Obituary Notices, by James Hardy. 185 



" The village of Hebburn is a short mile from us. There has 

 not been a school there in the memory of man. Last Sunday 

 (July, 1807) we assembled about twenty children in the remains 

 of the old castle, read a little appropriate address to them, and 

 prevailed on them to accompany us to church, about a mile dis- 

 tant from the village. They had never been in any place of 

 worship. Their parents were chiefly Dissenters, and their 

 chapels and tabernacles were many miles distant, too far for the 

 children to travel barefooted ; so they were suffered to run wild 

 on Sunday. I was much pleased with the liberality of the 

 parents ; there was no bigotry amongst them, for, though of 

 many diff'erent persuasions, they all willingly sent their children 

 to accompany us to the nearest place of worship. The children 

 on their part were delighted ; most of them could read ; and we 

 agreed that 'the Sermon on the Mount' was good for us all." 

 The ^Fletchers appear not to have sufficiently appreciated their 

 romantic Northumbrian property, which was purchased in 1817 

 by the Earl of Tankerville, whose estate of Chillingham adjoined 

 it, and who added the wild part of Hebburn to his range for the 

 celebrated wild cattle.^" 



Long ere this latter event, William Eichardson had left his 

 paternal residence to commence the business of life, having 

 served his apprenticeship to the trade of a saddler. Whether in 

 his youth he culled the wild flowers from Hebburn Wood, and 

 was then struck with their singularities, or whether the images 

 of their beauties remained as an abiding joy in his memory in 

 after years, to influence him in the studies of his maturity, we 

 know not. In the rough rocky bottom sheltered by the native 

 oaks, the rare Trientalis Europcsa, springs up in all its grace and 

 in full luxuriance ; and Oxalis is still more profuse in its tender 

 verdure, and offers here in its flowering ]3lots, a pink variety 

 with purple veins, which is a charming addition to the flower 

 border. A peculiar form of Melampyrum pratense, and the rosy- 

 bloomed Vaccinium Vitis-Idcea, are distributed among the purple 

 heather on the heights that margin the wide brown craggy 

 moors behind ; and also ornament the bilberry-clad summit of 

 Eas Castle, that most conspicuous land-mark from districts far 

 away. He would know about them afterwards, but it was not 

 here, that he was to commence his first searches after wild plants. 

 * Autobiography of Mrs Fletcher, pp. 96, 97, 93, etc. 



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