Monument of rudest times,

When science slept entombed, and o’er the waste,

The heath-grown crag, and quivering moss of old

Stalk’d unremitted war.

The tower in general form is a parallelogram, measuring about forty-five feet by thirty; the strongly-grouted walls are surmounted by an overhanging parapet, with a watch-turret projecting from each angle, giving it the character of a fortalice—as, indeed, it was in the troublous times when watch and ward and beacon lights were necessary safeguards against sudden assaults. In an angle of the thick walls is a spiral stone staircase, communicating with the upper chambers and the roof—the latter, in its original state, having been flat and covered with lead. The masonry, though of great strength, is plain and of the simplest character, the only carved work being the small square-headed windows in the upper stories, which have foliated lights, divided by a mullion, and are apparently of later date than the main structure, having probably been inserted about the close of the long reign of Edward III. In one of these windows the arms and crests of the Harringtons and Stanleys were formerly to be seen, but they were some years ago removed for safety, and are now placed in a window of the adjacent farmhouse. One of the small diamond panes has the well-known Stanley crest—an eagle, with wings endorsed, preying upon an infant in its cradle, with the addition of the fret or Harrington knot—nodo firmo—at each angle. On another pane are the letters Q (the equivalent of W) H, with the fret above and below—the initials being probably those of Sir William Harrington, who, according to Dr. Whitaker, fell mortally wounded on the plains of Agincourt, on that memorable St. Crispin’s Day in 1415[17]. A third pane has depicted upon it an eagle’s claw, a cognizance of the Stanleys, with a fleur de lis on each side.

It is not known with certainty when Wraysholme was erected; but probably it was not long after William Mareschal, Earl of Pembroke, founded the Priory of Cartmel (1188); and it may have been intended as a protection for the fraternity of that house, in the same way that Piel Castle was for the security of the monks of Furness; but, if so, the brotherhood did not enjoy a very lengthened tenure, for a little more than a century after, it is found in the possession of the great feudal family of the Harringtons of Aldingham, descended from the Haveringtons or Harringtons of Haverington, near Whitehaven. Sir Robert Harrington, the first of the name settled at Aldingham, which he had acquired in right of his wife, had two sons, the younger of whom, Michael Harrington had—8 Edward II. (1314–15)—a grant of free-warren in Alinthwaite (Allithwaite), in which township Wraysholme is situated, but the property eventually passed to the descendants of the elder brother, Sir John, a great-grandson of whom, Sir William Harrington, Knight of the Garter, was standard-bearer at the battle of Agincourt, where he is erroneously said to have lost his life. This Sir William married Margaret, daughter and heir of Sir Robert Neville, of Hornby Castle, and by her had a son, Sir Thomas Harrington.

In the fierce struggles of the Red and White Roses the Harringtons ranged themselves on the side of the Yorkists, and suffered severely in that internecine conflict Sir Thomas Harrington, who married a daughter of the house of Dacre, and succeeded to the Hornby estates in right of his mother, fell fighting under the standard of the White Rose at Wakefield Green, and his only son, Sir John Harrington, received his death-blow while fighting by his side on that memorable day (December 31, 1460), a day fatal to the House of York, and scarcely less fatal to the victorious Lancastrians; for the cruelties there perpetrated by the Black-faced Clifford were repaid with ten-fold vengeance at Towton a few months later. Drayton, in his “Queen Margaret,” recounts the butcher-work that Clifford did at Wakefield when the brave Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York, and his son, the Earl of Rutland, fell together—when

York himself before his castle gate,