tournaments."

Of his two sons- -Sir Geoffrey Le Scrope, the younger, was progenitor of the Lords Scrope, of Masham-while the elder, Sir Henry Le Scrope, inheriting Bolton, continued the noble line there seated. The latter was bred to the law and throve accordingly. In 1317 he became Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and subsequently was Chief Baron of the Exchequer. The vast estates he died seised of, show how profitable an use he had made of his offices, through a long life of Court favour and professional emoluments; and the religious and charitable endowments he bestowed on the Church and the poor, indicate that he was not unworthy of the riches he possessed. His eldest son, Sir William Le Scrope, died of a wound received at the siege of Morlaix, and was succeeded by his brother Sir RICHARD LE SCROPE, a man even more distinguished for activity and talents than his father. Without attempting to follow this nobleman, through all his martial exploits, which however stand recorded by their eye-witnesses, the several royal, noble, and knightly deponents in the celebrated controversy sustained by him with Sir Richard Grosvenor, for the right of bearing his family coat of arms, it will suffice to say that, between 1346 and 1385, a period of forty years, there was scarcely a battle of note in England, France, Spain, or Scotland, where the English forces were engaged, in which Scrope did not gain honour. But as a statesman, he was even still more renowned. Lord High Treasurer to Edward III., he was twice Chancellor of England, under that monarch's grandson, Richard II. : and Walsingham states him to have been, in those dignified stations, pre-eminently conspicuous for wisdom and integrity. It was this illustrious personage, by whom Bolton Castle was erected, and as Baron Scrope, of Bolton, he received summons to Parliament. At length, full of honours, and the world's esteem, he died A.D., 1403. His Lordship's eldest son, William, Earl of Wiltshire, and King of Man,* having been beheaded a few years before for his devoted fidelity to Richard II., Bolton Castle and the other princely demesnes of Lord Scrope devolved on his second son Roger, from whom derived a race of nobles-the Lords Scrope of Bolton, distinguished in all the martial achievements of successive ages. To Henry, the ninth Lord, was assigned the custody of Mary Queen of Scots, but fortunately for him, the near connexion which existed between his Lordship and the suspected house of Howard soon caused him to be relieved of

*To this nobleman, Shakespeare makes the Lord Roos thus refer:

"The Earl of Wiltshire hath the realm in farm."

RICH. II., Act 2, Sc. 1. He purchased the sovereignty of the Isle of Man from the Earl of Salisbury, and in 1394, when the truce was confirmed with France, "Guilliam Le Scrope" is recorded to have assented to it, "pour le seigneurie de Man" as one of the "allies of the King of England."

his charge. The grandson of this nobleman Emanuel, 11th Lord Scrope of Bolton, President of the King's Council in the North, was created by Charles I. Earl of Sunderland, but died without issue in 1627, when the earldom became extinct, and the Barony, devolving on Mary, only daughter of Henry, 9th Lord, and wife of William Bowes, Esq., continued vested in her descendants until 1815, when the issue of all the other coheirs having failed, the title passed to Charles Jones, Esq., but was not assumed by that gentleman. At the decease of Emanuel, Earl of Sunderland, the estates of the Scropes were divided amongst his Lordship's three illegitimate daughters. Of these ladies, the eldest Mary, wife of Charles Paulet, Marquess of Winchester, took the lands of Bolton, and her husband, on his elevation to a dukedom, chose Bolton for its designation.

The Powletts who thus succeeded to the estates of the Scropes, with great taste and judgment, fixed the site of the new mansion they erected in the vale below the ancient castle, in a situation of warmth, fertility, and beauty, and here resides the present William Powlett, Lord Bolton.

NORMANTON is not mentioned in the Doomsday Survey, but soon after the Conquest we find it included in the possessions of the family of Normanville, from which, doubtless, it derived its appellation. The Normanvilles were Lords of Empingham, in Rutlandshire, and of Kenardyngton in Kent, and seem to have principally resided in the latter county. The most distinguished inheritor of the name was Thomas de Normanville, King's Seneschal, north of the Trent, temp. EDWARD I. Eventually the heiress of these original proprietors of the land we are describing, Margaret de Normanvill, conveyed Normanton, and the other estates of her family, in marriage to William de Basynges, a gallant warrior of his time and one of the companions in arms of Edward I., in the victorious expedition into Scotland, A.D. 1288. For his services in that memorable campaign, he received the honour of knighthood, and on the outbreak of fresh hostilities, had summons to attend the King at Berwick on Tweed, fitted with horse and arms to march against the Scots. In the next reign he sat in parliament as knight of the shire for Rutland, and subsequently for Kent, wherein he had the custody of the Castle