Beauvallet by Georgette Heyer

The Venture was left in Plymouth Sound, under charge of Master Culpepper, and her treasure safely stored. She was docked, and would be clean careened before she could put to sea again. Beauvallet stayed some three nights in Plymouth, where he found a seafaring crony or two, heard what news was abroad, and saw to the bestowal of his ship. He took horse then, with Joshua Dimmock in attendance, and a hired man following hard upon them with led sumpters, and made for Alreston, in Hampshire, where he might reasonably expect to find his brother.

My Lord Beauvallet had other dwellings beside this, but of all this manor of Alreston saw him the most. There was a grim hold in Cambridgeshire, built nearly two hundred years ago by the founder of the house, Simon, First Baron Beauvallet. A left-handed scion of the old house of Malvallet, Simon cleaved for himself a new name and a new title. Under King Henry V he saw much fighting in France, and when those wars were done, came riding back into Cambridgeshire with a French bride, a countess in her own right, holding lands and a stronghold in Normandy. You might read of this first Beauvallet's mighty deeds in the dreamy chronicles of his close friend, Alan, Earl of Montlice, who occupied the latter years of his life with the writing of his reminiscences. It is a diffuse work, something poetical in tone, but contains much of interest.