Having thus been wonderfully preserved--says a writer whose words have often been quoted in these pages--and after twenty years of secretness and seclusion, having been restored in blood and honours, to his barony, his lands, and his castles; he, the Shepherd Lord, came forth upon the world with a mind in advance of the age, a spirit of knowledge, of goodness, and of light, such as was rarely seen in that time of ignorance and superstition; averse to courtly pomp, delighting himself chiefly in country pursuits, in repairing his castles, and in learned intercourse with such literate persons as he could find. He was the wisest of his race, and falling upon more peaceful times, was enabled to indulge in the studies and thoughtful dispositions which his early misfortunes had induced and cultured. Throughout a long life he remained one, whose precious example, though it had but few imitators, and even exposed him to be regarded with dread, as dealing in the occult sciences, and leagued with beings that mortal man ought not to know, was nevertheless so far appreciated by his less enlightened countrymen, that his image was always linked in their memories and affections with whatever was great and ennobling, and caused him to be recorded to this, our day, by the endearing appellation of the "Good Lord Clifford." This nobleman was twice married,--first to Anne, daughter of Sir John St. John of Bletsoe, cousin-germain to King Henry the Seventh, by whom he had two sons and five daughters. Lady Clifford was a woman of great goodness and piety, who lived for the most part a country life in her husband's castles in the North, during the twenty-one years she remained his wife. His second wife was Florence, daughter of Henry Pudsey, of Bolton, in Yorkshire, Esquire, grandson of Sir Ralph Pudsey, the faithful protector of Henry the Sixth after the overthrow of the Lancastrian cause at Hexham. By her he had two or three sons, and one daughter, Dorothy, who became the wife of Sir Hugh Lowther, of Lowther, in Westmorland, and from whom the Earls of Lonsdale are descended. It is said that, towards the end of the first Lady Clifford's life, her husband was unkind to her, and he had two or three base children by another woman.