Here stand I, Kildhurm's Oak, Ne'er to fall by age or stroke; E'er Two Hundred Years be run, Death of three and wealth of one. At the period to which these verses are assigned, the Kildhurms had no lack of worldly goods, so that the concluding words might have seemed uncalled for. But they did not long continue to lack significance. For, after King Charles had suffered on the block, and the Protector ruled over England, those Englishmen who had favoured the dead King's cause were bound to suffer both in life and lands. Sir Ralph, as we know, had already paid the former penalty; but his surviving relatives were constrained to pay the other. In addition to a fine in money of many thousands of pounds they were deprived of by far the larger part of their landed possessions; nothing, indeed, was left to them but half a dozen acres of barren land, and the Tower of Kildhurm itself. Of course it was a cause for thankfulness that the Tower was not taken too; it was not every Royalist, in those days, who could boast of owning a roof to cover him. Probably, on the other hand, the Kildhurms could have got on better, from a practical point of view, with a little less stone and mortar and a little more gold. All but two or three of the servants had to be dismissed; the domestic expenses had to be cut down to the very lowest figure; and there was the once rich and powerful family, now reduced to half a dozen persons all told, living in one corner of a castle capable of accommodating fifty guests with their retinues. It was a fine place, no doubt, for children to play at hide-and-seek in; but a sad place for the elders who remembered the glories of the past.