The Hall, as the great house at Humblethwaite was called, consisted in truth of various edifices² added one to another at various periods; but the result was this, that no more picturesque³ mansion⁴ could be found in any part of England than the Hall at Humblethwaite. The oldest portion of it was said to be of the time of Henry VII.; but it may perhaps be doubted whether the set of rooms with lattice windows looking out on to the bowling-green, each window from beneath its own gable, was so old as the date assigned to it. It is strange how little authority can usually be found in family records to verify such statements. It was known that Humblethwaite and the surrounding manors⁵ had been given to, or in some fashion purchased by, a certain Harry⁶ Hotspur, who also in his day had been a knight⁷, when Church lands were changing hands under Henry VIII. And there was authority to prove that that Sir Harry had done something towards making a home for himself on the spot; but whether those very gables were a portion of the building which the monks⁸ of St. Humble¹ had raised for themselves in the preceding reign⁹, may probably be doubted. That there were fragments of masonry¹⁰, and parts of old timber, remaining from the monastery¹¹ was probably true enough. The great body of the old house, as it now stood, had been built in the time of Charles II., and there was the date in the brickwork still

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