At this point of our progress, the antiquary may be disposed to turn aside for a little, to view two relics of the mediæval period of great interest—Lanercost Priory and Naworth Castle. The priory is a beautiful specimen of the early English style, and bears architectural evidence of having been built somewhere between the years 1155 and 1160. Besides the church, partially in ruins and partially in repair, the refectory and some portions of the monastic buildings remain. The whole structure has been formed of stones taken from the Roman Wall. In addition to some altars preserved in the crypt of the church, several centurial and carved stones are to be seen in the walls of the adjacent buildings. [Sidenote: NAWORTH CASTLE.] Naworth Castle, though still an interesting building, is destitute of some of the attractions which it once possessed. The Roman altars and other primeval monuments collected by lord William Howard, have long been dispersed, and a fire in 1844, almost entirely destroyed the baronial residence of that renowned border-chief, which, until that event, remained nearly in the state in which it was in his own day. The dungeons, however, in which the daring moss-troopers were immured, remain, and two magnificent oak trees near the grand entrance still extend those brawny arms on which, according to tradition, lord William suspended the victims of his lawless power. The load of twenty gasping wretches would not materially weigh down the larger boughs of these fine trees. That the government of lord William—the Belted Will of Border tales—was of a vigorous character, there cannot be a doubt; but that he used his power capriciously, cruelly, or tyrannically, there is no evidence. Lord William seems to have sent the most desperate of his prisoners to Newcastle-upon-Tyne or Carlisle. They would probably have as good a chance for life at Belted Will’s tribunal as at the assizes of either of these towns, if we may judge of the state of feeling towards them from North’s Life of Lord-keeper Guildford. His lordship, then sir Francis North, came to Newcastle, on the northern circuit, in 1676. His biographer says—