At the moment misery and
ruin were brought into every family. The dead cattle, the
ungarnered crops, the untilled lands--every spring of wealth had
dried up at the same moment. Those who were rich became poor; but
those who were poor already, and especially those who were poor
with the burden of gentility upon their shoulders, found
themselves in a perilous state. All through England the smaller
gentry were ruined, for they had no trade save war, and they drew
their living from the work of others. On many a manor-house there
came evil times, and on none more than on the Manor of Tilford,
where for many generations the noble family of the Lorings had
held their home.
There was a time when the Lorings had held the country from the
North Downs to the Lakes of Frensham, and when their grim
castle-keep rising above the green meadows which border the River
Wey had been the strongest fortalice betwixt Guildford Castle in
the east and Winchester in the west. But there came that Barons'
War, in which the King used his Saxon subjects as a whip with
which to scourge his Norman barons, and Castle Loring, like so
many other great strongholds, was swept from the face of the land.
From that time the Lorings, with estates sadly curtailed, lived in
what had been the dower-house, with enough for splendor.
And then came their lawsuit with Waverley Abbey, and the
Cistercians laid claim to their richest land, with peccary,
turbary and feudal rights over the remainder.
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