towers they kept their audit for the whole Dutchy of Lancaster, Bolingbroke having ever been the prime seat thereof, where the Recordes for the whole country are kept.” {32} And he then gives a detailed account of the following supernatural occurrence, as being beyond controversy authenticated:—Which is, that the castle is haunted by a certain spirit in the likeness of a hare; which, “att the meeting of the auditors doth runne betweene their legs, and sometimes overthrows them, and soe passes away. They have pursued it downe into the castleyard, and seen it take in att a grate, into a low cellar; and have followed it thither with a light, where, notwithstanding they did most narrowly observe it, and there was no other passage out, but by the doore or windowe, the roome being all close-framed of stones within, not having the least chinke or crevice, they could never finde it. Att other times it hath been seen to run in at the iron grates below into other of the grotto’s (as their be many of them), and they have watched the place, and sent for hounds, and put in after it; but aftar a while they came crying out.” (Harleian M.S.S. No. 6829, p. 162). The explanation of this hare-brained story we leave to others more versed in the doings of the spirit world; merely observing that such an apparition has not been entirely confined to Bolingbroke Castle. The town of Bolingbroke confers the title of Viscount on the family of St.-John of Lydiard Tregoze, Co. Wilts. The career, the abilities, the accomplishments, the vicissitudes, and the writings, of the great statesman, author and adventurer, Henry St.-John, Viscount Bolingbroke, during the reigns of Anne, William and Mary, and George I. are too well-known, to need further mention here. Saunders in his History of Lincolnshire (Vol. ii., p. 101, 1834) says that there was then still in the church the remains of an altar cloth, beautifully embroidered, and traditionally said to have been the work of Blanche, Duchess of Lancaster, wife of John of Gaunt, and mother of Henry IV., who is celebrated in Chaucer’s poem “the Dream.” Chancellor Massingberd, however, writing his account of Bolingbroke Castle in 1858 (“Architect Soc. Journ.” vol. iv. p. ii.) says that it had then disappeared, and not been seen for some 20 years, having probably been disgracefully purloined. The parish register dates from 1538; a rather unusual occurrence, as the keeping of registers was only enforced 1530–8 by Act of 27 Henry VIII., and the order was in few cases observed till a later period. EDLINGTON.