At the following Assizes, Bartendale was brought up again. It was a nice point at law whether the man could be sentenced to execution again after the Sheriff had signed his affidavit that the man had been hung till he was dead. Mr. Vavasour was naturally reluctant to supply the one link in the chain of evidence which established the identity of the prisoner with the piper who had been hung and buried for felony; he made earnest intercession that the poor fellow might be reprieved, popular sympathy was on his side, the judge was disposed to mercy, and Bartendale was accorded a full and free pardon, the judge remarking that the case was one in which the Almighty seemed to have interfered in mercy to frustrate the ends of human justice, and that therefore he was not disposed to reverse the decree of Providence according to the piper a prolongation of his days on earth. Drunken Barnaby in his "Book of Travels" alludes to Bartendale, when he stops at York: "Here a piper apprehended, Was found guilty and suspended; Being led to t' fatal gallows, Boys did cry, 'Where is thy bellows? Ever must thou cease thy tuning,' Answered he, 'For all your cunning, You may fail in your prediction.' Which did happen without fiction; For cut down, and quick interred, Earth rejected what was buried; Half alive or dead he rises, Got a pardon next Assizes, And in York continued blowing-- Yet a sense of goodness showing." After his wonderful deliverance the poor fellow turned hostler, and lived very honestly afterwards. When asked to describe his sensations on being hung, he said that when he was turned off, flashes of fire seemed to dart before his eyes, and were succeeded by darkness and a state of insensibility. BLIND JACK OF KNARESBOROUGH.[9] Blind Jack Metcalf is certainly one of the most remarkable characters that Yorkshire has produced. Afflicted with loss of sight, the indomitable energy of his true north-country character enabled him to carry on a successful business where many a south countryman would have failed.