The place suffered badly, however, in the hands of Pilkington, the first Protestant Bishop, who "built nothing, but plucked down in all places;" and still more deplorable were its fortunes in the storm of the Civil War, when, after having entertained Charles I. as king, the Palace received him as a prisoner, and was afterwards committed to the tender mercies of Sir Arthur Hazelrigg, who pulled down part of the castle and chapel to erect a mansion for himself. Bishop Cosin, on the Restoration, repaired this "ravinous sacrilege" to the best of his ability; and the chapel, as we find it, is largely his work, and fitly covers his tomb. Hazelrigg's hands also fell heavily on the fine Park, where he left "never a tree or pollard standing." But this also has been repaired, though one will look in vain now in the leafy coverts by the banks of the Gaunless for the herds of wild cattle that once frequented them. Perhaps the Park is put to better use as the favourite and delightful resort of the townsfolk and visitors of Bishop Auckland. [Illustration: WITTON-LE-WEAR.] Not far below Newton Bridge and Auckland Park is Binchester, marking the place where the Wear was crossed by the great Roman road of Watling Street, in its straight course across the county from Piercebridge on the Tees to Lanchester on the Browney, and Ebchester on the Derwent. Roman remains, in the form of sculptured stones, of votive altars, and of baths, have been discovered at Binchester, which may be the Binovium of Ptolemy; and here a cross-road from the south joined the old military way, coming past the sites of what are now Raby Castle, Staindrop, Streatham, Barnard Castle, and other scenes in Langleydale and Teesdale and on the banks of the Greta, since immortalised by history and legend. An older seat of the great family of the Nevilles than Raby Hall itself--Brancepeth Castle, beyond Willington--is near at hand. It got into their possession when the grandson of the Neville who "came over with the Conqueror" married the heiress of the Saxon family of Bulmer. From the Bulmers the Nevilles are supposed to have derived their badge of the "Dun Bull;" and one of their race may have been the hero of the legend that accounts for the local nomenclature by telling how "Sir Hodge of Ferryhill" watched the track of the savage boar--the "Brawn's path"--from Brandon Hill, and dug a pitfall for him at the spot still marked by a stone at Cleve's Cross, near Merrington. Brancepeth was the rendezvous of the "grave gentry of estate and name" in the North, who came to aid the Northern Earls, Westmorland, and Northumberland, in the unhappy rising in Queen Elizabeth's time that cost so many of them their heads as well as their lands. It now belongs to Viscount Boyne. In spite of its low situation and the too intrusive neighbourhood of the great Brancepeth Collieries, it is a noble and massive feudal pile, and in its general effect has been pronounced