It was here that Lambert Simnel, the pretended son of the Duke of Clarence, landed in 1487, and was joined by Sir Thomas Broughton. The subsequent history of this stronghold is very obscure; in 1588 it is described as an old decayed castle. In the parish of Tunstall, Sir Thomas Tunstall, in the time of Henry IV., built Thurland Castle on a rising piece of ground between the Greta and the Cant.[103] Of the religious houses and churches which had sprung up since the coming of the Normans, it need only here be stated that they had now spread all over the county, and that the Christian creed had become the religion of the entire community (see Chapter IX.). The impending final struggle between the rival Houses of York and Lancaster would probably not excite any very great interest in the minds of the people of this county, except that they had again been called upon to find men for Lord Stanley's army, which the King had commissioned him to raise in the counties of Lancashire and Cheshire; this force is supposed to have been about 5,000 strong, and it virtually decided the battle, as Lord Stanley, on the field, turned against the King, and led his troops to the support of Richmond. With the death of Richard III., the last Plantagenet King, on the field of Bosworth, came an end of that system of government which had existed for nearly 300 years, and the old feudal chain was soon to be broken, and Englishmen were to become more their own masters and less the blind followers of their social superiors; and, moreover, they were soon to find themselves free from the tyranny of priestcraft and superstitions, and prejudices were to be gradually dispersed by the increase of civilization and freedom. Towards this end the introduction of printing was a powerful lever, for when John Caxton, in 1472, set up his press in London, the priest could no longer prevent the spread of knowledge, and it was not long before the printed books found their way into Lancashire. With the spread of literature and knowledge came the spirit of adventure and enterprise, which soon raised the country to a position which it had not heretofore occupied. [Illustration] [Footnote 56: In the original document the names are often very different to the ones now in use, but they have all been identified as referring to the localities above given.] [Footnote 57: "There is a priest there having half a carucate of land in frank amoign."] [Footnote 58: Said to be waste.] [Footnote 59: Other forests are named at Latham, Aughton, Milling, Lydiate, and other places.] [Footnote 60: The hora was not a coin, but an equivalent for about 1s. 6d. or 1s. 8d.] [Footnote 61: In South Lancashire it is believed that six carucates made a hide. A carucate was about 100 acres, but was a variable term.] [Footnote 62: This will serve as a proof that _foresta_ (= a wood or forest) was not necessarily a dense mass of trees, but rather a place where game of every kind abounded.]