Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, who was beheaded at Pontefract in 1322, was honoured after his death almost as though a saint--Leland, writing in the time of Henry VIII., speaks of "the Hil, where the goode Duke of _Lancastre_ was beheddid"--whilst the _Dictionary of National Biography_ can find nothing better to say of him than that "despite his tragic end, it is difficult to say anything favourable of Thomas of Lancaster." In what has been said we have endeavoured to treat generally of all that is really best worth seeing in Man, dwelling briefly on those topics, whether of history or topography, that seem really of most validity, and passing in silence those aspects of the island--luckily few and often temporary--that appear to the writer not in harmony with its true and permanent charms, and in some cases even repellent. It would be pleasant in conclusion, did only space permit, to dig down a little deeper into the treasures of its place-names and local traditions, and to review the many quaint notices of its history and curiosities that are scattered up and down in the pages of old writers. It is not clear that Camden had ever visited Man, though he gives a short account of it at the end of his _Magna Britannia_. The natives, he observes, lived chiefly on oat-bread; whilst both the sheep and cattle were smaller than in England, "nor have they such stately fronts." Part of his description is embodied in a letter that was sent him by the Bishop, John Merrick. "The women," says this letter, "whenever they go out of their own houses, as if mindful of mortality wrap themselves up in the linen that is to serve for their shroud." Similarly, the late Augustus J. C. Hare says that a married woman in Northumberland, "in moments of gloom," will take out and try on her grave-clothes, which she always procures as part of her trousseau, "and find comfort in the inspection of the mournful linen." "Such women," continues the Bishop, "as are capitally convicted are sewed up in a sack and thrown from a rock into the sea. The natives in general are clear from stealing and begging from door to door, extremely religious, and to a man exact in their conformity to the church of England." Preaching in Jersey, in 1692, the learned Canon Falk thus boasted, in similar strain, that that island did not then contain a single dissenter. Giraldus Cambrensis, as cited by Camden, has a somewhat amusing story. The island lies, he tells us, "in the midway between the north of England and Ireland, occasioning no small dispute among the ancients to which of the two it belonged. The dispute was at last thus settled. As venomous creatures were found upon trial to live here, it was unanimously judged to the Britans." Ireland, it is well known, now possesses no poisonous reptiles: they were banished from its precincts by St. Patrick.