d tribute paid, by the
feudatories to their lords, whose power, little less than arbitrary, was
held directly from the crown.

The Lacies came over with the Conqueror; and, on the defection of Robert
de Poictou, obtained, as their share of the spoil, sixty knights' fees,
principally in Yorkshire and Lancashire. For the better maintainence of
their dignity they built two castles, one at Pontefract, the principal
residence, and another at Clitheroe. A _great fee_, or great lordship,
as Pontefract was a possession of the highest order; an honour, or
seigniory, like Clitheroe, consisting of a number of manors, was the
next in rank; and these manors were severally held by their subordinate
lords in dependence on the lord paramount, the lord of the fee or
honour.

[Illustration: CLITHEROE CASTLE.

_Drawn by G. Pickering. Engraved by Edw^d Finden._]

What was the precise aspect of our county when the Normans possessed
themselves of the land, it might be deemed an effort of the imagination
perhaps to portray. "Yet," says Dr Whitaker, in one of his happier
moods, "could a curious observer of the present day carry himself nine
or ten centuries back, and, ranging the summit of Pendle, survey the
forked Calder on one side, and the bolder margins of Ribble and Hodder
on the other, instead of populous towns and villages, the castle, the
old tower-built house, the elegant modern mansion, the artificial
plantation, the park and pleasure ground, or instead of uninterrupted
enclosures, which have driven sterility almost to the summit of the
fells; how great must then have been the contrast, when, ranging either
at a distance or immediately beneath, his eye must have caught vast
tracts of forest ground stagnating with bog or darkened by native
woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the wolf had
scarcely learned the supremacy of man--when, directing his view to the
intermediate spaces, to the windings of the valleys, or the expanse of
plain beneath, he could only have distinguished a few insulated patches
of culture, each encircling a village of wretched cabins, among which
would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood, scarcely equal in
comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly eminent above the
rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful cotarii, enjoyed
a rude and solitary independence, owning no superior but his sovereign.

"This was undoubtedly a state of great simplicity and freedom, such as
a