gh no longer possessed
of what they alleged to have been their original property, were long
distinguished by the proud title of Peverils of the Peak, which served
to mark their high descent and lofty pretensions.

In Charles the Second's time, the representative of this ancient family
was Sir Geoffrey Peveril, a man who had many of the ordinary attributes
of an old-fashioned country gentleman, and very few individual traits
to distinguish him from the general portrait of that worthy class
of mankind. He was proud of small advantages, angry at small
disappointments, incapable of forming any resolution or opinion
abstracted from his own prejudices--he was proud of his birth, lavish
in his housekeeping, convivial with those kindred and acquaintances, who
would allow his superiority in rank--contentious and quarrelsome with
all that crossed his pretensions--kind to the poor, except when they
plundered his game--a Royalist in his political opinions, and one who
detested alike a Roundhead, a poacher, and a Presbyterian. In religion
Sir Geoffrey was a high-churchman, of so exalted a strain that many
thought he still nourished in private the Roman Catholic tenets, which
his family had only renounced in his father's time, and that he had a
dispensation for conforming in outward observances to the Protestant
faith. There was at least such a scandal amongst the Puritans, and
the influence which Sir Geoffrey Peveril certainly appeared to possess
amongst the Catholic gentlemen of Derbyshire and Cheshire, seemed to
give countenance to the rumour.

Such was Sir Geoffrey, who might have passed to his grave without
further distinction than a brass-plate in the chancel, had he not lived
in times which forced the most inactive spirits into exertion, as a
tempest influences the sluggish waters of the deadest mere. When the
Civil Wars broke out, Peveril of the Peak, proud from pedigree, and
brave by constitution, raised a regiment for the King, and showed upon
several occasions more capacity for command than men had heretofore
given him credit for.

Even in the midst of the civil turmoil, he fell in love with, and
married, a beautiful and amiable young lady of the noble house of
Stanley; and from that time had the more merit in his loyalty, as it
divorced him from her society, unless at very brief intervals, when his
duty permitted an occasional visit to his home. Scorning to be allured
from his military duty by domestic inducements, Pev