The Secret Chamber at Chad | Page 8

return of the knight.
When Sir Oliver came back, Warbel was brought to him, told a part of
his tale, and was admitted readily as a member of the household; but
the story of his incarceration in the secret chamber remained a secret
known only to himself and the three boys. So delightful a mystery as
the existence of this unknown chamber was too precious to be parted
with; and it was a compact between the boys and the man, who now
became their chief attendant and body servant, that the trick of that
door and the existence of that chamber were to be told to none, but kept
as absolutely their own property.


Chapter II
: The Household At Chad.
The office of mistress of a large household in the sixteenth century was
no sinecure. It was not the fashion then to depute to the hands of
underlings the supervision of the details of domestic management; and
though the lady of the Hall might later in the day entertain royalty itself,
the early hours of the morning were spent in careful and busy scrutiny
of kitchen, pantry, and store or still room, and her own fair hands knew
much of the actual skill which was required in the preparation of the
many compounds which graced the board at dinner or supper.
Lady Chadgrove was no exception to the general rule of careful
household managers; and whilst her lord and master went hunting or
hawking in the fresh morning air, or shut himself up in his library to
examine into the accounts his steward laid before him or concern
himself with some state business that might have been placed in his
hands, she was almost always to be found in the offices of the house,

looking well after the domestic details of household management, and
seeing that each servant and scullion was doing the work appointed
with steadiness and industry.
There was need for some such careful supervision of the daily routine,
for the large houses in the kingdom were mainly dependent upon their
own efforts for the necessaries of life throughout the year. In towns
there were shops where provisions could be readily bought, but no such
institution as that of country shops had been dreamed of as yet. The
lord of the manor killed his own meat, baked his own bread, grew his
own wheat, and ground his own flour. He had his own brewery within
the precinct of the great courtyard, where vast quantities of mead and
ale were brewed, cider and other lighter drinks made, and even some
sorts of simple home-grown wines. Chad boasted its own "vineyard,"
where grapes flourished in abundance, and ripened in the autumn as
they will not do now.
Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly the change that has passed upon
our climate by slow degrees than a study of the parish records of
ancient days. Vineyards were common enough in England some
hundreds of years ago, and wine was made from the produce as
regularly as the season came round. Then there were the simpler fruit
wines from gooseberries, currants, and elderberries, to say nothing of
cowslip wine and other light beverages which it was the pride of the
mistress to contrive and to excel in the making. Our forefathers, though
they knew nothing of the luxuries of tea and coffee, were by no means
addicted to the drinking of water. Considering the sanitary conditions
in which they lived in those days, and the fearful contamination of
water which frequently prevailed, and which doubtless had much to do
with the spread of the Black Death and other like visitations, this was
no doubt an advantage. Still there were drawbacks to the habit of
constant quaffing of fermented drinks at all hours of the day, and it was
often a difficult matter to keep in check the sin of drunkenness that
prevailed amongst all classes of the people.
At Chad the gentle influence of the lady of the manor had done much to
make this household an improvement on many of its neighbours.
Although there was always abundance of good things and a liberal
hospitality to strangers of all sorts, it was not often that any unseemly
roistering disturbed the inmates of Chad. The servants and retainers

looked up to their master and mistress with loyalty and devotion,
curbed their animal passions and wilder moods out of love and
reverence for them, and grew more civilized and cultivated almost
without knowing it, until the wild orgies which often disgraced the
followings of the country nobility were almost unknown here.
Possibly another humanizing and restraining influence that acted
silently upon the household was the presence of a young monk, who
had been brought not long since from a neighbouring monastery, to act
in