heraldryofyorkmi01custuoft

THE CLIFFORDS. 273
His son Henry, with whom he had lived on bad terms for many
years, succeeded. Gay, dissolute, extravagant, the friend of Arthur Prince
of Wales, eldest son of Henry VIII., he sobered down by married life,
i.e.
by the influence of good wives, who, thank God, are not yet improved
off the face of the earth, and still hallow, elevate, and adorn the lives of
many Englishmen of all degrees in life.
In three years' time he was created Earl of Cumberland, and journeyed
to London at prodigious expense to be installed in his new dignity.
The total cost of my lord's outfit was ^87 5$. $d., which brought to
its modern value is a very considerable sum, and contains so many " gerdles
" of russet velvet, shoes, girdles, &c., including robes of crimson velvet and
" ermine, and a bugle horn tipped with silver, at 6s. 8d. the ounce," that
we can well imagine it.
His retinue consisted of thirty-three
servants, who with him rode to
London. Old liveries were discarded, and his train arrayed
anew in laced
coats faced with satin and embroidered with the cognizances of the family.
Five days they were in riding to London, and five weeks and one day they
remained there, and he stayed at Derby place, now the Heralds College.
Altogether the entire expenses amounted to ^376 95., or about ^1,500
present value. Seven years after he was made Knight of the Garter, that
crowning dignity of England's nobility.
I should not have mentioned all this if the sequel had not shown
that he was worthy to be a man whom the King delighted
to honour.
For in 1536 occurred the rebellion called the "Pilgrimage of Grace," the
occasion of which I have already mentioned in the history of the Eures,
and how Robert Aske, second son of Aske of Aughton, on the Derwent,
being taken by the rebels and compelled to take the oath, eventually put
himself at the head of the movement in Yorkshire, and being joined by
Sir Thomas Percy, marched to Pontefract Castle, and compelled Lord Darcy
to surrender, and, with the Archbishop of York, to take the oath.
From thence they sent to the Earl of Cumberland, requiring him to
join them, but he answered, as he afterwards proudly wrote to the King,
that though 500 gentlemen retained at his cost had forsaken him, he would
continue the King's subject and defend his castle, in which he had great
them all.
ordnance, against
Froude says that in 1536 " Skipton Castle alone in Yorkshire now
"held out for the Crown." He had but a mixed household of some eighty
persons left to garrison the castle, but though the rebels surrounded it, he
stoutly kept them at bay.
But there was yet another and even more imminent danger. His
wife and three children and several other ladies were staying, when the
insurrection burst out, at Bolton Abbey, and the insurgents, finding that