MEMOIR OF JOHN GREY. CHAPTER I. "Still linger in our northern clime Even when perchance its far-fetched claim T seems to me that any life of my father must include, to IT some extent, a history of the county in which he was born, lived, and died. He loved the place of his birth— sweet Glendale. His affections were largely drawn out to that Border country: not only to the living beings who peopled it, but to the scenes themselves-the hills, the valleys, and the rivers. All through his life there will be found evidence of the heart-yearnings towards them; and these are shared by his children, to whom there seems no spot on earth like Glendale. This attachment to our native country is perhaps stronger among us than among some families, because for so many generations back we were rooted there. Greys abounded on the Borders; they were B keepers often of the Border castles and towers, living a life not always very peaceful in regard to their Scottish neighbours. Glendale is rich in romantic associations; every name in and around it brings to the mind some incident of war, or lover's adventure, or heroic exploit, recorded in English ballads, or sung to sweet Scottish tunes, or woven later into the poems of Sir Walter Scott. Of Druidical and Roman vestiges there are not a few. The beautiful mountain stream, the Glen, from which Glendale takes its name, has a kind of sacred character, from the stories connected with it of St. Paulinus, who, according to the Venerable Bede, baptized in it several thousands of poor Britons. "Paulinus coming," he says, "to a place called Ad Gebrin, now Yeavring, abode there thirty-six days, during which time he did nothing from morning till night but instruct the multitudes who came to him in the saving word of Christ, and being instructed, he baptized them to the forgiveness of their sins in the river Glen, which is hard by." It is a very beautiful range of hills which skirts Glendale to the west; their very names, Yeavring Bell, Heathpool Bell, Newton Torr, Hetha, Hedgehope, and Cheviot, were delightful to my father's ear. Directly in front of our old home, Milfield Hill, lies the scene of innumerable fights between Scotch and English, Milfield Plain, and from its windows might have been seen the famous battle of Humbledon Hill. Flodden Hill, about a mile north of Milfield Hill, hides beneath its soil traces of the great battle of 1513: broken pieces of armour of men and horses were sometimes dug or ploughed up, and brought to the house, to be treasured up as relics. Many a time did my father recite to his children every incident of that battle, as he rode or walked with them over Flodden, sometimes resting at the "King's Chair" or by Sybil's Well. His memory was so good that he could go through almost the whole of "Marmion," and other poems relating to that woful day, "When shivered was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield." His dislike of the Stuarts was great, but he would tell with a sorrowful sympathy how the "flowers of the forest," the noble youth of Scotland, "were a' wede away." Looking on the waters of the fair Tweed, he often recalled the words "I've seen the morning with gold the hills adorning, Grow drumlie and dark as they rolled on their way.” This feeling was kept alive by the deep pathos of the Scotch songs which he so dearly loved. Not far, again, from Flodden stand the ancient castles of Ford, Etal, Wark, Twizel, Berwick, and Norham, whose very names call up memories of innumerable Border tales of tragedy and romance. A little further, and by the sea is Bamborough Castle, the old stronghold of Ida, King of Northumbria, and near the coast lie the Farnes, with Holy Island (Lindisfarn), full of traditions of St. Cuthbert, and of later associations with our brave Northumbrian girl, Grace Darling, who could never understand the sensation caused by her heroic deed, saying (and truly) that there were girls all along the coast who would and did accompany their fathers and brothers to sea in great storms, when there was a chance of saving life. The scene of the battle of Chevy Chase, for which there is none but ballad authority, is laid among the Cheviots. "The poet has used a license in his description of it," says an old historian, "and mixed in it some events of the battle of Otterburn farther south, for neither a Percy nor a Douglas fell in this woful hunting." After the battle of Flodden the Border warfare degenerated into a system of recriminative plunder, which continued till comparatively recent times. It is only a few generations back that our Northumbrians used to watch the fords all night long, with their trained mastiffs, to prevent the Scotch from carrying away their cattle. At one of the early meetings of the Highland Society at Kelso, my father said "There was a time, and that at no distant period, when, had it been possible for such animals as we have seen to-day to exist, it would have required the escort of our honourable vice-president, Sir John Hope, and his cavalry, in bringing each lot to the show-ground, to secure it against the chance of being roasted among the heather of the Highlands, or boiled in the pots of Cumberland." It is no marvel that a district which was the scene of so many vicissitudes, during centuries of predatory warfare, should have presented the aspect of a land wasted and blighted, which this part of the country did in the last century. Hutchinson, the historian of Northumberland, describes the desolateness of all this Border country in 1776. "From the openness of the country, where not a guide-post has been known since the creation, the traveller is compelled," he says, "to ask his way from some of the herdsmen of the Cheviots; and such is the ferocity and sullenness of these men, that when they give you instruction, it is as if they would chase a beast from trespass!" But Mackenzie, another local historian, says, in 1825, "Mr. Hutchinson describes the inhabitants of these hills as a most ferocious race of beings; but the Cheviot men are now neither so brutish nor so miserable as he represents them." He declares he found them "sober, shrewd, hospitable, and with a strong taste for religious disputations.” It was however scarcely possible to exaggerate the bleak and almost savage character of the country. My father speaks of it in the paper, written by him at the request of Lord Spencer for the Royal Agricultural Society's Journal : “Such was the state of society in that part of the county traversed by the Roman Wall, that those great antiquaries, Sir Robert Cotton and Mr. Camden, were deterred from following its course in 1600, as stated in Camden's own words: 'From hence the wall bends about by Iveston; Forster and Chester on the wall near Busy-gap, noted for robberies, where we heard there were forts, but we durst not go and view them, for fear of the moss-troopers.' And Warburton, who was Somerset Herald to George II., and published his Vallum Romanum in 1753, says, in reference to the same subject, 'Such was the wild and barren state of this country, even at the time I made my survey, that in those parts now called the wastes, and heretofore the debateable grounds, I have frequently discovered the vestiges of towns and camps that seemed never to have been trod upon by any human creature than myself since the Romans abandoned them; the traces of streets and the foundations of the buildings being still visible, only grown over with grass;' and it is certain that it was not till after the accession of George III., in 1760, that the King's writ might be said to run throughout the country. The now highly cultivated vale of the Till was in former days much |