WILD WHITE CATTLE. 237 



Forest, while the still more extensive forests of 

 Bowland and Blackburnshire were closely contiguous. 

 80 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 atWhalley 

 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 

 liibblesdale),* 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, Di. Whitaker, in his " History 

 and Antiquities of the Deanery of Craven," published 

 in 1 8 1 2, gave the following account of them, with 

 portraits of a bull and cow (pis. 8 and 9, p. 37) and 

 a view of the park (pi. 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. 



t Playford's " Brief Introduction to the Skill of Music," 1655. 



