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Warwick. He possessed one hundred manors; thirty thousand 
persons were fed daily at his tables; and when at court, his six 
hundred attendants bearing on their livery the Warwick badge of 
the bear and ragged staff, overawed London. 
While the king-maker held the manor of Penrith and the office 
of Lord Warden of the Marches, Penrith would probably see much 
of him for the first few years at least, whilst King Edward IV. 
occupied the throne upon which the great Warwick had placed 
him ; a peace, however, soon to be broken by another desperate 
attempt to regain power by the House of Lancaster, when Warwick, 
for reasons as yet ill understood, deserted his own kindred of the 
House of York, and carried his immense power over to the rival 
House of Lancaster, drove Edward from the throne, and set up 
once more the old Lancastrian King Henry VI. 
Another turn of the wheel, and the desperate battle of Barnet 
crushes for ever the Lancastrian cause. Warwick is slain, his 
immense estates confiscated, and his mighty career terminated 
for ever. 
Thus ended the ten years reign of the bear and ragged staff in 
Penrith. The manor now reverted to the crown, and was given 
by King Edward to his brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who 
for the next twelve years was a power in the north of England, 
residing at times at the castles of Carlisle, Penrith, and Barnard 
Castle, as well as being much in Yorkshire. He appeared to be 
ubiquitous, and all-powerful ; and notwithstanding the odium after- 
wards attached to his name in the south, nothing but good was 
known or believed of him in the north. 
Doubtless they were palmy days for Penrith when the white 
boars of the Duke of Gloucester replaced the bear and ragged 
staff of the traitor Warwick ; and when the Gloucester Arms were 
set up at the castle hostlery in Dockray, which perhaps was before 
the Warwick Arms. 
When after one short year’s reign as Richard III. this extra- 
ordinary man was treacherously betrayed and butchered on the 
battle field of Bosworth, the connection of Penrith manor with 
national history came to an end, 
