The Mantlemass series by Barbara Willard

First published:The Lark and the Laurel, 1970; The Sprig of Broom, 1971; A Cold Wind Blowing, 1972; The Iron Lily, 1973; Harrow and Harvest, 1974; The Eldest Son, 1977; A Flight of Swans, 1980; The Keys of Mantlemass, 1981.

Type of work: Historical fiction

Themes: Coming-of-age, family, and love and romance

Time of work: 1485-1644

Recommended Ages: 13-15

Locale: Sussex, England

Principal Characters:

• Cecily Jolland, a spoiled, overprotected sixteen-year-old girl who comes to Mantlemass to stay with her aunt
• Sir Thomas Jolland, her father, a Lancastrian supporter who sees Cecily as a commodity
• Dame Elizabeth Fitzedmund, her widowed aunt, mistress of Mantlemass, a believer in self-sufficiency
• Lewis Mallory, disowned by his father and living at Ghylls Hatch with the Orlebars
• Roger Orlebar, Lewis Mallory’s cousin, who raises fine horses and has made Lewis his heir
• Sir James, the parish priest, who gives Lewis a good education and later tutors Lewis’s son and Medley Plashet
• Dick Plashet, (Richard Plantagenet) illegitimate son of Richard, III, who spends his life shielding his family from the dangers presented by his ancestry
• Medley Plashet, Richard’s son by Anis Bostel, later married to Catherine Mallory, a natural gentleman
• Roger Mallory, heir to Lewis and Cecily, who becomes a monk and leaves his inheritance to Medley
• Catherine Mallory, daughter of Lewis and Cecily, a tomboy who grows up to marry Medley
• Harry Medley, eldest son of Medley and Catherine, a stubborn man who prefers ironworking to raising horses
• Piers Medley, second son of Medley and Catherine, a lover of his family and of horses
• Isabella, a young woman forced into a convent, whom Piers rescues during the monastic dissolution
• Ursula Pilgrove, a widow who cares for Piers’s infant daughter Catherine and who bears his daughter Lilias
• Lilias Rowan, daughter of Piers and Ursula Pilgrove, a strong woman who successfully operates her own iron foundry
• Ursula Godman, Lilias’ daughter, who is determined to choose her own husband rather than accept her mother’s choice for her
• Robin Halacre, called Medley, Piers’s heir, a man of charm but lacking in judgment and loyalty
• Humfrey Jolland, a city cousin, who runs away to fight the Armada, then is captured and forced to serve Spain
• Roger Jolland, his younger brother, a frail young man who settles at Mantlemass as an ironmaster
• Nicholas Highwood, grandson of Ursula and Robin, master of Mantlemass in the absence of a direct heir
• Cecilia Highwood, his sister, who preserves the family’s knowledge of its own history
• Roger Medley, cousin of Nicholas and Cecilia, thought to be the heir to Mantlemass
• Jamie Medley, half-brother to Roger, loving but tragically feeble-minded
• Edmund Medley, last survivor of Harry Medley’s line, a refugee from the slaughter of the Civil War
• John Verrall, Royalist officer, beloved of Cecilia

The Story

The Lark and the Laurel introduces the reader to the world of Mantlemass. Six other novels and a volume of short stories continue the saga of the Mallory and Medley families; the eight books together are known as the Mantlemass series or the “Mantlemass Chronicles.” When the series begins in late 1485, Mantlemass is a new manor house, only ten to fifteen years old. At the end of the final volume, in 1644, Mantlemass is destroyed by fire.

Each of the Mantlemass novels takes place at a critical point in British history, while the short stories span the entire period. Both The Lark and the Laurel and The Sprig of Broom begin in 1485, the year that Richard III is slain at the battle of Bosworth Field. Like many favorite books of early adolescents, The Lark and the Laurel describes a wealthy, sheltered girl’s passage from self-centered helplessness to self-reliant maturity. What sets it apart from other such stories is its historical setting—the late fifteenth century. The crisis of the Tudor accession serves not merely as a plot device that affects the characters’ lives, but also as an analog of the heroine’s own emergence from confusion and uncertainty to confidence. In addition to the political turmoil of 1485, the main plot includes a plausible mystery which must be solved before the heroine can come into her own.

The first stage of the novel, beginning in late August after the battle of Bosworth Field, sympathetically presents townbred Cecily Jolland’s first unwilling confrontations with country ways. Left at her aunt’s Sussex estate, Mantlemass, when her father, a political turncoat, escapes to France, she learns to dress and do simple household chores without the aid of a domestic staff. In the middle section of the book, with the advance of autumn, Cecily gradually adopts country clothing, learns country skills, and makes friends with Lewis Mallory of Ghylls Hatch, another displaced child of noble birth. As winter comes on and Mantlemass is snowbound, she takes on two ambitious tasks: learning to read and caring for simpleminded young Davy. All through this time, Cecily has dreams and flashbacks about a solemn, frightening ceremony from her childhood, but is unable to understand its meaning.

As spring comes, so does love; and soon, inevitably, danger follows. Lewis and Cecily are pledged to each other, though both have recently been warned that Cecily was betrothed to an unknown other at an early age. When messengers from Sir Thomas Jolland come to fetch Cecily away to marry a French nobleman, Dame Elizabeth and the forest people help Cecily escape pursuit long enough to solve the mystery of her past and wed Lewis.

Although The Sprig of Broom also begins in 1485, its main action picks up a generation later in 1506, when the hero, Medley Plashet, must uncover the secret of his past—that his father Richard is actually a son of Richard III, the last Plantagenet king. (The title is a play on words: “Plantagenet” comes from Planta genista, the taxonomic name of the broom plant.) By revealing the truth, Medley is able to clear his name and marry Catherine, daughter of Cecily Jolland and Lewis Mallory. In this book, the difference between true nobility and mere manners again plays an important part. First, the older son Simon, and then the daughter Catherine go to live for a time with their wealthy cousin, Lord Digby; Simon learns chiefly to judge by appearances and to scorn most of his old acquaintances, while Catherine is so miserable that she has to be rescued by Simon and Medley. The Digby household is one where country speech and outmoded fashions are despised, where love is considered a ridiculous reason for marriage, and where young women are to be sold off to the wealthiest suitor to raise the social status of the family. It is clear that Medley, though the son of servants, is more of a gentleman than any of the London cousins.

In the third generation, the turmoil of Henry VIII’s reign affects the Medleys and Mallorys in A Cold Wind Blowing and The Eldest Son, both set in the 1530’s. The Medleys’ second son, Piers, befriends and eventually marries a beautiful fugitive in A Cold Wind Blowing. This book shows the tragedy of the many committed religious who were forcibly secularized; indeed, the strain eventually causes Piers’s wife Isabella to kill herself, after revealing that she was forced into a convent in childhood. Told in a rather bare, bleak prose which suits its subject, A Cold Wind Blowing depicts the many opportunists who gained by the suppression of the monasteries as well as the mass of ordinary people who stood by. The Eldest Son marks the family’s involvement with iron working in addition to its continued interest in raising fine horses. The theme of family conflict within a framework of acceptance continues in this story of Harry, the brother who goes his own way and starts a new trade. Like Piers, Harry brings home disaster to his family—not an ex-nun this time, but a miniature foreign horse that infects the Ghylls Hatch horses and wipes out the breeding stock. Ghylls Hatch is burned and Harry and his family leave for a distant ironworks.

The Iron Lily begins in the last year of Queen Mary’s reign, 1557. The plot centers on two strong women, mother and daughter, who come into conflict—a variation on the relationship between Cecily and Dame Elizabeth in The Lark and the Laurel. Lilias, disinherited by her sister-in-law, runs away and takes service at Penshurst. Married later to an ironworker and settled in the Sussex weald, she comes to realize that she must be the illegitimate daughter of Piers Medley—that second son whose wife Isabella committed suicide. The main action of the novel begins at this point, about 1570. Lilias becomes a highly successful “ironmaster” after the death of her husband, controlling all around her except her daughter Ursula. Her most serious objection to Ursula’s choice of husband is met when Piers reveals that his ward, Robin, is not related by blood; and Piers also reveals to Ursula the forgotten secret of their Plantagenet ancestry.

The Spanish fleet that threatened the coast at the end of The Iron Lily arrives in A Flight of Swans, which opens in 1588, the year of the Armada. Again, the family’s twin obsessions, iron and horses, come into play. Again the family’s city cousins (this time, Roger and Humfrey Jolland) scorn the rough, countrified ways of Mantlemass; and again, family loyalties are sorely tried. Throughout the novel, Robin Medley drifts away from the ways and values of the Medleys who adopted him until finally, in an audacious scheme, he betrays their most cherished trust, the breeding stock of Ghylls Hatch horses. The call of family awakens a very different echo in Roger Jolland, who rescues his turncoat brother at great personal risk. Once again, human weakness and human strength balance realistically.

A generation later, Harrow and Harvest begins in 1642 and ends two years later shortly after the crucial battle of Marston Moor, which gave parliamentarians a decisive victory over the Tudor royalists. Once more, the family history has been forgotten and it falls to young Cecilia to put the tale together from writings left by her grandmother Ursula. Representatives of all the branches of the family come together: Cecilia’s brother Nicholas, cousin of the Medleys and interim caretaker of Mantlemass; Roger Medley, son of Cecilia’s uncle Thomas by his first wife; and Edmund, great-grandson of that Harry who left Mantlemass a century before. Now reunited, they all learn that, because Ursula was not the legitimate daughter of Piers, the line of inheritance actually runs through Harry’s family. This discovery quickly loses its meaning when, thanks to treachery within the family, Mantlemass is betrayed to the torches of the Royalist troops and young Edmund is killed. In a satisfying end to the family chronicle, Roger, Nicholas and his bride, and Cecilia prepare to emigrate to the New World; at the last minute, Cecilia stays behind with her handicapped cousin Jamie, is reunited with the soldier lover she had thought was dead, and discovers once again the secret of the family’s Plantagenet ancestry. This time, though, the secret is firmly consigned to the past as Cecilia and John Verrall burn the book in which it is told.

Context

Throughout the series, the carefully realized Sussex scene ties together the many generations of Medley and Mallory characters. Certain symbolic objects occur again and again: the crest of lark and laurel, carved into a massive seal ring; the volume of Latin poems, belonging to Medley Plashet’s father and containing the secret of his birth; the broom plant, whose botanical name recalls the Plantagenets. Conflict between brothers, between father and son, and between mother (or aunt) and daughter follow familiar patterns in each generation.

The first five Mantlemass novels to be published show the impact of great events on ordinary people; the two that were added later, The Eldest Son and A Flight of Swans, have less connection with great moments in British history but further develop the saga of the Mallory and Medley clans. Similarly, the short stories in The Keys to Mantlemass fill in many gaps in the family chronicle—from Dame Elizabeth FitzEdmund’s original decision to live at Mantlemass to the final restoration of the seal ring by a twentieth century American descendant of the family. Unlike the other Mantlemass books, The Keys to Mantlemass has not been published in the United States.

Barbara Willard has been a prolific author of books for adults and children since 1930. Since the late 1960’s, her focus has been on historical fiction for a juvenile audience. In addition to the Mantlemass books, she has written several other historical works set in and around Sussex; these include The Grove of Green Holly (1967; published in the United States as Flight to the Forest, 1967), a tale of the English Civil War, and the fifteenth century story The Miller’s Boy (1976), in which young Lewis Mallory appears. The Sprig of Broom was runner-up for the prestigious Guardian Award for 1972, and A Cold Wind Blowing was runner-up for 1973; The Iron Lily won the Guardian Award for 1974.

Whether set in past or present, Willard’s books introduce the reader to interesting but utterly normal people—sometimes noble, sometimes weak, often changeable, and always true to life. The appeal of the Mantlemass series is the result of the skillful use of a traditional device—placing a youthful protagonist in the context of a famous historical event—with the broadening effects of the family chronicle. Partly because very few of Willard’s characters are “heroic” in the style of G. A. Henty or Rosemary Sutcliff, they are people with whom young readers can identify. As members of a particular family in a particular place, they have a plausibility that is rare in historical fiction for readers of any age.