It is not known with certainty when Wraysholme was erected; but probably it was not long after William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, founded the Priory of Cartmel (1188); and it may have been intended as a protection for the fraternity of that house, in the same way that Piel Castle was for the security of the monks of Furness; but, if so, the brotherhood did not enjoy a very lengthened tenure, for a little more than a century after, it is found in the possession of the great feudal family of the Harringtons of Aldingham, descended from the Haveringtons or Harringtons of Haverington, near Whitehaven. Sir Robert Harrington, the first of the name settled at Aldingham, which he had acquired in right of his wife, had two sons, the younger of whom, Michael Harrington had—8 Edward II. (1314-15)—a grant of free-warren in Alinthwaite (Allithwaite), in which township Wraysholme is situated, but the property eventually passed to the descendants of the elder brother, Sir John, a great-grandson of whom, Sir William Harrington, Knight of the Garter, was standard-bearer at the battle of Agincourt, where he is erroneously said to have lost his life. This Sir William married Margaret, daughter and heir of Sir Robert Neville, of Hornby Castle, and by her had a son, Sir Thomas Harrington. [Illustration] In the fierce struggles of the Red and White Roses the Harringtons ranged themselves on the side of the Yorkists, and suffered severely in that internecine conflict Sir Thomas Harrington, who married a daughter of the house of Dacre, and succeeded to the Hornby estates in right of his mother, fell fighting under the standard of the White Rose at Wakefield Green, and his only son, Sir John Harrington, received his death-blow while fighting by his side on that memorable day (December 31, 1460), a day fatal to the House of York, and scarcely less fatal to the victorious Lancastrians; for the cruelties there perpetrated by the Black-faced Clifford were repaid with ten-fold vengeance at Towton a few months later. Drayton, in his “Queen Margaret,” recounts the butcher-work that Clifford did at Wakefield when the brave Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and his son, the Earl of Rutland, fell together—when York himself before his castle gate, Mangled with wounds, on his own earth lay dead; Upon whose body Clifford down him sate, Stabbing the corpse, and cutting off the head, Crowned it with paper, and to wreak his teene, Presents it so to his victorious queene, and the “victorious queene,” the haughty Margaret of Anjou, in the insolence of her short-lived triumph, gave the order,— Off with his head, and set it on York gates, So York may overlook the town of York,