“I wish I did not!” said Dr. Dove, when some one advanced this consideration with the intent of reconciling him to the change. “I am an old man,” said he, “and in age we dislike all change as naturally, and therefore no doubt, as fitly as in youth we desire it. The youthful generation in their ardour for improvement and their love of novelty, strive to demolish what ought religiously to be preserved; the elders in their caution and their fear endeavour to uphold what has become useless, and even injurious. Thus in the order of Providence we have both the necessary impulse and the needful check. “But I miss the old cross from its old place. More than fifty years had I known it there; and if fifty years acquaintance did not give us some regard even for stocks and stones, we must be stocks and stones ourselves.” CHAPTER XLIV. P. I. HISTORICAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH DONCASTER. THOMAS, EARL OF LANCASTER. EDWARD IV. ASKE'S INSURRECTION. ILLUSTRIOUS VISITORS. JAMES I. BARNABEE. CHARLES I. CHURCH LIBRARY. They unto whom we shall appear tedious, are in no wise injured by us, because it is in their own hands to spare that labour which they are not willing to endure. HOOKER. Nothing more than the scanty notices which have already been mentioned is recorded concerning the history of Doncaster, till King John ordered it “to be enclosed with hertstone and pale, according as the ditch required; and that a light brecost or barbican should be made upon the bridge, to defend the town if need should be.” The bridge was then of wood; in the following reign the townsmen “gave aid to make a stone bridge there:” in that reign a hospital for sick and leprous people was built there, the priories of St. James and St. Nicholas founded, a Dominican convent, and a Franciscan one. Henry III. slept there on his way to York. In the 23d year of Edward I. the borough was first summoned to send members to Parliament, from which burthen as it was then considered, it was relieved in the ensuing year. In 1321, Thomas Earl of Lancaster held a council here with other discontented Barons against Edward II.; in its results it brought many of them to an untimely death, and Lancaster himself suffered by the axe at Pomfret, as much in revenge for Gaveston, as for this rebellion. “In this sort,” says an old chronicler, “came the mighty Earl of Lancaster to his end, being the greatest Peer in this realm, and one of the mightiest Earls in Christendom: for when he began to levy war against the King, he was possessed of five earldoms, Lancaster, Lincoln, Salisbury, Leicester and Derby, beside other seigniories, lands and possessions, great to his advancement in honor and puissance. But all this was limited within prescription of time, which being expired both honor and puissances were cut off with dishonor and death; for (O miserable state!) _Invida fatorum series, summisque negatum Stare diu._