Page:The white doe of Rylstone - or, The fate of the Nortons. A poem (IA whitedoeofrylsto00wordrich).pdf/168

 She caused thirty thousand men be raised To take the earles i’ th’ North countrie.

Wi’ them the false Erle Warwicke went, The Erle Sussex and the Lord Hunsden, Untill they to York castle came I wiss they never stint ne blan.

Now spred thy aneyent, Westmoreland, Thy dun Bull faine would we spye: And thou, the Erle of Northumberland, Now rayse thy Halfe Moone on hye.

But the dun bulle is fled and gone, And the halfe moone vanished away: The Erles, though they were brave and bold, Against soe many could not stay.

Thee, Norton, wi’ thine eight good sonnes, They doomed to dye, alas! for ruth! Thy reverend lockes thee could not save, Nor them their faire and blooming youthe.

Wi’ them full many a gallant wight They cruellye bereav’d of life: And many a child made fatherlesse, And widowed many a tender wife.

“Bolton Priory,” says Dr Whitaker in his excellent book, the History and Antiquities of the Deanry of Craven, “stands upon a beautiful curvature of the Wharf, on a level sufficient-