The princely house of Neville was entirely ruined, and the immense estates of the castles of Raby and Brancepeth, with the dependent manors, were seized by the Crown. These properties should, by right, have vested in the bishopric, according to the full right of forfeitures for treason and felony within the palatinate, but Elizabeth continued to retain possession on pretence of covering the expenses incurred in suppressing the rebellion. Pilkington claimed the forfeitures in right of his palatinate, and, in support of his claim, brought an action against the Queen for the recovery of the forfeited estates, which he prosecuted with so much vigour and success that nothing but the interposition of Parliament prevented the Sovereign being beaten by a subject in her own courts; the Act decreeing that "the convictions, outlawries, and attainders of Charles, Earl of Westmoreland, and fifty-seven others, attainted of high treason, for open rebellion in the north parts," should be confirmed, and "that her Majesty, her heirs, and successors, should have, for that time, all the lands and goods, which any of the said persons, attainted within the bishopric of Durham, had, against the bishop and his successors, though he claimeth _jura regalia_, and challengeth all the said forfeitures in right of his church." After the failure of his suit the Bishop, whose health seems to have given way under the anxieties of prolonged litigation, petitioned for liberty to pass the winter in the South, with the hope, perhaps, and the desire of being removed to some other diocese. On the first alarm of Northumberland and Westmoreland's rising, Pilkington, conscious that his reforming zeal, as well as the fact of his being a married prelate, would be likely to provoke the fury of the insurgents, removed with his family into the South, and there remained until all danger was passed. Fuller says that his two daughters were conveyed away in beggars' clothes to prevent the Papists killing them; there was, however, only one child of the marriage born at the time of the outbreak. His wife, Alice, was a daughter of Sir John Kingsmill, a Hampshire knight, but it is not known with certainty when they were married, the fact having probably been kept secret for some time on account of the strong prejudice that society--Protestant as well as Roman Catholic, acting under the influence of old traditions--had against married priests; for marriage with the clergy was then accounted as hardly respectable, and even the wives of bishops--bishops' women as they were sometimes contemptuously styled--occupied an unpleasant position in the ranks in which their right reverend husbands were accustomed to move. [Illustration: DURHAM CASTLE.]