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84 ' THE RISING IN THE NORTH. |
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minds, they fell upon Barnard's castle, which Sir George Bowes held out against them for eleven days." —Percy.
The insurgents' army amounted to about six thousand men. The Earl of Sussex, supported by Lord Hunsdon and others, marched against them with seven thousand, and the Earl of Warwick with still greater forces. Before these superior numbers the rebels dispersed without striking a blow. Northumberland fled to the Scots, by whom, as we shall see in the next ballad, he was betrayed to Elizabeth. The Earl of Westmoreland escaped to Flanders, and died there in penury.
Another outbreak following close upon the above was suppressed by Lord Hunsdon. Great cruelties were exercised by the victorious party, no less than eight hundred having, it is said, suffered by the hands of the executioner.
The ballad was printed by Percy from two MS. copies, one of them in the editor's folio collection. " They contained considerable variations, out of which such readings were chosen as seemed most poetical and consonant to history."
" The Fate of the Nortons," we need hardly say, forms the subject of Wordsworth's White Doe of Rylstone. |
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Listen, lively lordlings all,
Lithe and listen unto mee, And I will sing of a noble earle,
The noblest earle in the north countrie. |
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