Chapter XXIII
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The first Lord Mounteagle left Hornby Castle to his son Thomas second Lord Mounteagle.
William third Lord Mounteagle, the son and heir of Thomas the second Lord Mounteagle, died in 1584, and is buried in the Parish Church of St. Peter, Melling.
Lady Mary Brandon,[A] the eldest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk, was the first wife of Thomas second Lord Mounteagle, whose second wife was Ellen Leybourne (née Preston), the mother of Anne, the wife of William third Lord Mounteagle, who died in 1584.
Ellen Preston’s father was Sir Thomas Preston; her mother was a Thornborough, of Hampsfield Hall, Hampsfell, in the Parish of Cartmel, North Lancashire. The Thornboroughs (or Thornburghs) had held some of the following manors from the time of Edward III.: — Hampsfield Hall, Whitwell, Winfell, Fellside, Skelsmergh, Patton, Dallam Tower, Methop, Ulva, and Wilson House, all either in North Lancashire or Westmoreland.
In the parish church of Windermere, at Bowness, near Lake Windermere, there is a window containing, besides royal arms (possibly those of Henry V.), the arms of Harrington, Leybourne, Fleming de Rydal, Strickland, Middleton, and Redmayne, most of which houses of gentry of “the North Countrie” were more or less allied to the fourth Lord Mounteagle.
Sir Edward Stanley first Lord Mounteagle was in possession of Hornby Castle and its broad acres at the date of Flodden Field, 1513.[A] This is interestingly evidenced by the two following stanzas from the old “Ballad of Flodden Field”: —
“Most lively lads in Lonsdale bred, With weapons of unwieldly weight; All such as Tatham Fells had bred, Went under Stanley’s streamers bright. From Silverdale to Kent Sand Side,[87] Whose soil is sown with cockle shells; From Cartmel eke and Connyside, With fellows fierce from Furness Fells.”
Now, the fourth Lord Mounteagle would, almost certainly, know that among the many valiant knights that fought with his forbear, Sir Edward Stanley, was Sir Christopher Ward, who led the Yorkshire levies to the victorious field, and who came of the great family of Ward (or Warde), long famous in the annals of the West Hiding of Yorkshire about Guiseley, Esholt, and Ripon.
For, as the grand old “Ballad of Flodden Field” again tells us, the English arms were reinforced
“With many a gentleman and squire, From Rippon, Ripley, and Rydale, With them marched forth all Massamshire, With Nosterfield and Netherdale.”
The honourable fact just mentioned concerning the valiant Yorkshire knight, Sir Christopher Ward, together with the fact of the relationship, whatever was its precise degree, between the families of Mounteagle and Ward, through the Nevilles and, almost certainly, other ancient houses besides, would tend to cement the bond of union betwixt William Parker fourth Lord Mounteagle and his private secretary or gentleman-servant, who — as we have proved by evidence and inevitable inferences therefrom — it is all but absolutely certain must have been Thomas Warde,[A] of Mulwith, the brother of Marmaduke Ward, of Mulwith, Newby, and Givendale.[88]
With the consequence that both Lord Mounteagle and his older — almost certainly diplomatist-trained — Elizabethan kinsman would share the lofty traditions, memories and ways of looking at things common to both, which would characterize an historic race that had been of high “consideration” long before the sister Kingdom of “bonnie Scotland” gave to her ancient foe a King from her romantic and fascinating but ill-fated Stuart line.