fought at Cressy,
and at Agincourt, and at Marston Moor. Sir Robert Waterton was Governor
of Pontefract Castle, and had charge of King Richard II. Sir Hugh
Waterton was executor to his Sovereign's will, and guardian to his
daughters. Another ancestor was sent into France by the King, with
orders to contract a royal marriage. He was allowed thirteen shillings a
day for his trouble and travelling expenses. Another was Lord Chancellor
of England, and preferred to lose his head rather than sacrifice his
conscience."

Waterton's childhood was spent at Walton Hall, and in his old age he used
sometimes to recall the songs of his nurses. "One of them," he said, "is
the only poem in which the owl is pitied. She sang it to the tune of
'Cease, rude Boreas, blustering railer,' and the words are affecting:--

'Once I was a monarch's daughter,
And sat on a lady's knee;
But am now a nightly rover,
Banished to the ivy tree.

'Crying, Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo,
Hoo, hoo, my feet are cold!
Pity me, for here you see me
Persecuted, poor, and old.'"

He was already proficient in bird's-nesting when, in 1792, he was sent to
a school kept by a Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Arthur Storey, at
Tudhoe, then a small village, five miles from Durham. Three years before
his death he wrote an account of his schooldays, which is printed in the
Life prefixed to Messrs. Warne's edition of his "Natural History Essays."
The honourable character of the schoolmaster, and the simple, adventurous
disposition of his pupil, are vividly depicted in this account. The
following quotations from it show that preparatory schools were less
luxurious in the last century than they commonly are at the present
day:--

"But now let me enter into the minutiae of Tudhoe School. Mr. Storey had
two wigs, one of which was of a flaxen colour, without powder, and had
only one lower row of curls. The other had two rows, and was exceedingly
well powdered. When he appeared in the schoolroom with this last wig on,
I know that I was safe from the birch, as he invariably went to Durham
and spent the day there. But when I saw that he had his flaxen wig on,
my countenance fell. He was in the schoolroom all day, and I was too
often placed in a very uncomfortable position at nightfall. But
sometimes I had to come in contact with the birch-rod for various frolics
independent of school erudition. I once smarted seve