tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[21] presented a remarkably fine front, with its pillared porch, its lengthy series of mullioned windows, and its solid wings at either side. It was built upon rising ground, which declined gradually to the rich, if occasionally marshy, meadows bordering on the river Ouse.[22] It was a large house, although, like many others built in the same style, the rooms were rather low in proportion to their size.[23] The approach was through a massive gateway,[24] from which an avenue of yews—which had existed in the time of the older house that formerly stood on the same site—led up to the square space in front of the door. Near the gateway was the old church, which was then in a very indifferent state of repair,[25] and below this were three pieces of water. Beyond them ran the river Ouse, and on the opposite side stood the old tower and church of Tyringham. If the house was new, it was very far from being the pretentious erection of a newly-landed proprietor. Yet the estate on which it stood had more than once been connected with a new name, owing to failures in the male line of its owners and the marriages of its heiresses, since it had been held by a De Nouers, under the Earl of Kent, half-brother to William the Conqueror. It had passed[26] by marriage to the De Nevylls in 1408; it had passed in the same way to the Mulshos in the reign of Henry VIII., and I am about to show that, at the end of the sixteenth century, it passed again into another family through the wedding of its heiress.

Mary Mulsho, the sole heiress of Gothurst, was a girl of considerable character, grace, and gravity of mind, and she was well suited to become the bride of the young courtier, musician, and sportsman excelling “in gifts of mind,”described at the beginning of this chapter. It can have been no marriage for the sake of money or lands; for Everard Digby was already a rich man, possessed of several estates, and he had had a long minority; moreover, there is plenty of evidence to show that they were devotedly attached to one another.

The exact date of their marriage I am unable to give. Jardine says[27] that Sir Everard “was born in 1581,”and that “in the year 1596 he married”; and, if this was so, he can have been only fifteen on his marriage. Certainly he was very young at the time, and Jardine may be right; for, at the age of twenty-four, he said that a certain event, which is known to have taken place some time after their marriage, had happened seven or eight years earlier than the time at which he was speaking.[28] I have made inquiries in local registers and at the Herald’s College, without obtaining any further light upon the question of the exact date of his wedding. One thing is certain, that his eldest son, Kenelm, was born in the year 1603. In that same year Everard Digby was knighted by the new king, James I. He may have been young to receive that dignity; but, as a contemporary writer[29] puts it, “at this time the honour of knighthood, which antiquity preserved sacred, as the cheapest and readiest jewel to preserve virtue with, was promiscuously laid on any head belonging to the yeomandry (made addle through pride and contempt of their ancestors’ pedigree), that had but a court-friend, or money to purchase the favour of the meanest able to bring him into an outward room, when the king, the fountain of honour, came down, and was uninterrupted by other business; in which case it was then usual for the chamberlain or some other lord to do it.”It is said that, during the first three months of the reign of James I., the honour of knighthood was conferred upon seven hundred individuals.[30]

We find Sir Everard and Lady Digby, at this period of our story, possessed of everything likely to insure happiness—mutual affection, youth, intelligence, ability, popularity, high position, favour at Court, abundance of wealth, and a son and heir. How far this brilliant promise of happiness was fulfilled will be seen by and bye.