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We learned from the messenger who brought the letter from Beaufort that he killed de Beauvais in fair fight, wounded de Vipont, and disarmed the Comte de Marplat, that at night he and five of his followers, though attacked by some thirty ruffians from the faubourgs under Beaufort himself, killed twelve of them outright, and that he himself seriously wounded the duke.
Wot ye, my lords," he said, turning round to his train, "who this gallant can be, that bears himself thus proudly?" "I cannot guess," answered De Bracy, "nor did I think there had been within the four seas that girth Britain a champion that could bear down these five knights in one day's jousting. By my faith, I shall never forget the force with which he shocked De Vipont.
Ralph de Vipont, a knight of St John of Jerusalem, who had some ancient possessions at a place called Heather, near Ashby-de-la-Zouche, occupied the fifth pavilion. From the entrance into the lists, a gently sloping passage, ten yards in breadth, led up to the platform on which the tents were pitched.
In the former supposition, as I have said over and over again, a marriage between Lionel and Sophy is precisely that which Darrell should desire; in the latter case, of course, if Lionel were the head of the House of Vipont, the idea of such an union would be inadmissible. But Lionel, /entre nous/, is the son of a ruined spendthrift by a linen-draper's daughter.
He had the Earl of Montfort, who was intractable and stupid beyond conception, to see and talk over; Carr Vipont was hard at work on the materials for the new Cabinet Alban was helping Carr Vipont. If the House of Vipont failed England at this moment, it would not be a CRISIS, but a CRASH! The Colonel hoped to arrange an interview with Lady Montfort for a minute or two the next day.
He was thoroughly inert; there was no winding him up: he could not manage his property; he could not answer his letters, very few of them could he even read through. Politics did not interest him, nor literature, nor field-sports. He shot, it is true, but mechanically; wondering, perhaps, why he did shoot. He attended races, because the House of Vipont kept a racing stud.
By that time its lands were vast; its wealth enormous; its parliamentary influence, as "a Great House," was a part of the British Constitution. At this period, the House of Vipont found it convenient to rend itself into two grand divisions, the peer's branch and the commoner's.
And in proof of its growing importance, the House of Vipont marries a daughter of the then mighty House of Darrell. In the reign of Henry V., during the invasion of France, the House of Vipont being afraid of the dysentery which carried off more brave fellows than the field of Agincourt contrived to be a minor. The Wars of the Roses puzzled the House of Vipont sadly.
But it was of use to a man to be a cousin of the House of Vipont, though without any money, without any merit at all. You might want nothing for yourself; the Colonel and the Marquess equally wanted nothing for themselves but man is not to be a selfish egotist! Man has cousins: his cousins may want something.
For, thanks to its parliamentary influence, and the aid of the great commoner, in the reign of George III. the House of Vipont became a Marquess. From that time to the present day, the House of Vipont has gone on prospering and progressive. It was to the aristocracy what the "Times" newspaper is to the press.
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