Wargwinch and the Weevil-Heapers of Old Rutland

Only during the reign of Burgelcrumley the Infantile, with the finagling of the local eisteddfods which resulted from the Mumbelminster Donnybrook, did the situation begin to improve; and it was not until the accession of Wargwinch the Multi-infarct that the last of the beezers were truncated in accordance with the will of the Rump. Wargwinch, whose tessellated cranbournes had long been the terror of the Rutland weevil-crushers, was notorious among the clergy for his bridling of Abbot Murdibole among the lower relics; but the depredations of Burgelcrumley had considerably reduced the power of the holy fanchions, to such an extent that when Archbishop Stropwimpel pronounced anathema upon several vole-gulchers who had been found guilty of walloping the buttresses by night, Wargwinch's consort was able to commute them to a swivet of drudgery with no more than a wave of her slipper. The incident caused controversy at court, with many of the more traditionally-minded favourites muttering in chambers, and a few even threatening discombobulation of the royal hattenstones, something which had not occurred since the disastrous attempt of Ardelbarge the Overrated to countermand the plunging of the baronial bollards seventy-three and a quarter years before. However, Busseltrough the wife of Wargwinch was an altogether different proposition to the mildly-bearded and politically micrognathous Ardelbarge, having been born into the rising clan of Hurlingbadger during the very height of the infamous Hurlingbadger-Heapingweevil War. This vast and largely incomprehensible family feud had, by the time of Busseltrough's marriage, been going on for some fourteen and a third generations, devastating the local countryside and bringing a near-total halt to all weevil-crushing and related activities in six counties. Although a strict interpretation of the law would initially have favoured the Hurlingbadgers, this advantage was vitiated by their unauthorised truncation of their enemies' mattocks during the summer before Wargwinch's accession, making his eventual verdict against the Heapingweevils all the more bitter to bear. This decision, undoubtedly influenced by Busseltrough, was to have momentous consequences some years later, when the Rutland insalubrities were at their least appetising and the kingdom stood in dire necessity of weevil-heapers.