These two noblemen were the leaders of the Catholic party in the North of England, and interested themselves warmly in various projects to restore Mary Stuart to her liberty. When a marriage was proposed between the Duke of Norfolk and the Scottish Queen, they, with many of the first persons in the kingdom, entered zealously into the scheme, having the ulterior view, according to Hume, of placing Mary on the throne of England. Norfolk endeavored to conceal his plans from Elizabeth, until he should form a combination powerful enough to extort her consent, but the Queen received information betimes, and committed the Duke to the Tower. Several of his abettors were also taken into custody, and the two Northern Earls were summoned to appear at court, to answer to the charge of an intended rebellion. They had proceeded too far to trust themselves willingly in the hands of their enraged sovereign, and the summons precipitated them into an insurrection for which they were not prepared. They hastily gathered their followers, and published a manifesto, in which they declared that they maintained an unshaken allegiance to the Queen, and sought only to reëstablish the religion of their ancestors, and to restore the Duke of Norfolk to liberty and to the Queen's favor. "Their common banner (on which was displayed the cross, together with the five wounds of Christ,) was borne by an ancient gentleman, Richard Norton, Esq., of Norton-Conyers: who with his sons (among whom, Christopher, Marmaduke, and Thomas, are expressly named by Camden) distinguished himself on this occasion. Having entered Durham, they tore the Bible, &c, and caused mass to be said there: they then marched on to Clifford Moor near Wetherbye, where they mustered their men. Their intention was to have proceeded on to York; but, altering their minds, they fell upon Barnard's castle, which Sir George Bowes held out against them for eleven days."--PERCY. The insurgents' army amounted to about six thousand men. The Earl of Sussex, supported by Lord Hunsdon and others, marched against them with seven thousand, and the Earl of Warwick with still greater forces. Before these superior numbers the rebels dispersed without striking a blow. Northumberland fled to the Scots, by whom, as we shall see in the next ballad, he was betrayed to Elizabeth. The Earl of Westmoreland escaped to Flanders, and died there in penury. Another outbreak following close upon the above was suppressed by Lord Hunsdon. Great cruelties were exercised by the victorious party, no less than eight hundred having, it is said, suffered by the hands of the executioner. The ballad was printed by Percy from two MS. copies, one of them in the editor's folio collection. "They contained considerable variations, out of which such readings were chosen as seemed most poetical and consonant to history." "The Fate of the Nortons," we need hardly say, forms the subject of Wordsworth's _White Doe of Rylstone_.