Considering the period of the year, which was only the end of September, the day was cold and wintry, when a party, consisting of some sixteen horse, took their way through one of the remote districts of Northumberland. The sky was covered with a film of grey cloud, and the wind, keen and chilling, as if loaded with hail or snow, swept over the bleak hills and moors. Northumberland was, at that time, from many local causes, far behind the rest of England in point of cultivation and numbers. Remote from the capital either of England or Scotland, and holding but very scanty communication with the rest of Europe, the power and authority of government was less felt and acknowledged in the great northern county than elsewhere; old thoughts and habits clung to the inhabitants with greater tenacity; news circulated less freely, and men were more under the influence of the great proprietors than perhaps in any other English shire. The party of horse, therefore, which I have mentioned, and which was headed, as the reader may suppose, by the young Earl of Eskdale and Richard Newark, not only passed unquestioned through a district where a great majority of the people were attached to the Stuart cause, but were received in the small towns and villages with much cordiality, as soon as it was perceived that they were not soldiers of the House of Hanover. The Northumberland man has a certain degree of northern cautiousness about him; but he is by no means without the merry English spirit, and a good portion of wit. Few inquiries were made of the travellers as to the end and object of their journey; but a sly and jesting allusion was often ventured to the cause of the exiled king, and every information was given voluntarily regarding the insurrectionary movements in Scotland, and the general feelings of the people of the county itself. The report, which had reached the west, of Forster and others being in arms in Northumberland, proved to have been greatly premature, and Smeaton now found that nothing was certain as to the proceedings of the malcontents and the government, except that warrants were out for the arrest of the Earl of Derwentwater, and Forster of Ramborough, member for the county, together with several other persons of less note, and that the Earl and his companion, with several of their friends, were closely concealed.