Note 15 — HADDON HALL, DERBYSHIRE.

A romantic tradition is still current in the vicinity of Haddon, relative to the courtship and marriage of Mr. Manners (afterwards Sir John) with the younger co-heiress of Vernon. The tradition purports that the lover (who was, perhaps, thirty years of age) having conceived an attachment for Miss Vernon, a beautiful girl of eighteen, dwelt for some time in the woods of Haddon as an outlaw, or, rather, in the dress of a gamekeeper (probably with the popular reputation of being an outlawed man), for the purpose of concealment, and in order to facilitate secret interviews with his mistress; and that he at length succeeded in persuading the young lady to elope with him during the festivities of a masked ball, given by Sir G. Vernon in honour of the marriage of his eldest daughter, Margaret, with Sir Thomas Stanley, a younger son of the Earl of Derby.