When the high born shepherd boy was about his fourteenth year, his grandfather, Lord de Vesci being dead, and his mother having become the wife of Sir Lancelot Threlkeld, a rumour again arose and reached the court that the young Lord Clifford was alive; whereupon his mother, with the connivance and assistance of her husband, had the shepherd with whom she had placed her son, removed with his wife and family from Yorkshire to the more mountainous country of Cumberland. In that wild and remote region, the persecuted boy was "kept as a shepherd sometimes at Threlkeld amongst his step-father's kindred, and sometimes upon the borders of Scotland, where they took land purposely for those shepherds who had the custody of him, where many times his step-father came purposely to visit him, and sometimes his mother, though very secretly." In this obscurity the heir of the Cliffords passed the remainder of his boyhood, all his youth, and his early manhood; haunting, in the pursuit of pastoral occupations, the lofty moorland wastes at the foot of Blencathra, or musing in the solitude of the stupendous heights of that "Peak of Witches;" at other times, ranging amid the lonesome glens of Skiddaw Forest, or on the bleak heath-clad hills of Caldbeck and Carrock. Thus being of necessity nurtured much in solitude, and, habited in rustic garb, bred up to man's estate among the simple dalesmen, to whom, as well as to himself, his rank and station were unknown, he was reared in so great ignorance that he could neither read nor write; for his parents durst not have him instructed in any kind of learning, lest by it his birth should be discovered; and when subsequently he was restored to his title and estates, and took his place among his peers, he never attained to higher proficiency in the art of writing than barely enabled him to sign his name. One of the first acts of Henry VII. was to restore the lowly Clifford to his birthright and to all that had been possessed by his noble ancestors. And his mother, who did not die till the year 1493, lived to see him thus suddenly exalted from a poor shepherd into a rich and powerful lord, at the age of one and thirty.