wn to fame. As a
benefactor to religion, his name was held in honour and his memory
regarded with veneration.

It seems that Walter Espec had, by his wife Adeline, an only son, who
was a youth of great promise, and much beloved by his parents. Nothing,
however, pleased him more than a swift horse; and he was so bold a rider
that he would not have feared to mount Bucephalus, in spite of heels and
horns. Leaping into the saddle one day, at the castle of Kirkham, and
scorning the thought of danger, he spurred his charger beyond its
strength, and, while galloping towards Frithby, had a fall at the stone
cross, and was killed on the spot. Much afflicted at his son's death,
Walter Espec sent for his brother, who was a priest and a rector.

'My son being, alas! dead,' said he, 'I know not who should be my heir.'

'Brother mine,' replied the priest, 'your duty is clear. Make Christ
your heir.'

Now Walter Espec relished the advice, and proceeded to act on it
forthwith. He founded three religious houses, one at Warden, a second at
Kirkham, a third at Rievalle; and, having been a disciple of Harding,
and much attached to the Cistercian order, he planted at each place a
colony of monks, sent him from beyond the sea by the great St. Bernard;
and, having further signalised his piety by becoming a monk in the abbey
of Rievalle, he died, full of years and honours, and was buried in that
religious house; while his territorial possessions passed to the Lord de
Roos, as husband of his sister.

Nevertheless, the family of Espec was not yet extinct. A branch still
survived and flourished in the north; and, as time passed over, a
kinsman of the great Walter won distinction in war, and, though a knight
of small estate, wedded a daughter of that Anglo-Saxon race the
Icinglas, once so great in England, but of whom now almost everything is
forgotten but the name. And this Espec, who had lived as a soldier, died
a soldier's death; falling bravely with his feet to the foe, on that day
in 1242 when the English under King Henry fought against such fearful
odds, at the-village of Saintonge. But even now the Especs were not
without representatives; for, by his Anglo-Saxon spouse Algitha, the
Anglo-Norman warrior who fell in Gascony left two sons, and of the two
one was named Walter, the other Osbert.

While Dame Algitha Espec lived, the young Especs scarcely felt the loss
they had sustained in the death of their father. Nothing, indeed, could