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136 THE DRAGON OF WANTXEY. |
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mean the three sisters of Francis Bosville, who would have been coheiresses, had he made no will? The late Mr. Bosville had a contest with the descendants of two of them, the late Sir George Saville's father, and Mr. Copley, about the presentation to Penniston, they supposing Francis had not the power to give this part of the estate from the heirs at law; but it was decided against them. The Dragon (Sir Francis Wortley) succeeded better with his cousin Wordes-worth, the freehold lord of the manor, (for it is the copyhold manor that belongs to Mr. Bosville,) having persuaded him not to join the refractory parishioners, under a promise that he would let him his tithes cheap: and now the estates of Wortley and Wordesworth are the only lands that pay tithes in the parish.
" N. B. The ' two days and a night,' mentioned in ver. 125, as the duration of the combat, was probably that of the trial at law." |
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Note to p. 128, and p. 181, v. 75-80. Grundtvig, ii. 653, refers to a Boeotian legend in Pausanias ix. 26, 5, for an instance of a similar contrivance. The story goes, that one Menestratus, to save a friend who was about to be exposed in due course to a dragon, made himself a brazen breastplate, which had on every scale a hook with the point bent upwards. Armed in this, he went voluntarily to meet the monster, and destroyed him, though at the expense of his own life. |
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