With the proceeds of this expedition he is supposed to have built the house in which his descendants dwelt for many generations. To satisfy some scruple of his conscience, or, according to another story, to lie near a favourite horse, he was buried in his garden under an altar-tomb, inscribed: "Hic Jacet Robertvs Hvtton armiger qvi obiit Avg die nono 1680. Et moriendo vivet." Stella Hall, a picturesque Elizabethan structure, situated close to the River Tyne, was erected by the Tempests on the site of a nunnery, and still contains some tapestry representing the story of Hero and Leander. Scattered up and down the dales are many other old homes that a writer dealing with his homeland would love to touch upon, but space forbids. Even these short notes are all too short. The old mansions of our countryside are a much neglected feature of archæology, and each house in itself demands photographs and drawings and a chapter quite as long as this. DURHAM ASSOCIATIONS OF JOHN WESLEY BY THE REV. T. CYRIL DALE, B.A. A packet of old letters suggests many questions as to the writers, whom they have long survived. Nor is this curiosity diminished when one of the correspondents has achieved a world-wide fame, so that there is no portion of the globe where his name is not known. For then one desires to know who were the people whom he honoured with his friendship, and to scan the letters closely to see if they throw any new light upon the character of the writer. There are in existence seventeen letters written by John Wesley to a member of a family once well-known in the county of Durham. Originally there were thirty letters, as appears from the numbering of those which remain, but where the other letters are the writer does not know.[19] These seventeen letters, two of them being only copies of the originals, came into the possession of the Rev. Thomas Dale, Canon of St. Paul’s from 1843-70, and from him passed to his eldest son, the Rev. Thomas Pelham Dale (1821-92), at one time well-known as the Rector of St. Vedast in the city of London.[20] They were written to Miss Margaret Dale, second daughter of Edward Dale[21] of Tunstall, who, owing to the extinction (as it seems) of the elder branch of the family in the male line, was head of the family of Dale, first of Dalton le Dale, and then of Tunstall. This Edward Dale was the son of Thomas Dale by his wife Margaret, daughter and co-heiress of George Middleton of Silksworth. Through her Burke, who was far too amiable a genealogist to doubt the assertions of any one respecting his ancestors, however remote, traces the descent of Edward Dale from Gundreda, daughter of William the Conqueror. The curious will find the descent set out at length in Burke’s _Royal Family_, Pedigree XVI. Edward Dale married Eleanor, youngest of the three daughters of the Rev. John Lawrence, Rector of Bishop’s Wearmouth. Mr. Lawrence (1668-1732) was in his day a well-known writer on horticulture, and has, as a