92 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



three hundred years since, " wild beasts " was the 

 distinctive name by which the wild cattle were pecu- 

 liarly known. But with regard to such parks as those 

 of JBrancepeth, of Streattam Castle, the ancient seat of 

 the Bowes family, and only three miles from Barnard 

 Castle, and, above all, of Baby Castle, about six miles 

 distant from it, we have no information whatever as to 

 what wild animals they contained in ancient times. 

 We may suspect, indeed — and as regards Baby at least, 

 there is some ground for our suspicions. It was the 

 great feudal residence of the head of the Nevills, the 

 powerful Earl of Westmoreland, to a branch of which 

 family, at one time, Barnard Castle belonged ; and here, 

 it is said, assembled at once seven hundred knights, 

 who held of that princely family. We may be quite 

 sure that no wild animal worth keeping would be absent 

 from their parks and chases. A singular circumstance, 

 too, corroborates this opinion, for the house of ISTevill 

 has borne as its crest for at least 650 years Britain's 

 white wild bull, "argent, pied sable." This crest is, 

 indeed, as borne by the Marquis of Abergavenny, the 

 male head of the family, heraldically speaking, " dis- 

 tinguished:" i.e., collared, armed, and chained, gold ; 

 but these must be modern additions, for the old Nevill 

 crest seems to have been, like the De Hoghton one, the 

 pure and unadulterated wild bull.* In Hutchinson's 

 " Durham " there is given an engraving of a carving in 

 stone, still existing at Baby Castle, which represents 

 the Nevill bull holding a standard charged with the 

 Nevill arms. It must be very ancient — I think 400 



* The Earl of "Westmoreland and Lord Braybrooke, both descended 

 from the Nevills through the female line, bear respectively as their crests 

 the white bull's head and the white bull, spotted, no doubt as a difference. 



