convent and followed their parents to the grave within
a few years, the Crown resumed the estate, and the title had remained in
abeyance ever since.

But the last Lord Turrald had a brother Simon, a roystering blade and
lawless adventurer, who disappeared some years before his elder brother's
death. Little was known of him except that he was supposed to have closed
a brawling career on the field of Bosworth, when Richard the Crookback was
killed and the short-lived dynasty of York ended.

The Turolds' family deed-box told a different story. There was a
manuscript in monkish hand, setting forth, "in the name of God, Amen," the
secret history of Simon, as divulged by him on his deathbed for the
information of his two sons. In this confession he claimed kinship with
the last Lord Turrald of Great Missenden. But he had not dared to claim
the title and rich estates on his brother's death, because he was a
proscribed man. He had been a Yorkist, and had fought for Richard. That
might have been forgiven him if he had not unhorsed his future king at
Bosworth and almost succeeded in slaughtering him with his own reckless
hands. So he had fled, and had remained in obscurity and a safe
hiding-place after his brother's death, preferring his head without a
title to a title without a head.

On this document, unsigned and undated, with nothing to indicate the place
of its origin, the Turold family based its claim of descent from the
baronial Turralds of Great Missenden. But the Turold history was a
chequered one. Their branch was nomadic, without territorial ties or
wealth, without continuance of chronology. They could not trace their own
genealogy back for two hundred years. There was a great gap of missing
generations which had never been filled in. It was not even known how the
document had come into their possession. Simon's two sons and their
descendants had vanished into unknown graves, leaving no trace. But the
family clung fast to their belief that they were the lineal descendants of
the Turralds of Buckinghamshire.

It had remained for Robert Turold to prove it. His father and grandfather
had bragged of it, had fabricated family trees over their cups, and glowed
with pride over their noble blood, but had let it go at that. Robert was a
man of different mould. In his hands, the slender supposition had been
turned into certainty. By immense labour and research he built a bridge
from the first Turold of whom any record existe