From a number of unconnected accounts respecting this great, if not good man, whose virtues even would have been the vices of our own age, we find as the most prominent parts of his disposition a thorough contempt for the maxims and opinions of the world, and an utter recklessness of its censure or esteem.  Marrying into the family of the Harringtons, he resided the latter part of his life at the Castle of Hornby, where we find him engaged in schemes for the most part tending to his own wealth and aggrandisement.

The chapel which he built is said to have been vowed at Flodden, but this statement is evidently untrue, having no foundation but the averments of those who content not themselves with a plain narrative of facts, but assume a licence to invent motives agreeable to their own folly or caprice.  That Sir Edward Stanley made any such vow we cannot imagine, much less would he put it into execution.  “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” was the governing principle of his life, and the mainspring of his actions.  It would be a strange anomaly in the records of human opinions to find an edifice reared to perpetuate a belief which the founder thought a delusion, a mere system of priestcraft and superstition.  To this prominent feature in his history our attention has been directed, and we think the following tradition assigns a better and more plausible motive for the founding of that beautiful structure, the chapel at Hornby.

It was by the still light of a cloudless harvest-moon that two men appeared to be sauntering up the stream that winds through the vale near Hornby.  One of them wore a clerical habit, and the other, from his dress, seemed to attend in the capacity of a menial.  They rested at the foot of a steep cliff overhung with firs and copse-wood.  The castle, upon the summit, with its tall and narrow tower, like a feather stuck in its crown, was not visible from where they sat.  The moon threw an unclouded lustre from her broad full face far away over the wide and heavy woods by which they were surrounded.  A shallow bend of the stream towards the left glittered over its bed like molten silver, issuing from a dark and deep pool shaded by the jutting boughs and grim-visaged rocks from whence they hung.

The travellers now ascended by a narrow and precipitous path.  Their task was continued with no little difficulty, by reason of the looseness of the soil, and the huge rocks that obstructed their progress.  By dint of scrambling, rather than walking, they, however, approached to the summit, when a light became visible over the hill, growing brighter as they ascended.  It was the castle turret, where Lord Monteagle generally spent the greater part of the night in study.  Whatever might be the precise nature of his pursuits, they were not supposed to be of the most reputable sort.

“Wizard spells and rites unholy”

were said to occupy these midnight vigils.  Often, as that lonely watch-tower caught the eye of the benighted peasant, did he cross himself, and fancy that shadows were flitting to and fro on the trembling and distant beam.