her was living at Whitby he had another narrow escape. "The
next year," he writes, "being 1608 upon my very birth-day, being the feast
of Mary Magdalen, and I just eight years old, by God's great Providence, I
escaped as great, if not greater danger than this; which was, that, at my
Father's house, at Whitby aforesaid, there was a great fierce sow, having
two pigs near a quarter old, which were to be reared there, lying close
together asleep, near to the kitchen door, I being alone, out of folly and
waggery, began to kick one of them; in the interim another rising up,
occasioned me to fall upon them all, and made them cry; and the sow
hearing, lying close by, came and caught me by the leg, before I could get
up, and dragged me half a score yards, under the window of the room now
called the larder, and what in respect of the age and the amazement I was
in, could not help myself; from the leg she fell to bite me in the groin
with much fierceness; when the butler, carrying a glass of beer to my
father (then in his chamber) hearing me cry, set down the beer on the hall
table, and running out, found the sow passing from my groin to my throat."

Another famous name connected with this period is that of George Villiers,
second Duke of Buckingham. After the death of Charles II. the royal
favourite retired to his seat at Helmsley, his strength being very much
impaired by the vicious life he had led at Court. He seems to have devoted
himself to hunting and open-air sports. Certain stories connected with the
Duke and mixed up with the usual superstitions were told to Calvert nearly
a hundred years ago.

"Near the Checkers' Inn at Slapstean," he says, "there stood until a few
years agone the cottage in which there lived many years sen one Isaac Haw,
who in his day did hunt the fox with George Villiers, and many a queer
story did he use to tell. Here be one. There lived on the moor not over an
hour's ride from Kirkby Moorside, one Betty Scaife, who had a daughter
Betty, a good like wench." George Villiers seeing this girl one day is
said to have induced her to become his mistress either by force or with
her mother's consent. After having a dream she told Villiers to come near
her no more, foretelling at the same time the time and death he would die.
He was so affected by this that he is said to have ridden away and never
seen her again.

Haw also tells how he once rode on the moor with the spirit of the Duke of
Buckingham, being no