Page:History and characteristics of Bishop Auckland.djvu/96

 HISTORY OF BISHOP AUCKLAND. 73 sctQptured as part of church decorations; but all live yet upon the lips of the peopla" Sir Walter Scott, in his " Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," accounts for these legends by suggesting " that, in bygone days, before our country was drained and cleared of wood, large serpents may have infested British woods and morasses, and taxed the prowess of British champions ;" and Mr. Surtees is said to have been of the same opinion. Since Bishop Longley's time the custom of presenting the falchion has been discontinued. The Palatinate Act vested in the Crown the various royalties, prerogatives, and homage services theretofore belonging to the Princes Palatine, so that in strictness the service is due to the Sovereign. Bishop Van Mildert was the last of a long line of Bishops who held the regal honours of Count, or Prince Palatine ; and with him departed that union of high temporal with spiritual power, which gave such influence to the Bishops of Durham in the mediaeval ages. CHAPTER 11. To the moralist or the philosopher there are few better schools for study than the surroundings of some of our old parish churches ; the very atmosphere seems laden with gloom and sadness, and the mute memorials of the dead that lie scattered around teach how frail is the hold of the future which brass or marble can secure us, and how each succeeding generation appears to come on and bury deeper in oblivion those who have gone before. " For all must sleep in grim repose,  Collected in the silent tomb ;  The old, the young, with friends and foes, " Festering alike in shrouds consume. " Yet falls at length, an useless fane : " To ruin's ruthless fangs a prey, '^ The wrecks of pillax'd pride remain." We now proceed to notice some of the mural monuments and inscriptions on stones in the floor of the Church. Several of the latter bear marks of brasses on them, but these ornamentations were, no doubt, destroyed at the dissolution. On one, which still remains in the nave, we have the following : — Hie jacet Lancelotus Clazton q. obiit. zi*. die me'si Febuar^, Anno. Ani M?,ccccG^, irj. cujs. aie p'piciet' deus Amen. And connected with the same family, we find, in the register of christenings for the year 1574, the following : — Feby. — ^Addalaine Claxtonn, Suriisse. — My Ladie Addalaine Novell,* FilUa Mr. Bobert Claxtonn. Mr. Anthony Wren, Issabell Bee. The family residence of the Claxtons was at Old Park, which pliice they had held from the time of Bishop Hatfield's survey; and the above-named Eobert was one of the individuals concerned in the " Kising of the North," in which so many of our local families of distinction lost not only their estates, but some few their heads. He was attainted of high treason, and his estates confiscated in the thirty-second year of the reign of Queen Elizabeth. In the first communication of the commission, which was appointed to try the principal rebels at York, and which consisted of the Earl of Sussex, Lord Hudson, Sir Gilbert Grerrard (the Attorney-General), and Sir Thomas Gargrave, we find that Eobert Claxton was reserved for the second execution* He is stated, in that communication — which was addressed to Sir W. Cecil, March 24th, 1570 — " to have ever been, before this time, of honest behaviour, and greatly lamented in the country.'' honee litnate at the low end of that village reoentlv belonmng to the late Gokmel Milk. Previooa to the rebellion of 1569, tradition layi that Mary Qaeen of Soots was the gnest of Lady Addaiine for a short time^ whilst residing at that place. Digitized by Google
 * The mould'ring marble lasts its day,
 * LadyAddaline Neville was a maiden stBter of the £erl of WestmoreUnd. She had an estate at WiUinffton, and resided in a