he smiled and said, ‘You have a pretty colour in your cheeks today, mistress.
I hope you are in good health?’


‘Perfect, thank you, my lord,’ Eleanor said, mystified.

‘That is good, for I have found you a husband, and you are soon to meet him.’

Eleanor turned pale at the words, and her hand went instinctively to the fold of her surcoat, fumbling for the chain of the
missal, her talisman. A husband? Who? Could it be, could it possibly be? But no, he said he had ‘found’ a husband. He wouldn’t
say that about him. Lord Edmund looked on smiling at her confusion, though not knowing, of course, the wild thoughts that
were tumbling through her mind.


‘Yes,’ he said, ‘you are surprised, and I expected it, for you have been left so long a maid you must have thought I meant
to ignore my duty to provide for you.’ He smiled, waiting for her quick denial, but she did not speak, and he went on. ‘Well,
you may be at ease. You are eighteen, and overdue for marriage, but I have a good match for you, and one that will see you
as comfortably set up as even your parents could have wished. It is to be the son of Edward Morland.’


Eleanor heard the name with a dull shock. She could not at first place the man, and she thought in vain amongst the various
men she had heard of in her master’s acquaintance. And then she remembered him. He had been once to the summer castle last
year, a tall bony man with a rough northern accent. He was, she remembered in horror, a sheep farmer, one of the common people
from whom the government borrowed money for various purposes. She had to speak now, and she found her voice only shakily.


‘My lord, I believe I recollect the man – he was a sheep farmer from the north –?’ Her eyes pleaded to be told she was wrong,
but Lord Edmund did not observe the expression.


‘Aye, that’s right. Edward Morland of York. He owns a great deal of land on the south side of the city of York. He is, in
fact, one of the richest men in Yorkshire, and a great asset to the war party. We are glad to get him so unequivocably on
our side as this suggests –’


‘But, my lord, a farmer?’

There was a brief silence as Eleanor realized she had, in her anguish, interrupted her master, a terrible crime. His face darkened as he stared at her.


‘Yes, mistress, a farmer. The only son, and heir of a farmer is to be your husband. And let me remind you that while you may
be related to a noble house, it is but a distant relationship, and you have no dowry – no dowry at all. The match is very
fair, and if I expected any comment from you, I expected a suitable gratitude.’


Eleanor’s cheeks now flamed, and her head hung as she tried to fight back the tears. Gentle Belle allowed her hand to drop
as if by accident to her friend’s shoulder and she spoke up to draw off the attention from her.


‘Of course Eleanor is grateful, my lord. I think it is just the suddenness of the news that has surprised her. When, pray,
may we expect these most welcome guests?’


‘They are already on the road, my dear. They should be here the day after tomorrow, in time for dinner.’

‘So soon? Well, that is news indeed.’

‘Yes, the day after tomorrow. They will stay for a few days, a week perhaps, while the betrothal takes place, and then they
will take mistress Eleanor back with them.’


Belle felt Eleanor stiffen and she said in a gently anxious voice, ‘She is to go away at the end of a week? Why, we had hoped
that she might be able to be with me when my time comes to lie-in –’


‘No, my dear,’ Lord Edmund shook his head firmly. ‘It’s of no use. We must get her north before the bad weather, and if she
doesn’t go with her betrothed it will be necessary for me to arrange an armed guard for her, and that might not be convenient.’


‘I am to be married, then, at York?’ Eleanor found her voice, but a very small voice.

‘Yes, mistress, you shall be married at your new home. Normally, of course, you would spend some months there to learn the
ways of the household, but there is no mistress there to teach you, Morland’s wife having died long since. So you must teach
yourself as you go along.’ He smiled encouragingly, but Eleanor could not shift the lump of misery and shame from her heart; she could not smile. Belle, guessing
a little at her feelings, tried once again to excuse her.


‘My lord,’ she said, ‘will you not give mistress Eleanor leave to withdraw? I see the news has come as a shock, and perhaps
she has need of time to compose herself.’


‘Of course, my dear. You have leave, mistress,’ Lord Edmund said graciously.

Eleanor curtseyed deeply, flung a look of gratitude at Belle, and hurried from the room. Once through the door she ran down
the stairs, through the hall under the surprised eyes of the servants, and out into the pleasaunce. Here she walked up and
down, wringing her hands together and turning her wretched thoughts over and over in her mind. It was born upon her then how
great was the difference between a hope, however slender, and no hope at all.


It was only a few minutes before she was found there by Gaby, her nurse, who had hurried after her as fast as her stoutness
allowed when she saw Eleanor run through the hall. Gaby had been her wetnurse and had graduated from that position to that
of personal maid. Eleanor’s mother had died when Eleanor was an infant: Gaby was all the mother she had ever known.


As Eleanor turned towards her at the end of the walk, Gaby was shocked by the distress in that loved face.

‘What is it, mistress? What’s happened?’

‘Oh Gaby! My lord has just told me – I am to be married!’

Gaby’s breath was released in a rush. So it was no worse than that, God be thanked!

‘Well, mistress,’ she said reasonably, drawing Eleanor into the shelter of the bower and sitting with her on the little wooden
bench, ‘you are eighteen years old. You should expect to be married, it is only right. Most girls are married long before
this, you know.’


‘I know, Gaby, but you don’t understand.’ Eleanor turned tragic eyes upon her. ‘They are to marry me to a farmer’s son. A
Yorkshire farmer!’


Gaby shook her head sadly. ‘You are too high, my little lady. The match is a good one – not what I would have liked for you,
you being a gentleman’s daughter, but a good match none the less. He is the only son, and heir to great wealth. The father
is very rich and becoming quite influential in government circles. Remember, my love, you have no dowry. A man of higher standing
would not take you.’


‘Would not?’ Eleanor whispered. ‘He might if – if he loved me.’

Gaby made a sound expressive of disgust. ‘Love! What has marriage to do with love? You are talking nonsense, mistress, and
you know it. Once you are married, that is the time for love. You will love your husband as the Bible bids you, and be happy.’


‘I will not,’ Eleanor said in a low voice, and her eyes flashed angrily. ‘They may marry me to a vulgar northern barbarian,
but I will never love him. I hate him!’


Gaby crossed herself automatically at these words, but her face darkened with shock and anger. ‘You wicked girl! Never let
me hear you say such a thing again! Why, it is your sacred duty laid down by our blessed Lord himself that a wife should love
her husband –’


‘You forget yourself, mistress Gaby,’ Eleanor said coldly, drawing herself up. ‘You should not speak to your mistress in such
terms.’


For a moment they stared at each other, and then Gaby said quietly, ‘I beg your pardon, mistress. I spoke from my heart, for
you know that I love you like my own child.’


Eleanor stared a moment longer, and then melted suddenly, and flung her arms around her kind nurse. ‘Oh Gaby, I’m sorry, I
shouldn’t have said that. You know I don’t mean it – only I’m so unhappy. How could they do it to me – how could they think so little of me as to marry me to a farmer?’


‘My dear mistress, your ideas are more high than just. A farmer may be a kind, godly and educated man as well as another.
Besides, there is nothing you can do about it. The choice is not for you, and you must make the best of it that you can, and
make him a good wife, and learn to love him.’


‘Well, I will try to be a good wife,’ Eleanor said in a low voice, ‘but I can never, never love him.’

‘You think of that other,’ Gaby said, glancing round her to make sure they were not overheard. Her voice sank to a whisper,
but was none the less forceful. ‘Put him from your mind, mistress! It was madness to think of him. You, a penniless orphan,
to think of a royal duke? Madness! Do not dare to love him, mistress, or it will make you miserable and wicked. Put him from
your thoughts now for ever, and never speak a word of it to anyone – anyone.’

Eleanor looked at her sadly. She knew that here was an end to her hopes, yet she knew also that she could never forget him.
She would love him still, though it would be her secret. They would and could marry her off as it pleased them, but what was
in her heart was between herself and God, and they could not make her love as they willed. But to Gaby she shewed the properly
submissive face, a face in which she was going to have a lot of practice over the next few days.


2

Well, it was over. By ten o’clock on the day after the arrival of the Morland party, the betrothal had taken place, and Eleanor
was as good as a married woman. The ceremony took place quietly and with no unseemliness, and the bridal party then repaired
to the hall for the feast. Everything had been done in the grandest style: the hall itself had been redded up, with fresh
rushes laid down, the hangings beaten, the tables and benches scrubbed, and the high table was laid with a beautiful damask cloth upon which were set the
trenchers and goblets, the napkins and towels, the salts and breads all in their proper order.


Lord Edmund and Belle led the way in, followed by Eleanor and her betrothed and Morland, all in their best clothes. Eleanor
looked as beautiful as she ought, dressed in her best surcoat of crimson wool over a cotte of sky-blue linen. Her little waist
was cinched in with a belt of gold wires set with lapis, her bride-gift from her master, and from it hung her missal, and
an ivory pomander ball, Belle’s bride-gift to her. On her head was a head-dress à cornes with a veil of stiffened fine muslin: it was heavy, and difficult to balance, and it ensured that she walked with her head
up, like a Queen.


Her husband-to-be though