with what he smilingly called, "a tankard
of right home-brewed excellent ale." The
guards sympathising with the gift, and
seeing its apparent harmlessness, withdrew,
but when the king lifted the lid of the
great silver flagon, lo! and behold, it was
brimming with yellow gold pieces, which
the royal gentleman in trouble, with his
usual craft, took care to instantly stow
away in his big pockets, dismissing the
kindly giver with a gracious smile. The
husband of a female servant, who offered
to help the king that night to escape, was,
after the Restoration, appointed, by a not
too grateful monarch, the king's chief bailiff
in Yorkshire; and growing rich, he built
for his disport Crosby House, in Upperhead
Row. Thoresby has another version of this
story. He says, Charles at the time was
in the land of the Scots, and on his way
from Newark to Newcastle, and so far the
worthy old gentleman errs exceedingly.
While the king was at Red Hall, a zealous
maid-servant of Alderman Metcalf's
entreated the king to change clothes with her
and so escape: she promised, if he did, to
lead him in the dark out of the garden
door into a back alley, called Land's Lane,
and thence to a friend's house, who would
forward him safely to France. The obstinate
king, however, declined the offer of the
generous woman with thanks, and gave her
a token (the legend says the Garter, which
is unlikely), saying that if it were never
in his own power, on sight of that token
his son would hereafter reward her.

Before the crow dismisses good Mr.
Thoresby, let the bird cull one or two
choice notes of that worthy's Leeds
memorabilia, and first, a note on Leeds strength
(1658—1725). Thoresby mentions Ralph
Dimsdale, a cloth-worker, who, vexed at a
carrier complaining that a certain pack
of cloth would break his horse's back,
lifted up the bale and carried it easily
as a Hercules, from Alderman Ibbotson's
house to the churchyard. He also
records the strength of Mr. Thomas
Smallwood, a chaplain in the Parliamentary
army, who, to outbrave the soldiers, would
sometimes lift at arm's length three pikes
(fourteen feet long each) tied together. A
note of memory, too: one Miss Dorothy
Dixon, of Hunslet Lane, when a child, was
able to remember nearly a whole sermon,
"letter perfect," as actors say. Of swiftness:
Edmund Preston, the Leeds butcher,
could run twice round Chapeltown Moor
(a four-mile course) in fourteen minutes.
It was roughly calculated that three
thousand pounds had been won by this
man's heels. This Hare-foot died in 1700,
of a wound received from a stake as
he was skipping over a hedge after some
stray sheep. Of strange sympathies: a
note of one Mr. Thomas Sharp, who died
at Leeds in 1693. At the very hour
of his dissolution a distant friend and
townsman of his fell into a bitter agony of
tears and vehement passion of apprehension,
so that he could not continue dressing
himself, but stood naked till he could send
a messenger to inquire for the sick man.
Impatient of the messenger's return, the
master hastened after him, and found Mr.
Sharp just dead, and the shroud not yet
wrapped round him. A note of longevity:
one Mr. Thomas Bernard, of Leeds, fifty
years old when he married, had eighteen
children, rode briskly to hunting when he
was above a hundred, and could then read
without spectacles.

But we may have too much even of old
Thoresby, so the crow, launching from
the top of the domed tower of the Town
Hall, which only wants "just a something"
to rival the great Hôtels de Ville of
Flanders, pushes on over moor and valley
for the city of York, stately crowned by its
triple tiara of minster towers, above the
Ouse, and nearly midway between London
and Edinburgh; and from that tower the
crow looks down greetingly on Severus's
Hills and many a fertile square of pasture.
The warlike Scots, with then a strong
tendency southward, besieged this city,
aided by the Britons, in the reign of
Severus (207); they were under a Scythian
leader. (Heaven only knows how a Russian
or Tartar general ever got promoted
to such a post in those days.) The Emperor
Severus, though old and gouty, drove
the Scotch wasps off with his cohorts, who
then marched into the Lowlands, cutting
down forests, making roads, and draining
marshes as they moved. The march, however,
is said to have cost him fifty thousand
men, for the Scotch even then never
gave any one more than two shillings for
half-a-crown, and were grim, shoulder to
shoulder, canny, hard to beat kind of
bodies. Severus then turned the eighty
miles of earth rampart that the Emperor
Hadrian had made (he also had lived at
York) into stone, from the Solway Firth
to Wallsend, where coals were then scarcely
sufficiently appreciated. On a second revolt
of the Scots, the old emperor, like Edward
the First, vowed their entire extermination,
but death stopped his march at the