heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

258 THE HERALDRY OF YORK MINSTER.
And so the forest furnished support for those who dwelt in it, either
by fair means or foul. Fair means : as, when John Steining, the keeper,
saw my "lord that now is, with his company, hunt in Rilstone, and hound
" 30 brace of deer, both horned and not horned, and kill all they might,
" both red and fallow." Or when " Old Lady Clifford," (as Launcelot
Marton, lord of Eshton, one of her gentlemen, says,) "would hound her
" greyhounds within the said grounds of Rilstone, and chase deer, and bring
"them away at her leisure." Also when "Master John Norton gate leave
" of my olde lord for a morsel of flesh for his wife's ' churching,' and had
" half of a
'
grete fat stag,' which Robert Gorton hunted and killed, and
'"had the shulders and the ombles' for his trouble."
And foul means: as when, in 1499, Will Gyzeley was bound in penalty
of ^40 " conditional to save harmless the deer and woods of Henry Lord
"Clifford;" or when, in 1546, "James Horner, of Beamsley, enters into
" recognizances with two sureties to be of good abearing to my lord's deer
"within Craven;" and when, in 1575, "Thomas Frankland, of Michels Ing,
" Gent., for killing and destroying deere, as well tame as wild and savage,
"in Litondale and Longstroth," was required to
yield himself as prisoner
into the castle of Skipton, there to remain during the Earl's pleasure.
The record does not proceed to say whether he complied with this
summons, but if his doing so involved his being immured in the gloomy
dungeon which I saw, until the guide blew out his lamp, and then,
verily, there was a darkness which might be felt he was a wise man if
he kept away, or fled the country.
Yes, then as now, country gentlemen quarrelled over their game, and
frequent strife took place between the Cliffords and the Nortons ;
and a
grave complaint is made by the same Master Marton that Master Norton,
" to draw my Lord of Cumberland's deer into his ground, hath made a
" wall on a high rigge beside a quagmire, and at the end of the wall he
"hath rayled the ground, so that it is destruction to my
Lord's deer as
" many as come." And Whitaker tells us that, after 300 years, vestiges
still remain on Rilstone Fell of this very ground, and of the cunning of
Master Richard Norton.
And the castle of Skipton, though not, as we have seen, the only
residence, was, at least, the principal residence of the Cliffords, and
though, perhaps, as such, its size a little disappoints one's expectations,
it is a goodly building, and well worthy of examination as one of the
few remaining specimens of a feudal baron's castle of the olden time.
The outer wall of the castle, which encloses a space about 650 feet
long by 300 feet wide, is pierced by a massive gateway, comparatively
modern, bearing the arms of Henry fifth Earl of Cumberland, by whom
it
was possibly rebuilt, the parapet above being perforated with the family
motto: "Desormais" (henceforth).