r the Countess, and the Earl her husband, he returned to
London.

"This brings us within one year of the date on the tenor bell, and I
cannot help thinking that its emblems have some allusion to the royal
visit to Knowsley and Lathom. It becomes, however, necessary to attempt
to account for the second date, 1576, on the same bell. And here we can
again only conjecture. It is not improbable that the original bell was
injured; that, prior to breaking up, its inscription and emblems were
carefully moulded, and a new one cast, with the old metal, in the year
1576, care being taken that a copy of the inscription, &c., should fill
the same situation in the present bell, which the originals occupied in
the former."[11]

It may not be deemed irrelevant to mention here a tradition which exists
relative to the visit of King Henry VII. at Lathom, particularly as it
does not appear to be generally known.

After the execution of Sir William Stanley, when the King visited
Lathom, the Earl, when his royal guest had viewed the whole house,
conducted him up to the leads for a prospect of the country. The Earl's
fool, who was among the company, observing the King draw near to the
edge of the leads not guarded with a balustrade, stepped up to the Earl,
and pointing down to the precipice, said, "_Tom, remember Will_." The
King understood the meaning, and made all haste down stairs, and out of
the house; and the fool long after seemed mightily concerned that his
lord had not had courage to take that opportunity of avenging himself
for the death of his brother.--_Kennett's MSS_. 1033. fol. 47.

It was on a still and sultry evening, about the close of summer, in the
year of grace one thousand three hundred and forty-seven, that a
solitary traveller was seen hastily descending, by a woodland path, into
the gloomy thickets that surrounded the neighbouring priory of
Burscough. The rain-drops were just pattering on the dark leaves above
him, and the birds were fast hastening to some deeper shelter. The timid
rabbit, as the stranger passed by, darted into its burrow, and many a
quiet face gazed on him from beneath a pair of ragged antlers, peeping
over the fences that guarded the demesne. Here and there a narrow glade
opened beautifully into the woods, through which might be seen green
lawns and pastures, with herds of dappled deer stealing silently to
their covert. The low growl of the distant thunder seemed to come upon
each living thing lik