“These men had so entrenched themselves in privileges and immunities, and so openly challenged an exemption from all secular jurisdiction, that no civil penalty could be inflicted on them for any malversation in office, and even treason itself was declared to be no canonical offence.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[10] Beaufort, Duke of Somerset.  Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, now bears the portcullis for his crest.  There is an engraving by Vertue, from a painting in the royal collection at Kensington Palace by Maubeugius in 1496, of the three children of Henry VII. and Elizabeth his queen, Prince Henry, Prince Arthur, and Princess Margaret, which is ornamented at the top with the portcullis surmounted with roses.

[11] Glazebrook’s Southport.

[Illustration:  THE EAGLE AND CHILD.]

THE EAGLE AND CHILD.

        “She’s over the muir,
        An’ over the border,
    An’ ower the blue hills far awa’: 
        With her callant, I trow,—­
        On his saddle-bow,
    While the mist-wreaths around them fa’.”

The main facts of the following narrative, lying scattered through a wide field of barren inquiry, the author has been at considerable pains to collect and arrange in a continuous narrative.

Little needs be said by way of introduction, the traditions here interwoven with the general history being mostly of a trivial nature, and not at all interfering with the facts developed by the historians and rhymers who have illustrated the annals of the house of Stanley.  These accounts, exaggerated and distorted as they inevitably must have been, may yet, in the absence of more authentic testimony, afford a pretty accurate glimpse at the real nature of those events, however they may have been disguised by fiction and misstatement.  Where tradition is our only guide we must follow implicitly, satisfied that her taper was lighted at the torch of Truth, though it may gleam doubtfully and partially through the mists and errors of succeeding ages.

One source from whence we have derived some information, though well known to the comparative few who have explored these by-paths of history, may not be thought uninteresting to the general reader, especially as it is connected with the most eventful portion of our narrative.

An ancient metrical account of the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, is contained in some uncouth rhymes, written about the year 1562, by Thomas Stanley, Bishop of Sodor and Man,[12] and son of that Sir Edward Stanley, who, for his valour at Flodden, was created Lord Monteagle.  There are two copies of these verses in the British Museum:  one amongst Cole’s papers (vol. xxix. page 104), and the other in the Harleian MSS. (541).  Mr Cole prefaces his transcript with the following notice:—­“The History of the family of Stanley, Earls of Derby, wrote in verse about the reign of King Henry the Eighth from a MS. now in possession of Lady Margaret Stanley, copied for me by a person who has made many mistakes, and sent to me by my friend Mr Allen, Rector of Tarporley, in 1758.—­W.  Cole.”