r, called the Banner
of the Five Wounds, because on it was displayed the Cross with the
five wounds of our Lord. The insurgents entered Durham, tore the
Bible, caused mass to be said in the cathedral, and then set
forward as for York. Changing their purpose on the way, they
turned aside to lay siege to Barnard Castle, which was held by Sir
George Bowes for the Queen. While they lingered there for eleven
days, Sussex marched against them from York, and the earls, losing
heart, retired towards the Border, and disbanded their forces,
which were left to the vengeance of the enemy, while they
themselves sought refuge in Scotland. Northumberland, after a
confinement of several years in Loch Leven Castle, was betrayed by
the Scots to the English, and put to death. Westmoreland died an
exile in Flanders, the last of the ancient house of the Nevilles,
earls of Westmoreland. Norton, with his eight sons, fell into the
hands of Sussex, and all suffered death at York. It is the fate of
this ancient family on which Wordsworth's poem is founded."
This statement as to the fate of Norton's sons, however, is not borne
out by the historians. Mr. Froude says (_History of England_, chap. 53),
"Two sons of old Norton and two of his brothers, after long and close
cross-questioning in the Tower, were tried and convicted at Westminster.
Two of these Nortons were afterwards pardoned. Two, one of whom was
Christopher, the poor youth who had been bewildered by the fair eyes of
the Queen of Scots at Bolton, were put to death at Tyburn, with the
usual cruelties."
IV. (See p. 127.)
_For we must fall, both we and ours--
This Mansion and these pleasant bowers,
Walks, pools, and arbours, homestead, hall--
Our fate is theirs, will reach them all._
Little now remains of Rylstone Hall but the site. "Some garden flowers
still, as when Whitaker wrote, mark the site of the pleasaunce. The
house fell into decay immediately after the attainder of the Nortons;
and, with the estates here, remained in the hands of the Crown until the
second year of James I., when they were granted to the Earl of
Cumberland. Although Wordsworth makes the Nortons raise their famous
banner here, they assembled their followers in fact at Ripon (November
18, 1569), but their Rylstone tenants rose with them."
V. (See p. 137.)
_Until Lord Dacre with his power
From Naworth come; and Howard's
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