Historic Notices of Haughton Castle. 157 



torch revealed the unhappy prisoner lying upon the steps des- 

 cending from the door of the vanlt starved to death. In the 

 agonies of hunger he had gnawed the flesh from one of his 

 arms.* The remorse of the lord of Haughton for his uninten- 

 tional cruelty is said to have nearly driven him mad. The 

 consternation and horror of the domestics was beyond descrip- 

 tion. The ghost of Archie Armstrong, as a matter of course, 

 henceforth haunted the castle, which, at dead of night, re- 

 sounded with agonising shrieks issuing from the dungeon where 

 he had so untimely and fearfully perished. 



Another legend seems to exist, turning upon this tragedy, 

 which relates how more than a hundred years after this, in the 

 time of Sir William Widdrington, the aforesaid spectre of the 

 renowned freebooter appeared as an illuminated skeleton, 

 after a terrifying shriek had been heard, in the hall of 

 Haughton Castle, to the terror of the assembled domestics and 

 retainers. This was in 1661, when their lord and lady were in 

 London, and Sir William had unfortunately taken with him the 

 black-letter Bible with which the first exorcist had successfully 

 laid the ghost. An uubelie^ng gardener unaccountably dis- 

 appeared on this last occasion of its re-visiting the castle, and tho 

 chaplain conjectured that the spirit had availed itself of the 

 absence of the sacred talisman in order to return and avenge 

 itself ; though if the harmless character of the victim, who lived 

 at least three generations later, be considered, it must be con- 

 fessed that the ghost still acted on the old moss-trooping ideas 

 of justice as in its embodied days. It is satisfactory to be 

 assured that by means of the black-lettered Bible the ghost of 

 the famished freebooter after a time was exorcised and sot at 

 rest, and never again troubled the inmates of Haughton Castle. | 



Another and less tragical legend I have met with which appeared 

 in poetic guise in the Alnwick Journal, January 15, 1863, called 

 "The Feast of Spurs," which tells how the lady of the castle, 

 some time in the sixteenth century, according to ancient Border 

 custom, served up " The Spur" at dinner in a covered dish, when 

 she, on one particular occasion, wished to express that her larder 

 was empty and needed replenishing. The " Charlton Spur," six 

 inches long, many will recollect is still preserved at Hesley- 



* Sec " Historical Notes of Haydon Bridge and district," by Mr 

 Win. Lee. 



fUeynold'a Miscellany, March 1^1, 18(i:j. 



