Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/15

 and accommodated with seven gates; a defence that secured the town from pillage for nearly four centuries, and enabled it to resist for two months the heavy siege of the Scotch army under the Earls of Callander and Leven, who at length were obliged to take it by storm.

Great part of the walls and some of the towers remain; but their condition is so beastly, as to prevent investigation, and almost approach. Like all other places that were rich and secure, Newcastle had its proportion of monks and nuns in the Roman Catholic times, the "fruges consumere nati;" and Benedictines, and Camelites, white friars and black friars, Fransiscans and Dominicans, Augustines and Cistercians, swarmed in its streets. A part of the grey priory still remains, though incorporated with a modern house, the mansion of the late Sir William Blanket. It is remarkable as having been the residence of the famous Duns Scotus, the doctor subtilis of the schools; the theatre of his inexplicable reasonings and invisible distinctions, faculties which acquired him much renown in his day, when men were satisfied with sound instead of sense, vile words in the lieu of ideas. But the liberality of individual; at Newcastle was not entirely confined to the encouragement of idleness and sensuality in the persons of