other. Whenever he went to the church, he took with him, as a guard, twenty stout archers; and he had a centinel placed on a neighbouring rock, called Carrig-y-Big (from whence the church, the house, and the castle could be seen), who had orders to give immediate notice of the approach of banditti. He never mentioned beforehand when he intended to go out, and always went and returned by different routes, through unsuspected parts of the woods. He found it necessary to his perfect security to increase the number of his adherents; he therefore established colonies of the most tall and able men he could procure, occupying every tenement, as it became empty, with such tenants only as were able to bear arms. His force, when complete, consisted of a hundred and forty archers, ready to assemble whenever the sound of the bugle from the castle echoed through the woods to call for their assistance. "These," says Sir John Wynne, "were each arrayed in a jacket or armolet coat, a good steele cap, a short sword and dagger, with a bow and arrows. Many of them had also horses and chasing slaves, which were ready to answer the crie on all occasions; whereby he grew so strong, that he begun to put back, and to curb the sanctuary* of thieves and robbers, which, at times, were wont to be above a hundred, well horsed and well appointed." "Such was the state of Wales in these unhappy times, when every one claimed, by a kind of prescriptive right, whatever he had power to seize, and when lives or property were considered of no other value than interest or ambitiou chose to dictate. Meredith ap Jevan, to enjoy a quiet life, threw himself into the bosom of a country infested with outlaws and murderers, and comparatively with the state of society about his former residence, near Penmorfa, attained his end. He closed his useful life in the year 1525, leaving, to survive him, twenty-three legitimate, and three natural children.”—The Rev. W. Bingley's North Wales.

The castle of Dolwyddelan is six miles distant from Llanwrost.

* The sanctuary here alluded to was the hospital at Y-Spytty-Evan of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem.

BARNARD CASTLE.

Durham.

ON the rocky banks of the river Tees, which divides Yorkshire from the county of Durham, stands the remains of the once magnificent and powerful fortress of Barnard Castle, but now in so ruinous a state, that little remains except the great circular tower, on the western side of the building, called Baliol's Tower. The outer walls comprise an area of six acres, of which the eastern half has been separated from the western by a deep ditch, and fortified by a wall. There is every appearance of a draw-bridge having guarded the entrance from the outer to the inner division of the castle, from the remains of the foundations of two towers that stand near each other, and between which the road to the inner court, or ballium, must have passed. The ruins of these towers stand on the edge of the ditch, and in the line of the inner wall. The dilapidations of former times are much to be regretted; for Leland mentions parts of which not a vestige remains. Camden, in speaking of Barnard Castle, says, that it was "built by Bernard Baliol," (in the year 1178) “great grandfather to John Baliol, king of Scots, and so named from him (the same Bernard created burgesses in this town, with the same liberty and freedom as those of Richmond); but John Baliol, whom Edward I. had declared king of Scots, lost this, with other possessions in England, for falling from the allegiance that he had sworn to King Edward; at which time the king, being displeased with Anthony, Bishop of Durham, (as the history of that place tells us), took this castle, with all its appurtenances, from him, and conferred it upon the Earl of Warwick. But some few years after, Ludovicus de Bellomonte,

H

the Bishop, descended from the royal line of France (who yet, as it is written of him, was a perfect stranger to all matters of learning), went to law for this castle, and other possessions, and carried the cause; sentence being given in these words"The Bishop of Durham ought to have the forfeitures in war, within the liberties of his Bishopric, as the King hath them without." After passing through several families, among whom was Richard III. and whose arms yet remain in the roof of one of the windows, it came into the possession of the Earls of Darlington, and now gives title to the eldest son. The accompanying view represents the strongest part of the castle, which is placed on the summit of the rocks that here overhang the Tees, and which are about eighty feet from the water to the foundations of the walls. From the top of the great circular tower, a small part of which appears in the view, much of the romantic and beautiful scenery of Tees Dale is seen to the greatest advantage; lower down the river, near where the river Greta joins the Tees, stands one of those ancient fortified houses of uncertain date, called Mortham Tower. The situation of this tower, or castellated mansion, has been so well described by Sir Walter Scott, in the notes to his poem of Rokeby, that we cannot do better than present it to the reader: "The Castle of Mortham which Leland terms Mr. Rokesby's place' in ripa citer, scant a quarter of a mile from Greta bridge, and not a quarter of a mile beneath into Tees, is a picturesque tower surrounded by buildings of different ages, now converted into a farm house and offices. The battlements of the tower itself are singularly elegant; the architect having broken them at regular intervals into different heights; while those at the corners of the tower project into octangular turrets. They are also from space to space covered with stones laid across them as in modern embrasures, the whole forming an uncommon and beautiful effect. The surrounding buildings are of a less happy form, being pointed into high and steep roofs. A wall with embrasures, encloses the southern front, where a low portal arch affords an entry to what was the castle court. At some distance is most happily placed, between the stems of two magnificent elms, the monument alluded to in the text. It is said to have been brought from the ruins of Eglistone Priory, and from the armoury with which it is richly carved, appears to have been a tomb of the Fitz-Hughes, The situation of Mortham is eminently beautiful, occupying a high bank, at the bottom of which the Greta winds out of the dark, narrow, and romantic dell, which the text has attempted to describe, and flows onward through a

it.

more open valley to meet the Tees, about a quarter of a mile from the castle. Mortham is surrounded by old trees, happily and widely grouped with Mr. Morritt's new plantations.”—In the fifth note to the same poem is an account of the Ghost of Mortham Tower, prefaced by so much beautiful scenery that we shall not mutilate the description by attempting to abridge "What follows is an attempt to describe the romantic glen, or rather ravine, through which the Greta finds a passage, between Rokeby and Mortham, the former situated on the left bank of the Greta, the latter on the right bank, about half a mile nearer to its junction with the Tees. The river runs with very great rapidity over a bed of solid rock, broken by shelving descents, down which the stream dashes with great noise and impetuosity, vindicating its etymology, which has been derived from the Gothic, Gudan, to clamour. The banks partake of the same wild and romantic character, being chiefly lofty cliffs of limestone rock, whose grey colour contrasts admirably with the various trees and shrubs which find root among their crevices, as well as with the hue of the ivy, which clings round them in profusion, and hangs down from their projections in long sweeping tendrils. At other points the rocks give place to precipitous banks of earth, bearing large trees intermixed with copse wood. In one spot the dell, which is elsewhere very narrow, widens for a space to leave room for a dark grove of yew trees, intermixed here and there with aged pines of uncommon size. Directly opposite to this sombre thicket, the cliffs on the other side of the Greta, are tall, white, and fringed with all kinds of deciderous shrubs. The whole scenery of this spot is so much adapted to the ideas of superstition, that it has acquired the name of Blockula, from the place where Sweedish witches were supposed to hold their Sabbath. The dell, however, has superstitions of its own growth, for it is supposed to be haunted by a female spectre, called, the Dobie. The cause assigned for her appearance is a lady's having been whilom murdered in the wood, in evidence of which her blood is shown upon the stairs of the old Tower of Mortham. But whether she was slain by a jealous husband, or by savage banditti, or by an uncle who coveted her estate, or by a rejected lover, are points upon which the traditions of Rokeby do not enable us to decide."-The rooms in Mortham Tower are fashioned after the dark and inconvenient mode of the age in which the house has been erected, and it is now used as a farm house, having its courts generally well filled with the produce of the neighbouring fields.

THIRLWALL CASTLE.

Northumberland.

THIS view affords an interesting specimen of those strong holds so frequent on the borders of England and Scotland, where every comfort and convenience is sacrificed to the necessity of being secure, and whose first effect conveys to the mind the idea of a place intended never to be entered, and, once entered, never to be left. Thirlwall Castle stands on the banks of the little river Tippal, embowered in trees, above whose tops rises the dark and gloomy tower of this remnant of the ancient Border warfare. It consists of a single building of great strength, and, according to Camden, had in his time six small turrets on the summit; the west and east end each having had two, and the south and north sides each of them one in the middle, but these have now disappeared. Some parts of the walls are so thick that the windows or loop-holes, scarcely have power to lighten the interior, which thus takes an air of the most dismal and prison-like appearance. During the Border troubles, the most frequent mode of attacking these castles was by fire, introduced at the windows and beneath the doors, and from the extreme narrowness of the apertures, the stone vaulting, &c. there is sufficient reason to believe that the whole has been constructed with a view, as much as possible, to avoid such a contingency. Little more is known of this castle but what we find in Hutchinson's Tour, who says, that--"It was the strong-hold, rather than the seat, of the Thirlwalls, and was possessed by John de Thirlwall in the reign of Edward III. and of Robert de Thirlwall in the reign of Elizabeth. It was vaulted and defended by an outer wall, the floor of one of the apartments was lately cleared, and discovered to be of