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low water, at nine of the clock, the same hour each of you shall set your stakes at the brim of the water, each stake a yard from another, and so yedder them, as with your yedders, and so stake on each side with your stout-stowers, that they stand three tides without removing by the force of the water. Each of you shall make them in several places at the hour aforenamed (except it be full sea at that hour, which, when it shall happen to pass, that service shall cease), and you shall do this service in remembrance that you did [most cruelly] slay me. And that you may the better call to God for repentance, and find mercy, and do good works, the officer of Eskdale-side shall blow his horn, Out on you, out on you, out on you, for the heinous crime of you. And if you and your successors do refuse this service, so long as it shall not be full sea, at that hour aforesaid, you, and yours, shall forfeit all your lands to the abbot [of Whitby], or his successors. Thus I do entreat the abbot, that you may have your lives and goods for this service, and you to promise by your parts in Heaven, that it shall be done by you and your successors, as it is aforesaid.' And the abbot said, I grant all that you have said, and will confirm it by the faith of an honest Then the hermit said, 'My soul longeth for the Lord, and I do as freely forgive these gentlemen my death, as Christ forgave the thief upon the cross:' and in the presence of the abbot and the rest, he said, ‘In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum: [a vinculis enim mortis] redemisti me, Domine veritatis. Amen.'"

man.

And so he yielded up the ghost, the 18th day of December, upon whose soul God have mercy.-Amen. Anno Domini 1160. [1159.]

This grotesque story is so amusing, that we would be tempted to side with Grose, and assert its authenticity, but unluckily the proofs of its truth are so feeble, that we are forced to discard it as a fiction. Its romance caught the fancy of Scott, and he has thus versified it in Marmion:

"Then Whitby's nuns exulting told,

How to their house three barons bold
Must menial service do;

While horns blow out a note of shame,
And monks cry, Fie upon your name!
In wrath, for loss of sylvan game,

Saint Hilda's priest ye slew.'
This on Ascension-day, each year,
While labouring on our harbour pier,

Must Herbert, Bruce, and Percy hear."

Sir Richard Cholmley, who obtained the 21 years' lease of the dissolved monastery's lands became subsequently possessed in fee of the estate, by purchasing the grant from Sir Edward Yorke, who had bought it of John Earl of Warwick, the grantee from the Crown. Sir Richard was a distinguished soldier, and fought with great gallantry in Scotland. He loved pomp, and generally had fifty or sixty servants about his house; nor would he ever go up to London without a retinue of thirty or forty men. His hair and eyes were black, and his complexion so swarthy, that he was usually styled "The Black Knight of the North." To his son and successor, Sir Francis Cholmley, the mansion of Whitby Hall owes its erection.

It bears the marks of having been partly built out of the ruins of the monastery; and probably stands on or near the site of the abbot's hall. The celebrated Sir Hugh Cholmley greatly enlargad and improved the structure, about the year 1635; and the eastern part of it was probably added by him. During the civil wars, Sir Hugh fortified the house, and had a

garrison to defend it, as appears by the following passage in Vicars' Parliamentary Chronicle for February, 1643-4, p. 160: "The most noble and ever-to-be-honoured and renouned Lord Fairfax-about this time enlarged his quarters from Hull 20 miles towards Durham, and by a party of horse, commanded by that valiant, victorious, and religious commander, Sir William Constable, drave that rotten apostate, Sir Hugh Chomley, out of Scarborough towne into the castle, which caused such an operation in the hearts of the inhabitants of Whitby, as that they were soone and surely reduced and settled (as you already heard in part they were) to the Parliament's side, and, presently after, seized on Sir Hugh's great house and fort on the High-Clift, disarmed his garrison, and so kept it for Lord Fairfax, who, afterwards, sent 200 horse, the better to secure it"

The last Sir Hugh Cholmley, about the year 1672, built the north side of the hall, forming a handsome and extensive front; the whole structure now assuming the form of a square, with an open area within. The Duke and Duchess of Lauderdale, the Earls of Athol and Kinghorn, and others of the nobility, were entertained by Sir Hugh, in his improved mansion. When the Wentworth estates fell to the Cholmley family, in 1743, Howsham became the chief residence of the family, and Whitby Hall began to be deserted. About fifty years ago, the wind having injured the roof of the north front, the whole of that side, which was the principal part of the house, was dismantled, only the walls being left standing.

The present representative of the family, and the Lord of Whitby, is George Cholmley, Esq.

NOTES RESPECTING THE LIFE AND FAMILY OF
JOHN DYER, THE POET.

By W. HYLTON LONGSTAFFE.

No. IV. 1740–1750.

THE "Ruins of Rome," a poem possessing fine passages, and language the most exalted, appeared in 1740. The poet's hatred of Popery here also appears. Speaking of the old Roman gods, he calls them

Terrifick, monstrous shapes! prepost'rous gods,
Of Fear and Ign'rance, by the sculptor's hand
Hewn into form, and worship'd; as ev'n now
Blindly they worship at their breathless mouths
In varied appellations: men to these

(From depth to depth, in dark'ning error fall'n),
At length ascribed th' INAPPLICable Name.

And adds in a note, "Several statues of the Pagan gods have been converted into images of saints," which is likely enough. Dyer saw these things with his own eyes. The MS. of this poem is a small octavo, very fairly written, containing many and various readings, but none are of any peculiar interest. Part of the above passage at first read—

Blindly they worship under varied names,

And prostrate at their breathless mouths implore
Strange mediation.

And the alterations have the words, "Vile mediation," "bestial types," showing how warm he was on this subject. And now his declining health, and his natural love of privacy and quiet study, determined him to enter the church; so he took orders, and was in 1741 presented by Mr. Harper to Calthorp or Catthorp, in Leicestershire. He had by this time also married. His wife's maiden name was, as before mentioned, Sarah Ensor, married first to a Mr. Hawkins. Dyer was residing at Nuneaton, near Coventry, according to a MS. pedigree of the Pauls of Wilnecote, when this event took place. "My wife's name,' says he in a letter to Mr. Duncombe, "was Ensor, whose grandmother was a Shakespear, descended from a brother of everybody's Shakespear." Of this Shakespear descent I am sorry I know nothing, nor have I seen any remarks on it. The following table will shew Mrs. Dyer's immediate

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relatives, as far as I can trace them with accuracy, from the Tamworth registers and family prayer-book :

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bap. 1650, under age 1667, | (Symmes) Martha and Mary, bap. 1663.

æt. 21 in 1671, bur. 1723. d. 1704-5.
Joins in son James's mar-
riage-settlement 1707.

William,

Samuel, bur. 1666.

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bur. 1681.

d. of George

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sor of Wil-
necote, bap.
1681-2,died
1750-1.

Twigge,
d. 1758,
aged 64.

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Grace, the grandmother of the poet's wife, is believed, from an impaled escutcheon remaining at Wilnecote, to have been a Miss Symes (the arms being similar to those of the family of that name at Daventry). Miss Shakespear seems, therefore, to have been Mrs. Dyer's ancestrix on the mother's side. The Ensors have been settled in the parish of Tamworth for many centuries, springing from the marriage of Thomas Edensor and Anne Hopwas, an heiress, of a junior branch of the very honourable family of Comberford of that Ilk, and originally coming from Edensor in Staffordshire. In 13 Edw. I., Thomas de Ednesover, by his inq. p. m., held lands in Tameworth Baddesley (now Baddesley Ensor), &c.

The Ensor arms, as given by Shaw in his "Staffordshire," from Visitations, are-Quarterly, 1 and 4 EDENSOR, ar. a fess gu. between three horse-shoes sa. 2. HOPWAS. (On a seal of 39 Edw. III. the arms are ermine, on a bend three plates). 3. COMBERFORD. Gu. a talbot passant

ar.

Crest, on a wreath a dexter arm erect holding a sword ar., hilted, &c., or. It is odd that this crest never seems to have been since used, the ordinary one being a unicorn's head arg. crined and armed or. The arms in Mrs. Dyer's time had a chevron substituted for the fesse, but from the old seals of the family at Wilnecote, they appear to have been used indifferntly.

I am in great uncertainty as to the exact junction of our Ensors with the Comberford ones, and until I am able to spend a little time in Warwickshire, and search the family wills, &c., I am afraid I shall have to remain so. From the title-deeds of property at Wilnecote, the first possessors stand thus::

Thomas Ensor, mentioned in the settlement of 1579 as father of John=

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There is a final agreement about Echylls in 1593; the next document is in 1614, in which, and all subsequent documents, the head of the family is John Ensor. The pedigree, given in the "Landed Gentry," is also in "Shaw's Staffordshire," down to George, who mar. Jane Sanders; the Edward, who follows, is fictitious, as the father of James, yet the line, as regards another branch, may, possibly, be correct. The John, of 1614, who succeeded Barnabas, as I understand, I am in doubt about as to the parentage of. One, the son of Gregory Ensor, of Wilnecote, born in 1586-7, is the most likely man, but, whoever he was, he was, doubtless, the same as had a son John, bap. 1612, and another Barnabie, bap. 1613-4. Barnabas continued a family name till 1686. The names in the above sketch shew there evidently was a very near connection with the main stock, but if Gregory or Barnabas really was our ancestor, the junction (if the visitations are correct) would be before the marriage of Thomas Ensor with Dorothy Comberford (who was of the main line of that ancient house). Yet, Dorothy was a favourite family name-the family traditions point to that match as our origin, and I have a very singular relic of the Comberfords, which, really, would seem to have come through this lady. It is a large sheet of linen-work, composed of a 100 squares, each having a distinct design. Half of these devices are of open work, by which, I mean, that a groundwork of linen

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