It was midnight; and the priest was chanting the service and requiem for the dead in the little chapel or chantry of St Michael, which was built within the walls of Clyderhow or Clitheroe Castle.  The Dies irae from the surrounding worshippers rose in a simple monotone, like the sound of some distant river, now caught on the wing of the tempest, and flung far away into the dim and distant void, now rushing on the ear in one deep gush of harmony—­the voice of Nature, as if her thousand tongues were blended in one universal peal of praise and adoration to the great Power that called her into being.  Many a heart quailed with apprehension, many a bosom was oppressed with doubtful and anxious forebodings.  Robert de Lacy, the last of this illustrious race, fourth in descent from Ilbert de Lacy, on whom the Conqueror bestowed the great fee of Pontefract, the owner of twenty-eight manors and lord of the honour of Clitheroe, was no longer numbered with the living; and here in the chapel of this lone fortress, before the dim altar, all that remained of this powerful baron, the clay no longer instinct with spirit, was soon to be enveloped in the dust, the darkness, and the degradation of its kindred earth.

Many circumstances rendered this scene more than usually solemn and affecting.  Robert de Lacy had died without issue to inherit these princely domains, the feudal inheritance of a family whose power had so wide a grasp, that it was currently said the Lacies might pass from Clitheroe Castle to their fortress at Pontefract, a journey of some fifty miles, and rest in a house or hostelrie of their own at every pause during their progress.

With him ended the male line of this great family.  Failing in issue, he had devised all these vast estates to Awbrey, his uterine sister, daughter of Robert de Lizours, married to Richard Fitz-Eustace, lord of Halton and constable of Chester.

Thus ended the last of his race; and the inheritance had passed to a stranger.

The surrounding worshippers were mostly domestics and retainers of the family, save Robert de Whalley, the dean of that ancient church, supposed to have been founded by Augustine or Paulinus in the seventh century, and then called “The White Church under the Leigh.”  No tidings had been heard from the Fitz-Eustace at Halton, and in two days the body was to be carried forth on its last pilgrimage to Kirkstall Abbey, founded by Henry de Lacy, father of the deceased, about forty years prior to this event.

The beginning of February, in the year 1193, when our story commences, was an epoch memorable for the base and treacherous captivity of Richard Coeur de Lion by the Duke of Austria; and for the equally base and treacherous, but short-lived, usurpation of John, the brother of our illustrious crusader.  The nation was involved in great trouble and dismay.  The best blood of England and the flower of her nobility had perished on the deserts of Palestine, or were pining there in hopeless captivity.  The house of Fitz-Eustace, into whose possession the estates of the Lacies were now merged, had themselves been shorn of a goodly scion or two from the family tree during these “holy wars.”