That, she said, had been full of
letters, but all the oldest things had been within a door opening
in the wainscot, which she should never have found had not Bob
pushed it open in his search for rats, and then she found a tin case
full of papers and parchments, much older, she thought, than the
letters. She had tied them up together, and easily produced them.
Mr. Wayland handed them to Mr. Belamour, whose legal eye was better
accustomed to crabbed old documents. A conversation that had begun
on the way about Fay and Letty was resumed, and interested both
their father and Aurelia so much that they forgot to be impatient,
until Mr. Belamour looked up from his examination, saying, "This is
what was wanting. Here is a grant in the 12th year of Henry III.
to Guglielmus ab Vita and the heirs male of his body to the Manor,
lying without the city of Carminster, and here are three wills of
successive lords of Delavie expressly mentioning heirs male. Now
the deeds that I have seen do not go beyond 1539, when Henry Delavie
had a grant of the Grange and lands belonging to Carminster Abbey--
the place, in fact, where the Great House stands, and there is in
that no exclusion of female heirs. But the Manor house can certainly
be proved to be entailed in the male line alone, according to what
was, I believe, the tradition of the family.
Pages:
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424