4822 Tyneside Naturalists' Field Club. 



architecture. The nave and aisles were replaced late in the fourteenth century hy 

 those now standing; and the edifice now consists of a chancel, nave, two aisles, a 

 southern porch, and a campanile in which hang three bells. The clerestory is of ele- 

 gant middle pointed work. Originally there had been a pointed roof of high pitch, 

 but it was replaced by the present flat roof in 1496, when the living was sequestered 

 for repairs. Bothal church is altogether an interesting edifice, and affords, as many 

 other churches in Northumberland do, an example of the influence of military archi- 

 tecture and of the disturbed state of the Border lands on the form and fabric of the 

 parish church. Thus, the square-headed trefoiled arch, which is common in castel- 

 lated architecture, is found in many ecclesiastical edifices in Northumberland; and a 

 castle being adjacent, we have a campanile instead of a tower. Passing then to the 

 history of the castle and barony, Mr. Gibson traced the descent of the great family of 

 Bertram, who seem to have acquired Bothal in or not long after the reign of William 

 Rufus, their ancestor, Guy de Balliol, having received these possessions with the other 

 confiscated estates of Earl Robert de Mowbray. Bothal was made a barony as early 

 as the time of Richard Cceur de Lion, and the great baronial family of Bertram flou- 

 rished here until late in the reign of Edward III. Robert Bertram, the last lord in 

 the male line, seems to have been a man of great energy and martial spirit, and it 

 was he who obtained the royal license to make a castle of his manor-house of Bothal. 

 The noble gate tower, which is the only perfect portion remaining of the Edwardian 

 Castle, is a well-preserved monument of his dominion. This martial chieftain fought 

 at the battle of Nevill's Cross, and captured William Douglas. Malcolm Fleming, 

 Earl of Wigton, was conveyed after the battle to Bothal Castle for safe custody, but 

 was allowed to escape without ransom, for which the Lord of Bothal fell under the 

 King's displeasure ; but he seems to have died in the possession of power and honour, 

 and on his death the barony and possessions descended on Helen, his only child, by 

 whose marriage to Robert de Ogle, Bothal came to a branch of that ancient Northum- 

 brian family. After his death the Lady Helen married three successive husbands. 

 She founded a chantry in the church of St. Andrew, at Bothal, and is commemorated, 

 together with her first husband, by the magnificent monument which forms so con- 

 spicuous a feature in the sacred edifice. Their posterity succeeded to the barony and 

 possessions, and in their time, probably, additions were made to the castle. A survey 

 made in the time of Elizabeth mentions, besides the Great Tower, the Blanch Tower 

 and the Ogle Tower, all which have long been destroyed, though they were represented 

 as standing in a view taken in 1728. Mr. Gibson said it was probably after the acqui- 

 sition of Bothal by the Ogle family that the edifice known as the Lady Chapel was 

 built. Its ruins stand higher up on the banks of the Wansbeck, on a spot where a 

 hermitage was supposed to have existed. After tracing the descent of the barony and 

 possessions of the Lords of Bothal to the Ducal House of Portland, Mr. Gibson read 

 some characteristic extracts from the will of Robert, sixth Lord Ogle of Bothal, who 

 died in 1562, and from the inventory of the furniture and effects in Bothal Castle at 

 the time of his death. He also read, from the survey made in 1576, the description 

 of the castle as it then existed, and of the kinds of fruit that were cultivated in its 

 gardens, remarking that their record afforded us some glimpses of the life, habits and 

 costume of the Border chieftain of the Elizabethan era. It was painful to contrast 

 the now ruinous state of this castle with its former magnitude and strength ; but the 

 whole spot was suggestive of feudal memories, and invested with a picturesque beauty 

 and interest which could hardly be exceeded even in any of the river valleys of 

 Northumberland. 



