Queen Maudry

Role First Queen of Quillet Status dead Age died at 74, in Lease Year 44

Every child in the vale knows three things about the Founder: she was a lowland shepherd’s daughter who grazed her father’s flocks in the Sallow Hills, she talked a dragon out of a valley, and she sang badly and often. Only the second proved half wrong. She did not talk the dragon out of the valley. She rented it.

The story the vale tells

In the version sung at the Midsummer Fair, Maudry climbed the Tally Cliffs alone, sword on her back, and argued with the dragon for three days until it agreed to let her people farm the vale. The song ends with the dragon flying away forever. The statue in the square shows her with one foot on a rock and her sword pointed at the sky.

What the Wardens have found

The dragon did not fly away. Maudry signed a lease on the cliffs in Lease Year 1, for three hundred summers, with the rent payable at the end. She never drew her sword, which is called Fair Terms and now hangs at Beatrix Holloway’s side. She chartered Summerhythe two years later, ruled for forty-three years, and was buried in Maudry’s Barrow with the counterpart copy of the lease and a clay guardian that sings her songs.