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    The Poor Clare
    The Poor Clare
    The Poor Clare
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    The Poor Clare

    By Elizabeth Gaskell

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    About this ebook

    Elizabeth Gaskell was a British author during the Victorian era, and her novels are notable for detailed descriptions of the different classes of society in 19th century Britain.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKrill Press
    Release dateDec 9, 2015
    ISBN9781518331169
    The Poor Clare
    Author

    Elizabeth Gaskell

    Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) was a British novelist and short-story writer. Her works were Victorian social histories across many strata of society. Her most famous works include Mary Barton, Cranford, North and South, and Wives and Daughters.

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      Book preview

      The Poor Clare - Elizabeth Gaskell

      THE POOR CLARE

      ..................

      Elizabeth Gaskell

      CROW PRESS

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

      This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2015 by Elizabeth Gaskell

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      The Poor Clare

      CHAPTER I.

      CHAPTER II.

      CHAPTER III.

      The Poor Clare

      By

      Elizabeth Gaskell

      The Poor Clare

      Published by Crow Press

      New York City, NY

      First published 1856

      Copyright © Crow Press, 2015

      All rights reserved

      Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      About Crow Press

      Crow Press is a publishing house that loves reading and distributing horror stories, weird fiction, and tales of the bizarre.

      THE POOR CLARE

      ..................

      CHAPTER I.

      ..................

      DECEMBER 12TH, 1747.—MY LIFE HAS BEEN strangely bound up with extraordinary incidents, some of which occurred before I had any connection with the principal actors in them, or indeed, before I even knew of their existence.  I suppose, most old men are, like me, more given to looking back upon their own career with a kind of fond interest and affectionate remembrance, than to watching the events—though these may have far more interest for the multitude—immediately passing before their eyes.  If this should be the case with the generality of old people, how much more so with me! . . . If I am to enter upon that strange story connected with poor Lucy, I must begin a long way back.  I myself only came to the knowledge of her family history after I knew her; but, to make the tale clear to any one else, I must arrange events in the order in which they occurred—not that in which I became acquainted with them.

      There is a great old hall in the north-east of Lancashire, in a part they called the Trough of Bolland, adjoining that other district named Craven.  Starkey Manor-house is rather like a number of rooms clustered round a gray, massive, old keep than a regularly-built hall.  Indeed, I suppose that the house only consisted of a great tower in the centre, in the days when the Scots made their raids terrible as far south as this; and that after the Stuarts came in, and there was a little more security of property in those parts, the Starkeys of that time added the lower building, which runs, two stories high, all round the base of the keep.  There has been a grand garden laid out in my days, on the southern slope near the house; but when I first knew the place, the kitchen-garden at the farm was the only piece of cultivated ground belonging to it.  The deer used to come within sight of the drawing-room windows, and might have browsed quite close up to the house if they had not been too wild and shy.  Starkey Manor-house itself stood on a projection or peninsula of high land, jutting out from the abrupt hills that form the sides of the Trough of Bolland.  These hills were rocky and bleak enough towards their summit; lower down they were clothed with tangled copsewood and green depths of fern, out of which a gray giant of an ancient forest-tree would tower here and there, throwing up its ghastly white branches, as if in imprecation, to the sky.  These trees, they told me, were the remnants of that forest which existed in the days of the Heptarchy, and were even then noted as landmarks.  No wonder that their upper and more exposed branches were leafless, and that the dead bark had peeled away, from sapless old age.

      Not far from the house there were a few cottages, apparently, of the same date as the keep; probably built for some retainers of the family, who sought shelter—they and their families and their small flocks and herds—at the hands of their feudal lord.  Some of them had pretty much fallen to decay.  They were built in a strange fashion.  Strong beams had been sunk firm in the ground at the requisite distance, and their other ends had been fastened together, two and two, so as to form the shape of one of those rounded waggon-headed gipsy-tents, only very much larger.  The spaces between were filled with mud, stones, osiers, rubbish, mortar—anything to keep out the weather.  The fires were made in the centre of these rude dwellings, a hole in the roof forming the only chimney.  No Highland hut or Irish cabin could be of rougher construction.

      The owner of this property, at the beginning of the present century, was a Mr. Patrick Byrne Starkey.  His family had kept to the old faith, and were stanch Roman Catholics, esteeming it even a sin to marry any one of Protestant descent, however willing he or she might have been to embrace the Romish religion.  Mr. Patrick Starkey’s father had been a follower of James the Second; and, during the disastrous Irish campaign of that monarch he had fallen in love with an Irish beauty, a Miss Byrne, as zealous for her religion and for the Stuarts as himself.  He had returned to Ireland after his escape to France, and married her, bearing her back to the court at St. Germains.  But some licence on the part of the disorderly gentlemen who surrounded King James in his exile, had insulted his beautiful wife, and disgusted him; so he removed from St. Germains to Antwerp, whence, in a few years’ time, he quietly returned to Starkey Manor-house—some of his Lancashire neighbours having lent their good offices to reconcile him to the powers that were.  He was as firm a Catholic as ever, and as stanch an advocate for the Stuarts and the divine rights of kings; but his religion almost amounted to asceticism, and the conduct of these with whom he had been brought in such close contact at St. Germains would little bear the inspection of a stern moralist.  So he gave his allegiance where he could not give his esteem,

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