96 WILD WHITE CATTLE OF GREAT BRITAIN. 



of Naworth Castle, once the stronghold of those re- 

 doubted barons, the Lords Dacre of Gillesland; then 

 the residence of their heir by marriage, Lord William 

 Howard, too well known to the Scottish moss-troopers 

 under the soubriquet of " Belted Will;" and lastly, of 

 his descendants, the Earls of Carlisle. In this wild 

 neighbourhood, to perhaps a later period than anywhere 

 else in England, the wild cattle roamed at large un- 

 reclaimed, though protected, no doubt, by their all- 

 powerful owners. A MS.* and anonymous History of 

 Cumberland, known, however, to have been written 

 about the year 1675 by Edmund Sandford, of an old 

 Cumberland family, and preserved in the library of the 

 Dean and Chapter of Carlisle, tells us that around 

 Na worth formerly were '" pleasant woods and gardens ; 

 ground full of fallow dear, feeding on all somer tyme ; 

 braue venison pasties and great store of reed deer on 

 the mountains ; and white wild cattel, with blak ears 

 only, on the moores ; and blak heath-cockes, and brone 

 more-cockes, and their pootes." I presume that these 

 " white wild cattel " had been destroyed during the 

 civil wars, from thirty to forty years before. The 

 writer was evidently well acquainted with their colour 

 and with the localities they frequented. 



It would perhaps seem natural, now that we have 

 arrived at the Borders, to cross over and give a similar 

 historical account of the kindred race of Scottish wild 

 cattle. But before I do so I wish to point out to the 

 reader that the numerous wild herds, of whose ancient 



* This MS. is quoted by Jefferson in his " History and Antiquities of 

 Cumberland," 1840 ; and also by William Dickinson in his Prize Essay, 

 " On the Farming of Cumberland," Journ. Royal Agric. Soc, vol. xiii., 

 1852. Both writers appear to have had access to it. 



