LIFE OF THE AUTHOR. 



" In good * Queen Mary's days, there was a short tide of flood in 

 our favour ; and Thomas Waterton of Walton Hall was High Sheriff 

 of York. This was the last public commission held by our family. 

 The succeeding reigns brought every species of reproach and indig- 

 nity upon us. We were declared totally incapable of serving our 

 country ; we were held up to the scorn of a deluded multitude, as 

 damnable idolators ; and we were unceremoniously ousted out of our 

 tenements : our only crime being a conscientious adherence to the creed 

 of our ancestors, professed by England for nine long centuries before 

 the Reformation. So determined were the new religionists that we 

 should grope our way to heaven along the crooked and gloomy path 

 which they had laid out for us, that they made us pay twenty pounds 

 a month, by way of penalty, for refusing to hear a married parson read 

 prayers in the Church of Sandal Magna; which venerable edifice had 

 been stripped of its altar, its crucifix, its chalice, its tabernacle, and 

 all its holy ornaments, not for the love of God, but for the private 

 use and benefit of those who had laid their sacrilegious hands upon 

 them. My ancestors acted wisely. I myself would rather run the 

 risk of going to hell with St Edward the Confessor, Venerable Bede, 

 and St Thomas of Canterbury, than make a dash at heaven in com- 

 pany with Harry VIII., Queen Bess, and Dutch William. 



" Oliver Cromwell broke down our drawbridge ; some of his mus- 

 ket-balls remaining in one of the old oaken gates, which are in good 

 repair to this day. Not being able to get in, he carried off every- 

 thing in the shape of horses and cattle that his men could lay their 

 hands on. 



" Dutch William enacted doubly severe penal laws against us. Dur- 

 ing the reign of that sordid foreigner, some little relaxation was at 

 fast made in favour of Dissenters ; but it was particularly specified 

 that nothing contained in the act should be construed ' to give ease 

 to any Papist or Popish recusant.' 



" My grandfather had the honour of being sent prisoner to York, 

 a short time before the battle of Culloden, on account of his well- 

 known attachment to the hereditary rights of kings, in the person of 



* " Camden, the Protestant historian, says that Queen Mary was a Princess never 

 sufficiently to be commended of all men for pious and religious demeanour, her 

 commiseration towards the poor," &c. 



