Topography.

ORIGINAL NOTICE.

For the Table Book.

Denton-castle, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on the north-west side of Otley, was once the seat of the parliament’s general, Fairfax, and came to the present family of Ibbetson by relationship. Prince Rupert in passing by it on his march into Lancashire, in order to assist the king’s troops in that quarter, was about to raze it, but going into the house, he observed the pictures of the Manners and the Villiers, Fairfax’s ancestors, and out of good will towards them he desisted. It, however, was afterwards unfortunately destroyed by the carelessness of a maid servant, who dropping asleep at the time she was picking feathers, the candle fell into the feathers and burnt the house to the ground. In a few years afterwards, it was rebuilt by the father of sir Henry Ibbetson, bart. in the year 1721, and has this remarkable motto in the pediment:—

“Quod nec Jovis ira nec ignis nec poterit ferrum.”

Verses

To the memory of Denzil Ibbetson, fourth son of sir Henry Ibbetson, bart., who unfortunately lost his life by an accidental discharge of his gun when shooting at Cocken, near Durham, the seat of his aunt, lady Mary Carr, sister of Henry earl of Darlington—1774.

Thy fate, lamented Ibbetson, we were.
With an unfeign’d and sympathetic tear;
Thy virtues, on our mem’ries graven deep,
Recall the painful thought of what was dear.

Yet ’tis not for thy sufferings, but our own,
That heaves the heartfelt melancholy sigh,
That death, which haply cost thee not a groan,
Leaves us to mourn with what we ne’er can vie.

That life, good humour, and that manly sense,
Those ever-pleasing ties, that friendly heart,
Which but unwittingly could give offence,
Disarm’d ev’n Death’s grim tyrant of his dart.

Without one pang or agonizing groan,
Thy soul reliev’d forsook its vile abode,
For joys more worthy of the good alone—
“The bosom of thy Father and thy God.”