“Drovers still curse the memory. Four hundred years, and the courts still deal with the house through its steward.”
As the drovers of the Sarrum county tell it
In the bad years after 4460, with the Long Hunger on the county, a drover bringing his beasts up the hay roads would meet men he knew by their coats. They were levy-men, raised under a Hartfell commission, and their captain was Randal Hartfell, whom the drovers called the Pale Stag. They took the beasts. They took the fodder off the carts. They did not trouble to hide whose men they were, and there was nobody on the road to stop them.
What the drovers did next is the part they tell slowly. They went to the drover courts, which sat all through the Hunger, and they had it written down: the drover’s name, the place, the count of beasts, what was taken and by whom. The clerks wrote it all. By 4464 the rolls held four hundred and some entries, and in ninety-odd of them the by-whom was a levy company under a Hartfell commission.
Then the courts kept the rolls. Twice the house has offered to settle, in 4502 and in 4588, and twice the courts refused, because a settlement would close the matter and they did not want it closed. So the drovers still curse the name, still take their business to the Hartfell steward and not to the duke, and nobody has ever told a Hartfell why.
What is known
The rolls of 4460 to 4464 hold four hundred and some entries, each with a drover’s name, a place, a count of beasts and a note of what was taken and by whom. In ninety-odd of them the taker is a levy company under a Hartfell commission. The county leaves out the uncomfortable part: between 4460 and 4468 a great many men in Britannia did under warrant what Randal Hartfell did under none. What sets the Pale Stag apart is the record, not the conduct; elsewhere the reaving was lawful and went unwritten.
House Hartfell has never contested the rolls and offered to compound in 4502 and 4588; both offers were refused, so that the matter stays open. It is the one black story with living consequences. The reaving is long over, and the rolls are among the most consulted muniments in the county.