history of modern times, for during that time William Caxton was revising his first proofs in the sacred purlieus of Westminster, and Christopher Columbus was waiting on the western coast of Spain in a poor convent for the means to realize his sublime idea of a vast India over the virgin waves of the great Atlantic. Both these things perhaps were in Richard's thoughts as he came and went here, and not improbably formed the topic of talk at some of the suppers he and his retainers ate together in our castle.
After this, and in 1537, we find, as a result of the growing intelligence of the times, the first signs of desires for peace between the English and the Scots. In that year, and most likely within the walls of the castle, the Bishops of Durham and Orkney met at Carlisle as commissioners for a treaty of peace between the two countries. But these ancient towers had many a storm in reserve then, the first of which occurred in the very same year–the year of the Pilgrimage of Grace. In that year the city was besieged by those misguided men, which resulted in their being repulsed by the garrison and citizens, and seventy-four of their principal officers being executed on the city walls. Subsequently, their ghastly heads gleamed from these towers or the walls, scaring the mid-day airs even with fearful terror; for these were not the hated Scotch, but English gentlemen, and some of them probably well known and much loved in the city. There must have been many a sad procession through these gates, both in and out, during this "rising." Here in these border counties the two great antagonistic forces of the time, Protestantism and Catholicism,
