with a livery-gown, and hat, every seventh year.—The pensioners must be all single women, of an unblemished character, and free from all suspicion of heresy, blasphemy, and atheism. A further account of this institution may be seen in the different histories of the county. The _Castle_ of Rising is of much more modern origin than the town itself. It is supposed to have been built about the middle of the 12th century, by William de Albini, first Earl of Sussex, and son of another William de Albini, who was butler to William Rufus, and to whom that king had made a grant of Rising, upon the defection or rebellion of his uncle Odo, bishop of Bayeux and Earl of Kent, to whom his brother, the conqueror, had granted it, upon the forfeiture and seizure of the vast temporalities of Stigand archbishop of Canterbury, in whose possession it was before the conquest. The Earl of Sussex is said to have been one of the most celebrated warriors of the age in which he lived, and to have married _Adeliza_ the dowager queen of Henry I. from which last circumstance the Castle of Rising appears to have been from the very first a royal palace. This Castle and lordship continued in the Albini family till the death of Earl _Hugh_, in 1243, when they went, together with the fourth part of the Tollbooth of Lynn, to Roger de Montalto, lord of Montalt, (in Flintshire) by his marriage to Cecily, fourth daughter and coheiress of William Earl of Sussex, and one of the Sisters of Earl Hugh, who made it his chief seat, and place of residence. It continued afterward, with all its appurtenances, in the Montalto family, till the death of Robert Lord Montalt, in 1329, when Emma his widow surrendered and conveyed them, with all her other possessions and castles, agreeable to a former deed, executed in the life time of her husband, to the dowager queen _Isabel_, the mother of Edward III. In 1330, soon after the trial and execution of her great favourite Mortimer, the Castle of Rising became the chief place of that queen’s residence, and continued to be so ever after to the time of her death, in 1358, when it descended to her grandson, Edward the black prince; but it does not appear that he ever resided there, though it seems very probable that he had been there often in the time of his grandmother. In the second year of the reign of his son, Richard II. it was granted by that king to John Montfort, surnamed the valiant, Earl of Richmond, and Duke of Britany (the husband of his half sister _Joan_) in exchange for the town and castle of Brest. On the defection of Montfort, about twelve years after, the king gave it to his uncle Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester; who being murdered at Calais, in 1398, Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, another of the king’s uncles, obtained a grant of it, with the manors of Beeston, Mileham, &c. in Norfolk; and at his death, in 1403, it came to his eldest son Edward, Duke of York; who being slain in the memorable battle of