fellyshipe of non such as is or shall be borne or brought up in Tyndale, Lyddisdale, or any such lycke places, on pain of 20_ll_,’ because, says the order, ‘the parties there brought up are known, either by education or nature, not to be of honest conversation; they commit frequent thefts and other felonys, proceeding from such lewde and wicked progenitors.’ The offence of calling a fellow-free-man ‘a Bussey-gap rogue,’ was sufficiently serious to attract the attention of a guild; a case of this kind being recorded in the books of the Bakers and Brewers’ company of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1645. The traces of this disordered state of society remained until the early part of the reign of George III., when the sheriff of Northumberland was first enabled to execute process in the north-western parts of the county. ‘Within my own recollection,’ says Mr. Hedley, ‘almost every old house in the dales of Rede and Tyne was what is called a _Peel_ house, built for securing its inhabitants and their cattle in the moss-trooping times.’ Very many of these yet exist. Far different is the state of the district now. The men of the mural region, and of the vales of North Tyne, and Rede-water, are as upright as any in England. With the exception of a few aged individuals, an uneducated person is not to be found. Although, in addition to the ordinary courts of law, they have access to courts-leet and courts-baron, (those admirable institutions by which our Saxon forefathers gave to the poorest villager the ready means of procuring redress of wrong,) nowhere has the law less occasion forcibly to assert its claims. Property is secure, and land brings its full price in the market. On some of the extensive farms of the Cheviot range, not fewer than ten thousand sheep are kept; they are counted but twice a year, and seldom is one amissing. The value of land in Northumberland (exclusive of towns and mines) is seven times greater than it was at the commencement of the eighteenth century, and two hundred times what it was in the middle of the sixteenth. The antiquary, who will not fail to rejoice in the prosperity of the country through which he is travelling, as well as in the safety of his own person, may therefore go on his way cheerfully and in confidence. The second mile-castle from Sewingshields, opposite the farm-house called the Kennel, is remarkable as having been built upon an absolute declivity. Hodgson observes that it had an interior wall on every side of it, at the distance of about twenty feet from the exterior wall. [Sidenote: THE BLACK DIKE.]