184 



Obituary Notices. By James Hardy. 



MR "WILLIAM RICHARDSON, ALNWICK. 



William Eichaedson was born at tlie village of Hebbtirn, 

 near CMUingliam, August 31st, 1797. At present Hebburn, 

 situated in an angle of the steep public road that leads over a 

 natural pass between tbe roots of Eas-Castle and Hebburn bills, 

 skirting the Earl of Tankerville's Park wall, consists of a double 

 row of bumble cottages, one on each side of tbe highway, but 

 not exactly opposite each other. Some of them have flower-plots 

 in front. Higher up, is a gushing spring of limpid water, by 

 the way- side, most refreshing to the traveller. The place had 

 been much more populous, as is indicated by the large ash trees 

 on the right hand as one ascends, that once sheltered the garden- 

 plots, when occupied by the retainers of the Hebburn family, 

 the ruins of whose old tower stand on the right, within the pre- 

 cincts of the deer-park. At the period referred to, the j)ro- 

 prietrix of the Hebburn estate, was Mrs Brudenell, the heiress 

 of the old family of Hebburn (which dated from the period of 

 King John), who, on coming of age, had made an unfortunate 

 marriage with the Eev. Edward Brudenell, an unworthy dissi- 

 pated man, of noble birth, who spent her means and neglected 

 her, and from whom she was obliged to separate with a very 

 restricted maintenance. Eelieved by his death in 1804, this once 

 gay and light-hearted lady entered once more on her hereditary 

 estates, and came back at the age of 66 — " a shattered, feeble, 

 old woman" — to the hills and ruined castle of her ancestors. 

 She died at Tadcaster, Dec, 1806, and out of gratitude left her 

 landed property to her friend, Mrs Fletcher, wife of Mr Archi- 

 bald Fletcher, an eminent Whig lawyer, and a member of the 

 famous literary society of Edinburgh of a bygone period. The 

 Fletchers spent part of the summer and autumn of 1807 at Heb- 

 burn House. Mrs Fletcher speaks of it as situated " at the sum- 

 mit of a bleak, bare hill. It was built by the late Mr Brudenell, 

 who pulled down an old baronial castle which time had spared, 

 and fixed upon precisely the only part of the estate which afibrds 

 a prospect utterly devoid of picturesque beauty." Mrs Fletcher 

 describes the condition of the village of Hebburn, when William 

 Eichardson would be ten years old, and he probably participated 

 in the picture here presented. 



