Set folk together by the ears--
--BUTLER.

William, the Conqueror of England, was, or supposed himself to be, the
father of a certain William Peveril, who attended him to the battle of
Hastings, and there distinguished himself. The liberal-minded monarch,
who assumed in his charters the veritable title of Gulielmus
Bastardus, was not likely to let his son's illegitimacy be any bar to
the course of his royal favour, when the laws of England were issued
from the mouth of the Norman victor, and the lands of the Saxons were
at his unlimited disposal. William Peveril obtained a liberal grant of
property and lordships in Derbyshire, and became the erecter of that
Gothic fortress, which, hanging over the mouth of the Devil's Cavern,
so well known to tourists, gives the name of Castleton to the adjacent
village.

From this feudal Baron, who chose his nest upon the principles on
which an eagle selects her eyry, and built it in such a fashion as if
he had intended it, as an Irishman said of the Martello towers, for
the sole purpose of puzzling posterity, there was, or conceived
themselves to be, descended (for their pedigree was rather
hypothetical) an opulent family of knightly rank, in the same county
of Derby. The great fief of Castleton, with its adjacent wastes and
forests, and all the wonders which they contain, had been forfeited in
King John's stormy days, by one William Peveril, and had been granted
anew to the Lord Ferrers of that day. Yet this William's descendants,
though 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.