The original fortress of Greystock was built in the reign of Edward III. by Lord William de Greystock, that nobleman having obtained the king's license to castellate his manor-house of Greystock in the year 1353. Being garrisoned for Charles I., it was destroyed by a detachment of the Parliamentary army in June, 1648, except one tower and part of another. The Castle was almost entirely rebuilt about the middle of last century by the Hon. Charles Howard, and additional extensions were subsequently made by his great-grandson, the eleventh Duke of Norfolk, who bequeathed it to the present Mr. Howard, by whom the work of renovation was continued and completed in 1846. In the night of the 3rd and 4th of May, 1868, it was very seriously damaged by fire. Elizabeth Greystoke, Baroness Greystoke and Wemme, was a minor at the time of her father's death. She was the only daughter of Sir Robert Greystoke, knight, who died June 17th, 1483, in the lifetime of his father, Ralph, seventeenth Baron Greystoke. By an inquisition held after the death of that nobleman, it was found that he died on Friday next after the Feast of Pentecost, in the second year of King Henry VII., namely, June 1st, 1487. He was succeeded by Elizabeth, his grand-daughter and heiress, who during her minority was a ward of the crown, and had special livery of all her lands in 1506. This lady married Thomas, ninth Baron Dacre of Gillesland, and third Lord Dacre of the North; by which marriage the Barony of Greystoke became united with that of Gillesland. The nobleman in whose custody the King had placed his ward was Henry the tenth Baron Clifford, better known as Lord Clifford the Shepherd. He had married a cousin of Henry VII., and on the accession of that monarch had been restored, by the reversal of his father's attainder, to his honours and estates. Their sons had been educated together, and brought up in habits of intimacy; and the friendship thus formed in youth was continued after the one had succeeded to the crown as Henry VIII., and the other had ceased to be " Wild Henry Clifford," and had been advanced by his royal kinsman and associate to the dignity of Earl of Cumberland.