castle had been taken by an enemy. The following account of the siege of Bedford Castle by Henry III., given in Camden's _Britannia_, is interesting, as containing a summary of the principal portions of the building, and the several stages of the attack:--"The castle was taken by four assaults: in the first was taken the barbican; in the second, the outer bail (ballium); at the third attack, the wall by the old tower was thrown down by the miners, where, with great danger, they possessed themselves of the inner bail through a chink; at the fourth assault, the miners set fire to the tower, so that the smoke burst out, and the tower itself was cloven to that degree, as to show visibly some broad chinks; whereupon the enemy surrendered." The most perfect of our northern castles now existing, is Raby, the stately seat of the Duke of Cleveland, the history of which is traced through eight centuries and a half. Raby, pointing by its name to a Danish origin, is first mentioned in connexion with King Canute, who, after making his celebrated pilgrimage over Garmondsway Moor to the shrine of St. Cuthbert, there offered it, with other possessions, to the saint. Bishop Flambard wrested the rich gift from the monastics, but restored it again on his death-bed. It continued in the peaceful possession of the monks till 1131. In that year they granted it, for an annual rent of £4, to Dolphin, son of Ughtred, of the blood-royal of Northumberland. Whoever the original founder might have been, Dolphin's descendant, Robert filius Maldred, was Lord of Raby when, early in the thirteenth century, he married Isabel Neville, by the death of her brother the last of that line. From their son Geoffrey, who assumed his mother's surname, the history of the Nevilles may be said to date. To his descendant, John Lord Neville, they owed Raby. Some portion of the older fabric is thoroughly incorporated with the new, so as to present the work and ideas of one period, and a perfect example of a fourteenth-century castle, without any appearance of earlier work or later alteration whatever. Its apparent weakness of site has been pointed out; but though not set on a hill, it had the defence of water, which was drawn off centuries since. But the real defences of Raby lay beyond the mere circuit of its own walls and waters. They are to be found in the warrior spirits of its lords and in the border castles of Roxburgh, Wark, Norham, Berwick, and Bamburgh, which they commanded continuously as warders and governors from the days of Robert Neville, in the thirteenth century, to the time of Queen Elizabeth. Apart from the question of the site, the stately castle itself is of great strength, and skilfully disposed.