EAST AND WEST AYTON. 3-tl 



once the fortified residence of the family of the 

 Eures, or Evers, This village was the lordship of 

 Gilbert, the son of Lagi ; who soon after he became 

 possessed of it, assumed the name of Ay ton, From 

 this place, in the reign of Henry I., his grandson 

 Gilbert, who succeeded him in this manor, married 

 Margery, the daughter of Warine de Vesci, a young- 

 er son of William lord Vesci; and after that by 

 marriage came into the Clifford family. Henry, the 

 eldest son of John lord Clifford, who was slain in 

 the battle of Towton field, in the Lancastrian cause, 

 was very young at the death of his father ; and his 

 mother dreading the resentment of the house of 

 York, placed him in an obscure retreat at Londes- 

 borough, with a shepherd who had married her 

 nurse ; charging the woman to bring him up as her 

 own child. A report afterwards reaching the court 

 that the young lord Clifford was alive ; he was se- 

 cretly removed along with the shepherd, to a farm 

 in Scotland : and on the accession of Henry VII I. 

 to the throne, was restored to the estates and hon. 

 ours of his ancestors.* 



Three fourths of the manor of West Ay ton are 

 vested in seven trustees, for the maintenance of 

 dissenting ministers ; agreeably to the will of 

 lady Hewley. The remaining fourth belongs to 

 George Osbaldeston, Esq. of Hutton Bushell. 



HACKNESS 



Is a celebrated and delightfully pleasant village, 

 in the wapentake of Whitby strand, 6 miles N. w. 



* Wordsworth's Poems ii. 128. 



