WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA 5 



and at Agincourt, and at Marston Moor. Sir 

 Robert Waterton was Governor of Pontefract 

 Castle, and had charge of King Richard II. Sir 

 Hugh Waterton was executor to his Sovereign's 

 will, and guardian to his daughters. Another 

 ancestor was sent into France by the King, with 

 orders to contract a royal marriage. He was 

 allowed thirteen shillings a day for his trouble 

 and travelling expenses. Another was Lord Chan- 

 cellor of England, and preferred to lose his head 

 rather than sacrifice his conscience." 



Waterton 's childhood was spent at Walton Hall, 

 and in his old age he used sometimes to recall the 

 songs of his nurses. "One of them," he said, 

 *'is the only poem in which the owl is pitied. She 

 sang it to the tune of 'Cease, rude Boreas, bluster- 

 ing railer, ' and the words are affecting : — 



*Onee I was a monarch's daughter. 

 And sat on a lady's knee; » 



■But am now a nightly rover, 

 Banished to the ivy tree. 



'Crying, Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, 



Hoo, hoo, my feet are cold! 

 Pity me, for here you see me 

 Persecuted, poor, and old.' " 



He was already proficient in bird's-nesting 

 when, in 1792, he was sent to a school kept by a 

 Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Arthur Sto- 

 rey, at Tudhoe, then a small village, five miles 

 from Durham. Three years before his death he 

 wrote an account of his school days, which is 

 printed in the Life prefixed to Messrs, Warne's 

 edition of his ''Natural History Essays." The 



