Page:A History of Cawthorne.djvu/63

 There is a large ancient bow at Cannon Hall which is said to have belonged to Little John, the lieutenant of Robin Hood's band. The late Rev. Charles Spencer Stanhope gave the following traditional history of it to the Rev. Dr. Gatty, who inserts it as a note on page 3 of his Hallamshire. "Oct. 5, 1865. There is a bow at Cannon Hall said to have been the bow of Little John bearing on it the name of Col. Naylor, 1715, who is said to have been the last man who bent it and shot a deer with it. There was also a cuirass of chain mail and an arrow or two which were said to have belonged to Little John, but they were lost in repairs of the house about 1780; but I have heard my father say that the cuirass had been much reduced by people stealing rings from it for memorials. Hathersage in Derbyshire was an estate formerly belonging to the Spencer family" (see page 28) "and was left by the last Spencer to the son of his eldest daughter, John Ashton Shuttleworth. In this churchyard was the head and footstone of the grave of Little John; and his bows, arrows, and cuirass, according to Ashmole, as I am told, used to hang up in the Chancel of Hathersage Church."

Ashmole MS. 1137: fol. 147. "Little John lyes buried in Hathersage Churchyard within three miles from Castleton, near High Peake, with one stone set up at his head and another at his feet, but a large distance between them. They say a parte of his bowe hangs up in the said Church."

"From thence they have long disappeared, and a bow, &c., are found at Cannon Hall, a seat of the Spencers, who were also owners of Hathersage, and this bow was always known by the name of Little John's bow. It is of spliced yew, of great size, and above six feet long, though the ends where the horns were attached are broken off. The late James Shuttleworth, who died about 1826, had the grave opened I fancy about 1780, and the only bone which was found, beyond what instantly crumbled to dust, were thigh bones of the extraordinary length of 28½ inches. I remember, in the year 1820, when Sir Francis, father of Sir Charles Wood, Bart., of Hickleton (now Lord Halifax), was at Cannon Hall, on my recounting this anecdote, sending up for the old woodman, Hinchcliffe, who told it me; and he took a two-foot rule out of his pocket