the borders of Scotland, where it was necessary he should sometimes retreat, and where sir Lancelot hired land for the convenience of the shepherds who accompanied him, he was frequently, though very secretly, visited both by the good knight and his affectionate mother.

In this lowly disguise, bred up in forests and mountain fastnesses, the child of nature, and inured to every privation, did Henry lord Clifford pass twenty-five of those years which are usually esteemed the best and fairest of our lives. Yet, though deprived of the honours and the luxuries to which the nobility of his house should have entitled him, he was more than compensated by higher and better gifts; for his heart was uncorrupted and his integrity unassailed. He possessed, we are told, a strong natural understanding, and an amiable and contemplative disposition: in one thing only was he unfortunate; for, under the apprehension that any show of learning might lead to the detection of his birth, his education was so entirely neglected, that he could neither write nor read; and it was only after his restoration to the honours and possessions of his family that he was taught to write his name.

He wanted not, however, the pleasures which

health, activity, and conscious innocence could bestow; nor, if what I have now to bring forward be correct, did he want, during this his long period of enforced concealment, those consolations which spring from the tenderest of all affections, from the interchange of faithful and enduring love.

There is reason indeed to conclude that the exquisitely pathetic ballad, entitled "The Nut-brown Maid," was founded on what really had occurred between this young nobleman and the object of his attachment, during the latter part of his seclusion in the Fells of Cumberland.

Dr. Whitaker, taking it for granted that there was no edition of Arnold's Chronicle, in which the ballad of the Nut-brown Maid first made its appearance, prior to 1521, and coupling this date with the circumstance of the lover "specifically describing Westmoreland as his heritage,” conjectured that Henry, first earl of Cumberland, and the son of the shepherd lord of whom we are now speaking, was the hero of the poem, adding, that “the barony of Westmoreland was the inheritance of this Henry Clifford alone *."

* History of Craven, p. 256—note.

To the individual, however, of the Clifford family thus fixed upon by Dr. Whitaker, in his otherwise very probable hypothesis, an insuperable objection has been raised by an ingenious writer in the Censura Literaria. "The last entry," he observes, "in the list of mayors and sheriffs in the copy of Arnold in my possession has the date, xviii Hen. vii, or 1502, in which year the book appears to have been printed. The subsequent edition, described by Oldys, carries down the list of mayors, &c. to the xii or xiii of Henry viii, or 1521. Now as the Nut-brown Maid is printed in both editions, it cannot be assigned to a later origin than 1502, and at that time the Henry Clifford spoken of by Dr. Whitaker was only nine years old; that he was the hero of the ballad is therefore impossible. I mean not, however," he shortly afterwards adds, " to take it from the Cliffords."

"The barony of Westmoreland," says Dr. Whitaker, "was the inheritance of Henry Clifford alone. It was also the inheritance of his father, Henry lord Clifford; he whom the circumstances of the times made a shepherd's boy,' who was obliged to put on various disguises to secure himself from danger; and instead of giving the festive

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treat in the halls and palaces of his ancestors, was forced to seek his own scanty portion in the mountain solitudes and woodland recesses. He then may be truly said to have been (as the ballad represents him) a bannished man,' and an outlawe. For nearly thirty years he was obliged to forego the patrimony of his fathers, and in that period, if, as I surmise, he was the real hero of the Nut-brown Maid, the adventure recorded in the poem took place. The great lynage of the lady, and her being a baron's childe, agree perfectly with the descent of his first wife, Anne, daughter of sir John St. John of Bletsoe *.”

This account of the origin of the Nut-brown Maid carries with it a high degree of probability and veri-similitude; it accords remarkably, not only with the language, style, and orthography of the composition, which are those of the period immediately preceding the accession of Henry VII., but it coincides throughout with the extraordinary circumstances which accompanied the youth and opening manhood of this persecuted nobleman; and in its denouement it points, with singular precision,

* Censura Literaria, vol. vii. pp. 96, 97, 98.

to what were, in fact, his prospects and expectations.

We may, in short, infer from the closing stanzas of the poem, that the interview which it commemorates took place almost immediately after it was known to lord Henry that the attainder of his house had been reversed, and before any intimation of such a change of fortune could have reached the ears of the object of his affections.

Interesting as the ballad of the Nut-brown Maid must assuredly be deemed merely as a work of fiction, yet does it become incomparably more striking and affecting, when it is discovered to have been built on the basis of reality; and a reality, too, of which the circumstances are, at the same time, in a high degree romantic and extraordinary.

Intimately connected, therefore, as is this antique ditty with one of the most remarkable transactions in the life of lord Henry Clifford, forming, as it were, an important part of his history, and deriving, in fact, from this association no inconsiderable portion of its charm, I cannot but be persuaded that its introduction in this place will, from the consequent facility of application and reference, be felt by a great majority of my readers as peculiarly

VOL. I.

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