"Seneschal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... concerned, the abbot, who considered his house to be vastly superior to political dissension, and secretly laughed at his cousins for supporting King Stephen's upstart cause, had advised Gilbert to make his way directly to the court of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, and Grand Seneschal of France, the husband of the Empress Maud, rightful Queen of England. Thither he was riding, therefore, with Dunstan on his left hand, mounted upon his second horse, while Alric, the sturdy little Saxon groom and archer, ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... second siege in 1240, whilst Louis IX. was on his crusade, and Queen Blanche was regent. Very curious letters exist from Guillaume des Ormes, the seneschal to the regent, describing the siege of Carcassonne by the troops of the viscount; but for these, and for a detailed account of the fortifications, I must refer the reader to M. Viollet-le-Duc's account, in his treatise on the Military ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... shadowy hour of twilight, the warden sounded his horn. "I see," cried he, "a numerous train winding up the valley. There are mingled Moors and Christians. The banner of my lord is in the advance. Joyful tidings!" exclaimed the old seneschal: "my lord returns in triumph, and brings captives!" Then the castle courts rang with shouts of joy; and the standard was displayed, and the trumpets were sounded, and the draw-bridge was lowered, and Donna Maria went forth with her ladies, and her knights, and her pages, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... name, are ye skirlin' there for?" said the sharp voice of that uncourteous seneschal, as he put his shaggy head out of the glassless orifice that served as a window; "are we ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... as to the door of our cell. It is locked with a key, which the Count himself retains, except when he goes out, as this afternoon,—it is then entrusted to the seneschal. I know this from Brigitte, for the key is given to her when she comes to us. She hands it to the guard on the landing, who opens the door and keeps the key while she is within. When she leaves us, he locks the door, and she takes the key back to the Count or seneschal. ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... strewn with fresh-cut rushes, an obsolescent custom which served here alike to save the heavy cost of carpets and to lend the place an ancient baronial dignity. Whilst pretence was made of keeping state, the servitors were all old, and insufficient in number to warrant the retention of the infirm seneschal by whom Don Antonio was ceremoniously received. A single groom, aged and without livery, took charge at once of Don Antonio's mule, his servant's horse, and the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... common, and the celebrated Grandes Chroniques of St Denis began to be composed in French. But the only production of this thirteenth century which has taken rank in general literary knowledge with the work of the Marshal of Champagne is that[158] of Jean de Joinville, also a Champenois and Seneschal of the province, who was born about ten years after Villehardouin's death, and who died, after a life prolonged to not many short of a hundred years, in 1319. Joinville's historical work seems to have been the occupation of his old age; but its subject, the Life and Crusading ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... Norman Knight, Seneschal of the Garde Doloureuse, to Gwenwyn, Prince of Powys, (may peace ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... for the evening. While revelry was again held in the great hall; while the tables groaned, for the third time since morning, with good cheer, and the ruby wine, which seemed to gush from inexhaustible fountains, mantled in the silver flagons; while seneschal, sewer, and pantler, with the yeomen of the buttery and kitchen, were again actively engaged in their vocations; while of the three hundred guests more than half, as if insatiate, again vied with each other in prowess with ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Bresze, en son vivant cheualier de l'ordre, premier Chambellan du Roy, grand Seneschal, Lieutenant-general et gouverneur pour le dict Sieur, en ses pays et duche de Normendie, Capitaine de cent gentile hommes de la maison du dict sieur et de cent hommes d'armes de ses ordonnances, Capitaine ...
— Rouen, It's History and Monuments - A Guide to Strangers • Theodore Licquet
... Sancho, he shall sure be sent from Court! My little Ferdinand—thou hast incurred Great perils for thy mistress. Go again And show this signet to the Seneschal, And tell him that no greater courtesy Be shown to any guest than to my Page. This from myself—or I perchance will send, Shall school their pranks. Away, my faithful imp, And tell me how the ...
— Count Alarcos - A Tragedy • Benjamin Disraeli
... stopped abruptly; for the seneschal of the castle joined us, and politely expressed his hope that we had dined to ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... 'I crave a boon of you, that while you live, your foster-brother, Sir Kay, shall be high seneschal ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... bearded visages, and imparting a ruddier glow to the moonlit buttresses and battlements of the fortress—aroused Leila from a kind of torpor rather than sleep, in which the fatigue and excitement of the day had steeped her senses. An old seneschal conducted her, through vast and gloomy halls (how unlike the brilliant chambers and fantastic arcades of her Moorish home) to a huge Gothic apartment, hung with the arras of Flemish looms. In a few ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... head, and the yellow wheel in the apparent locality of the heart in his garment, according to the ecclesiastical and royal ordinances, the said de Rastchid has exhibited to us letters patent of the seneschal of Touraine and Poitou. Then the said Jew has declared to us to have done a large business for the lady dwelling in the house of the innkeeper Tortebras, to have sold to her golden chandeliers, with many branches, minutely engraved, plates of red ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... 1. The seneschal, who answers to our modern steward or land agent, and where there were several manors supervised all of them. He attended to the legal business and held the manor courts. It was his duty to be acquainted with every particular of the manor, ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... Greek emperor the charge of defending, and the shame of losing, the last relics of the Latin conquest. The countess-dowager of Edessa retired to Jerusalem with her two children; the daughter, Agnes, became the wife and mother of a king; the son, Joscelin the Third, accepted the office of seneschal, the first of the kingdom, and held his new estates in Palestine by the service of fifty knights. His name appears with honor in the transactions of peace and war; but he finally vanishes in the fall of Jerusalem; ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is seen; But—it might be with twenty years between, Or haply less—at unfixed interval There would a semblance be of festival. A Seneschal and usher would appear, And troops of servants many baskets bear. Then were, in mystery, preparations made, And they departed—for till night none stayed. But 'twixt the branches gazers could descry The blackened hall lit up most ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... the Sieur, to punish two of his peasant vassals who had committed a trifling offence, killed one, and dragged the other over stones, attached to the tail of his horse. This act of barbarity roused public indignation, and a deputation waited on the seneschal of Perigord to demand retribution. But having received no satisfaction from this officer, in 1595, the peasants took the matter into their own hands, revolted and besieged the castle. As they failed to take it, they turned on the property ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... danced the Tage Mouse, The Castle's won, the Castle's won! Who Seneschal was in Ribe house, For young ...
— The Songs of Ranild • Anonymous
... lady is grown more fair since last we saw her Queen of Beauty at Melloc joust, concerning whom Fame, in troth, doth breed a just report for once. But, messire, didst mark him beside her—with touch o' hand, lord, whispers i' the ear—didst mark this wolf, this Seneschal, this thrice accurst ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... managed to look out on to the courtyard which they had just quitted. The carriage and De Vivonne were passing out through the gate as he looked, and he heard a moment later the slam of the heavy door and the clatter of hoofs from the troop of horsemen outside. The seneschal and his retainers had disappeared; the torches, too, were gone, and, save for the measured tread of a pair of sentinels in the yard twenty feet beneath him, all was silent throughout ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... and the archway, which by day stood hospitably open, was at night only guarded by two large oaken doors, yielding to a slight push. Beneath the southern wall of the castle court were various flower-beds, the pride and delight of the old seneschal, Ralph Penrose, in his own estimation the most important personage of Lynwood Keep, manager of the servants, adviser of the Lady, and instructor of the young gentleman in the ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... will bring thee back to thy old father, the vow fulfilled; and my freed spirit shall rejoice in thee again. Thou knowest thy duty. Thou must first visit the Castle of Fievrault, and there seek of the old seneschal the sword of the man I slew. He will give it thee freely when thou tellest thy story and disclosest thy name. But be sure thou dost not tarry there, no, not one night, for the place is haunted. Then thou must take the nearest ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake |
