cognition of the feudal superiority of
the Clarenhams; and though the success of the royal party at Evesham
occasioned his liberation, his possessions were greatly diminished.
Nor had the turmoils of the reign of Edward II. failed to leave their
traces on the fortunes of the Lynwoods. Sir Henry, father of the
present Knight, was a staunch adherent of the unfortunate monarch, and
even joined the hapless Edmund, Earl of Kent, in the rising in which
that Prince was entrapped after the murder of his brother. On this
occasion, it was only Sir Henry's hasty flight that preserved his life,
and his lands were granted to the Baron Simon de Clarenham by the young
Edward III., then under the dominion of his mother Isabel, and Roger
Mortimer; but when at length the King had freed himself from their
trammels, the whole county of Somerset rose to expel the intruders from
Lynwood Keep, and reinstate its true master. Nor did Simon de
Clarenham make much resistance, for well knowing that an appeal to the
King would occasion and instant revocation of the grant, he judged it
advisable to allow it to sleep for the present.

Sir Henry Lynwood, therefore, lived and died unmolested. His eldest
son, Reginald, was early sent to the Royal Camp, where he soon
distinguished himself, and gained the favour and friendship of the
gallant Prince of Wales. The feud with the Clarenhams seemed to be
completely extinguished, when Reginald, chiefly by the influence of the
Prince, succeeded in obtaining the hand of a lady of that family, the
daughter of a brave Knight slain in the wars in Brittany.

Since this time, both the Baron de Clarenham and his son, Sir Fulk, had
been on good terms with the Knight of Lynwood, and the connection had
been drawn still closer by the Baron's second marriage with the Lady
Muriel de la Poer, a near relative of Sir Reginald's mother. Many a
time had Dame Eleanor Lynwood ridden to Clarenham castle, under the
escort of her young brother-in-law, to whom such a change from the
lonely old Keep afforded no small delight.

Eustace, the only one of Sir Henry's younger children who survived the
rough nursing or the over-nursing, whichever it might be, that thinned
in former days the families of nobles and gentleman, might as well, in
the opinion of almost all, have rested beneath a quaint little image of
his infant figure, in brass, in the vaults of the little Norman chapel;
for he was a puny, ailing child, apt to scandalize hi