78 JOURNAL OF JOHN ASTON, 1639 



The other accident was not soe pitifull, but rather pleasing 

 to see justice executed upon soe malicious a malefactor. It 

 was this. Some of Sir Jacob Asheley's^*^ regiment were quart- 

 ered about South Sheilds neare New-Castle, and there were 

 courteously used by a bayliffe of Sir Nicholas Tempest's (whose 

 demeasnes^i adjoined to their quarter) but they ill requited 

 his pitty of them, with stealing his cattle and other outrages, 

 which moved him to complaine to their colonell, who having 

 severely punished the oifendours, it begot such a rancour in 

 one of their hearts, that hee, onely to please himselfe, with an 

 unchristian and unprofitable revenge upon the steward, fyred 

 with his match a great stake of his master's hay (valued by 

 leport at 40^.). This villaine, when hee was found out, was 

 on Monday, the 20th of May, whiles all the army marched by, 

 executed upon a new gibbett newly erected for him at the 

 south end of Stannington towne, framed of some of the burnt 

 timber of the fired houses, and this inscription fixed on the 

 poast : "for willfull and malicious burning of a stack of hay." 

 This was the first exemplary justice done in the army, and 

 noe question but this, and the strict martiall lawes published 

 in printe, was a bridle to base mindes onely awed witli feai-e 

 of punishment. 



[May] 23. The 23, beeing Ascension day, his majestic stayed 

 at New Castle to receive the communion, and in the afternoone 

 hee came to Anwick,^^ where the earle of Northumberland hath 

 an auncient castle and a great royalltie, but the castle was 

 two ruinous to receive the king^^ : hee therefore lodged at the 



^" Ashley = Astley. Sir Jacob Astley was knighted 17th July 1624. 



^^ Flatworth. Cf. new Hintory of Northumberland, Vol. vni., p. 3-il, 

 iiote 3. 



•^^ On May 23rd the King himself set forward to his first halt at 

 Alnwick. Terry, Life and Campaigns of Alexander Leslie, p. 63. 



•*^ The above description may be compared with what was written 

 by one who accompanied the Duke of Cumberland's army in 1745 : — 

 " After I had fully surveyed these ruins [of Alnwick Castle] by walking 

 round the walls, I found it was formerly the most strong building 

 (both as to a castle as well as a palace) that I ever saw. All around 

 the battlements is full of effigies which the weather and great length 

 of time has now defaced. The grand port, or gateway, as you enter, 

 is as strong as any I have seen in Flanders, with everything belonging 



