| It was not without some emotion that he looked upon the scene around him, for, in spite of his secluded life, he knew enough of the ancient greatness of his own family to be aware that the time had been when they had held undisputed and paramount sway over all that tract of country. | Не без волнения смотрел он на окружавшую его красоту, ибо, несмотря на уединенную жизнь в монастыре, он знал достаточно о былом могуществе его рода, знал и то, что когда-то власть его предков, бесспорно, распространялась на все эти земли. |
| His father could trace his pure Saxon lineage back to that Godfrey Malf who had held the manors of Bisterne and of Minstead at the time when the Norman first set mailed foot upon English soil. | Его отец был чистокровным саксом и возводил свою родословную к Г одфри Мэлфу, владевшему поместьями Бистерн и Минстед в те времена, когда норманны впервые ступили окованной железом ногой на английскую землю. |
| The afforestation of the district, however, and its conversion into a royal demesne had clipped off a large section of his estate, while other parts had been confiscated as a punishment for his supposed complicity in an abortive Saxon rising. | Однако часть владений их семьи была отторгнута: в этом округе насадили леса, и он стал собственностью короля, другие земли были конфискованы за предполагаемое участие Мэлфа в неудавшемся мятеже саксов. |
| The fate of the ancestor had been typical of that of his descendants. | И судьба предка стала прототипом для судьбы потомков. |
| During three hundred years their domains had gradually contracted, sometimes through royal or feudal encroachment, and sometimes through such gifts to the Church as that with which Alleyne's father had opened the doors of Beaulieu Abbey to his younger son. | В течение трех веков их владения все сокращались, иногда в результате вторжения феодалов или самого короля, иногда вследствие пожертвований в пользу церкви, вроде того дара, с помощью которого отец открыл врата аббатства Болье для своего младшего сына. |
| The importance of the family had thus dwindled, but they still retained the old Saxon manor-house, with a couple of farms and a grove large enough to afford pannage to a hundred pigs--"sylva de centum porcis," as the old family parchments describe it. |