88 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



it from the family of Catterick. They then resided in 

 London, and had then recently been under a cloud for 

 the part they took in the civil wars. It was, therefore, 

 hardly possible that a domestic herd could have passed 

 through all these changes, and been continued from the 

 days of Queen Elizabeth. But a wild herd might ; like 

 deer, they were, in law, part and parcel of the park they 

 inhabited, and passed along with it. It is my strong 

 impression that it is to such a herd the tradition refers, 

 and that if the steward's accounts of that period existed 

 and could be examined at Stanwick, as they have been 

 at Chartley, some mention might be found in the one 

 case, as in the other, of the " wild beasts." 



But we cross the Tees, and enter the Palatinate of 

 Durham, whose prince bishop exercised formerly almost 

 more than royal power, in consequence of his being 

 in this district virtually " Rex atque Sacerdos." It 

 abounded anciently, particularly its western side, with 

 wastes, wilds, and primaeval forests. Even Durham 

 itself, when the monks, in the year 995, brought there 

 the body of St. Cuthbert, and began to build its famous 

 minster, is thus described in a Saxon poem, given in 

 Hickes' Anglo-Saxon Grammar : — 



" And there grow 

 Great forests ; 

 There live in the recesses 

 Wild animals of many sorts ; 

 In the deep valleys 

 Deer innumerable." 



Half-way between Durham and the Tees is Bishop 

 Auckland, one of the principal residences of the Bishops 

 of Durham ; Brancepeth Castle — so called, it is said, 

 from a celebrated boar which frequented the neighbour- 



