Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/59

 The derivation of Hardy's mother presents a picture of different composition. If his father's line demonstrates a natural descent from Norman nobility to west-country bourgeoisie, his mother's indicates a steady, unvarying adherence to the class and attainments of the solid, intelligent, independent English yeomanry.

Her people were the Swetmans and the Childses, two groups which have often intermarried, and have for centuries lived only in the neighborhood of Melbury Osmond, the "King's Hintock" of Hardy's "Wessex," a picturesque old village on the plateau which spans the Frome Valley and the Vale of Blackmoor. Here the proliferation of life streams upwards from the rich soil with unquenchable vigor.

While the Hardys adhered to their ruffle-sleeved King during the Civil Wars, the Swetman and Childs families were stanch Parliamentarians and Roundheads. They were energetic small landholders, self-sufficient, independent, occasionally even defiant, of the surrounding Lords of the Manors. They may be traced with certainty as far back as 1635; beyond that the ancestral lines are somewhat blurred.

The old Swetman house in Melbury Osmond was in later times the only pre-Elizabethan structure in the neighborhood; its windows were mullioned in the Sixteenth Century manner. It was later sold. Hardy himself, in The Duke's Reappearance, has related a characteristic family tradition connected with this dwelling. At the time of Monmouth's Rebellion, one Christopher Swetman lived there, as head of the family. A man of some spirit, he was secretly in sympathy with the cause