Great Aycliffe, lying five miles north of Darlington on the highroad, was once one of the lesser forests of the Bishopric. About four miles north of Aycliffe the road crosses a little stream by the hamlet of Rushyford. This was a desolate spot in 1317, when on September 1 Lewis Beaumont, Bishop-elect of Durham, and the Cardinals Gaucelin John and Luke Fieschi, with a numerous train of attendants, travelled towards Durham, Beaumont to be consecrated in the cathedral, the Cardinals to negotiate a truce between England and Scotland. They had been warned at Darlington that the road was beset, and this warning, which they disregarded, proved only too true, for as they crossed the gloomy little burn at Rushyford, they were set upon by the notorious freebooter, Sir Gilbert Middleton, and his men. The Cardinals and their servants were stripped of their goods and allowed to continue their journey, but the borderers carried off the Bishop-elect to their fortress of Mitford Castle, and there held him to ransom, until the Prior and Convent of Durham by great sacrifices succeeded in redeeming him. The next place of importance on the road is Ferryhill, a large modern village six and a half miles south of Durham. Few traces of the past survive here, except the fragment of an old stone cross, Cleve’s Cross, which is traditionally held to commemorate the slaying of a great wild boar, which ravaged Durham once upon a time, by a certain valiant Roger de Ferry, whose family long dwelt in the neighbourhood in great honour. About a mile to the south-east of Ferryhill is Mainsforth, the estate of Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham. Midway between Ferryhill and Durham the highroad crosses the River Wear by Sunderland Bridge, and passes through the suburbs into the city of Durham. A bird’s-eye view of the city of Durham even at the present day is surprisingly beautiful. In the Middle Ages it would have served as a model for one of those fascinating little Jerusalems or Bethlehems, walled, towered, and pinnacled, which the old Italian masters loved to perch on the craggy hills in the background of some sacred picture. The river sweeps round three sides of the crag, which is crowned by the cathedral and the castle, and the narrow neck of land on the fourth side was defended by a moat. The Prior’s borough of Elvet and the merchants’ quarter of Framwellgate lay on the opposite bank of the river, and were connected with the citadel itself by their bridges.