Robert de Clifford had by his wife, Matilda, one of the daughters and coheirs of Thomas de Clare, Barden, the Wharf, suddenly contracts itself to a rocky channel little more than four feet wide, and pours through the tremendous fissure with a rapidity proportioned to its confinement. This place was then, as it is yet, called the Strid, from a feat often exercised by persons of more agility than prudence, who stride from brink to brink, regardless of the destruction which awaits a faltering step. Such, according to tradition, was the fate of young Romillè, who inconsiderately bounding over the chasm with a greyhound in his leash, the animal hung back, and drew his unfortunate master into the torrent. The forester who accompanied Romillè, and beheld his fate, returned to the lady Aaliza, and, with despair in his countenance, inquired What is good for a bootless bene?' To which the mother, apprehending that some great calamity had befallen her son, instantly replied,' Endless sorrow.'

"The language of this question, almost unintelligible at present, proves the antiquity of the story, which nearly amounts to proving its truth. But 'bootless bene' is unavailing prayer; and the meaning, though imperfectly expressed, seems to have been, 'What remains when prayer is useless?'

"This misfortune is said to have occasioned the translation of the priory from Embsay to Bolton, which was the nearest eligible site to the place where it happened. The lady was now in a proper situation of mind to take any impression from her spiritual comforters; but the views of the two parties were different; they spoke, no doubt, and she thought, of proximity to the scene of her son's death; but it was the fields and woods of Bolton for which they secretly languished.

two sons, Roger and Robert, of which the first had nearly perished on the scaffold, in consequence of his

“Thus far I have copied,” adds Dr. Whitaker, “and even reasoned upon, the vulgar tradition; in which Dodsworth, Dr. Johnston, and Dr. Burton, have successively acquiesced, without reflecting that this drowned son of the second foundress is himself a party and witness to the charter of translation *. Yet I have little doubt that the story is true in the main, but that it refers to one of the sons of Cecilia de Romille, the first foundress, both of whom are known to have died young." History of Craven, p. 368.

This singular occurrence, which, whether it apply to Cecilia or Aaliza Romillè, is of little consequence in a poetical point of view, has furnished more than one of our living bards with a theme for his muse. I annex the lines of Mr. Rogers.

THE BOY OF EGREMOND.

Say, what remains when hope is fled ?”
She answer'd, "Endless weeping!"
For in the herdsman's eye she read
Who in his shroud lay sleeping.

At Embsay rung the matin-bell,

The stag was roused on Barden-fell ;
The mingled sounds were swelling, dying,
And down the Wharfe a hern was flying:
When near the cabin in the wood,
In tartan clad and forest-green,
With hound in 'leash, and hawk in hood,
The boy of Egremond was seen.

*See Monast. Anglic. vol. ii. p. 102.

rashly taking part with the earl of Lancaster in his unsuccessful contest with Edward the Second, and his

Blithe was his song-a song of yore;

But where the rock is rent in two,
And the river rushes through,

His voice was heard no more!
'Twas but a step! the gulf he pass'd;
But that step-it was his last!

As through the mist he wing'd his way,
(A cloud that hovers night and day)
The hound hung back, and back he drew
The master and his merlin too.

That narrow place of noise and strife
Received their little all of life!

There now the matin-bell is rung;

The "Miserere!" duly sung;
And holy men, in cowl and hood,
Are wandering up and down the wood.
But what avail they? Ruthless lord,
Thou didst not shudder when the sword
Here on the young its fury spent,
The helpless and the innocent.
Sit now, and answer groan for groan;
The child before thee is thy own;
And she who wildly wanders there,
The mother, in her long despair,
Shall oft remind thee, waking, sleeping,
Of those who by the Wharfe were weeping;
Of those who would not be consoled

When red with blood the river roll'd.

favourites, Hugh Spencer and son.

In fact, it was

only owing to the severity of his wounds, which were thought to be mortal, that he escaped decapitation; for, on his unexpected recovery, the resentment of the king having subsided, his life was spared. Nor was his property, which had of course been forfeited to the crown by his rebellion, long withheld from his family; for Robert, who, on failure of issue, succeeded him as third lord of Skipton, being a great favourite with Edward the Third, obtained a reversal of the judgment against his brother, in the fourth year of that monarch's reign.

From this period to the reign of Henry the Fifth, when JOHN LORD CLIFFORD, SEVENTH LORD OF THE HONOUR OF SKIPTON, followed his sovereign to the conquest of France, nothing remarkable occurs in the slight memorials which have been preserved of the earlier Yorkshire Cliffords. This seventh lord was not only like the generality of his progenitors, of a martial disposition, but had one of the finest fields which the kingdom has ever afforded for the display of his prowess. His career, however, as a soldier, which commenced in the

fourth of Henry the Fifth *, was terminated in the tenth of the same reign, and only a few months before the death of his victorious prince, at the siege of Meaux, where, says Goodwin, May, 1422, fell the lord Clifford, who was brought over and buried in the church of the canons of Bolton in Craven, in Yorkshire +.

By his marriage with Eliza, only daughter of Henry Percy, son of Henry Percy earl of Northumberland, John lord Clifford had a son and heir, THOMAS, EIGHTH LORD OF THE HONOUR OF SKIPTON, who was born in the year 1414. This nobleman appears to have taken for his model the cha

* "The contract was to this effect, that this lord, with fifty men-at-arms, well accoutered, whereof three to bee knights, the rest esquires, and a hundred and fifty archers, whereof two parts to serve on horseback, the third on foote, should serve the king from the day hee should bee ready to set sayle for France, taking for himself 4s. for every knt. ; for every esquire 1s. ; for every archer 6d. per diem.

"This was the usual meanes whereby the kings in those times furnished their armys with men of value; and it was counted no dishonourable thing for persons of honour upon this kinde of traffick to make themselves an advantage: indeed, it was in these martial times the trade of the nobility and great men." Sir Matthew Hale's Memoirs of the Cliffords, apud Whitaker, p. 246.

† Goodwin, p. 325.