WILD WHITE CATTLE. 237 
Forest, while the still more extensive forests of 
Bowland and Blackburnshire were closely contiguous. 
So far as can now be ascertained, it appears tolerably 
certain that this herd, seldom numbering more than 
eight or ten head, was once part of the herd at Whalley 
Abbey, the property of the Asshetons, and that 
in 1697, on the death of Sir John Assheton, the last 
baronet of Whalley Abbey, part of the herd there 
went to Gisburne, to the Listers (afterwards Lords 
Ribblesdale),* with whom the Asshetons were con- 
nected by marriage: and the other part was added to 
the previously existing herd at Middleton Park, 
belonging to his heirs, the Asshetons, baronets of 
Middleton. In 1790 Bewick wrote:—At ‘‘ Gisburne 
there are some perfectly white, except the inside of 
the ears, which are brown. They are without horns, 
very strong boned, but not high. They are said to 
have been originally brought from Whalley Abbey, 
in Lancashire, upon its dissolution in the twenty- 
third year of Henry VIII., and to have been drawn 
to Gisburne by the power of music”—in the same way 
that a herd of about twenty Red-deer is said to have 
been brought out of Yorkshire to Hampton Court.t 
A few years later, Dr. Whitaker, in his ‘ History 
and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven,’ published 
in 1812, gave the following account of them, with 
portraits of a bull and cow (pls. 8 and 9, p. 37) and 
a view of the park (pl. 10). 
* The grandson of Thomas Lister (to whom Sir John Asheton had 
bequeathed Gisburne and part of the Whalley herd) and Catherine 
Asheton of Middleton, was created Baron Ribblesdale in 1797. 
+ Playford’s “ Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music,” 1655. 
