John's, Cambridge,
was one of the six divines appointed to correct the Book of
Common Prayer; for which and other services he was in 1560
created Bishop of Durham. After the suppression of the great
northern rebellion in 1569, headed by the Earls of
Northumberland and Westmoreland, he claimed the lands and goods
of the rebels attainted in his bishopric. In support of this
claim he brought an action against the queen for a recovery of
the forfeited estates; and though his royal mistress was
accustomed to speak of unfrocking bishops, the reverend divine
prosecuted his suit with so much vigour and success that
nothing but the interposition of Parliament prevented the
defendant from being beaten in her own courts.

The present erection, the scene of our story, was built in the
year 1732, by Mr Andrews, the owner of Rivington Hall, whose
family have for many generations--with, perhaps, one
interruption only--had it in possession.

The evening was still and sultry. The clear and glowing daylight was
gone, exchanged for the dull, hazy, and depressing atmosphere of a
summer's night. The cricket chirped in the walls, and the beetle
hummed his drowsy song, wheeling his lumbering and lazy flight over
the shorn meadows.

[Illustration: RIVINGTON PIKE.
_Drawn by G. Pickering.
_ _Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]

It was about harvest-time--the latter end of August. The moors were
clothed in their annual suit of gay and thickly-clustered blossoms,
but their bloom and freshness was now faded. Here and there a sad
foretokening of dingy brown pervaded the once glowing brilliancy of
their dye, like a suit of tarnished finery on some withering and
dilapidated beau.

A party of sportsmen had that day taken an unusually wide range upon
the moors, stretching out in wild and desolate grandeur through the
very centre of the county, near the foot of which stands the populous
neighbourhood of Bolton-le-Moors. Rivington Pike, an irregularly
conical hill rising like a huge watch-tower from these giant masses of
irreclaimable waste, is a conspicuous and well-known object, crowned
by a stone edifice for the convenience of rest and shelter to those
whom curiosity urges to the fatigue and peril of the ascent. The view
from this elevated spot, should the day be favourable, certainly
repays the adventurer; but not unfrequently an envious mist or a
passing shower wi