The place where this Oak tree grew is uncertain. Whitaker says it stood "at a small distance from the great gateway." This old entrance or gateway to the Abbey was through a part of the modern and now inhabited structure of Bolton Hall, under the Tower; and the old sexton at the Abbey told me that the tree stood near that gateway, at some distance from the ruins of the Abbey.--ED.
[L] Of Wharfedale at Bolton, Henry Crabb Robinson says, in his _Diary_ (September 1818), "This valley has been very little adorned, and it needs no other accident to grace it than sunshine."--ED.
[M] Compare the lines in the sonnet _At Furness Abbey_ (composed in 1844)--
A soothing spirit follows in the way That Nature takes, her counter-work pursuing. ED.
[N] Roses still grow plentifully among the ruins, although they are not abundant in the district.--ED.
[O] This is not topographical. No "warrior carved in stone" is now to be seen among the ruins of Bolton Abbey, whatever may have been the case in 1807; nor can Francis Norton's grave be discovered in the Abbey grounds.--ED.
[P] The detail of this tradition may be found in Dr. Whitaker's book, and in the Poem, _The Force of Prayer_, etc. [p. 204].--W. W. 1815.
[Q] Compare _The Boy of Egremond_, by Samuel Rogers.--ED.
[R] "At the East end of the North aisle of Bolton Priory Church is a chantry belonging to Bethmesly Hall, and a vault, where, according to tradition, the Claphams" (who inherited this estate, by the female line from the Mauliverers) "were interred upright." John de Clapham, of whom this ferocious act is recorded, was a name of great note in his time; "he was a vehement partisan of the House of Lancaster, in whom the spirit of his chieftains, the Cliffords, seemed to survive."--W. W. 1815.
This quotation is from Dr. Whitaker's _History of the Deanery of Craven_.--ED.
[S] In 1868, when this chapel was under restoration, a vault was discovered at the eastern end of the north aisle, with evident signs of several bodies having been buried upright. On the site of this vault the organ is now placed. The chapel was restored by the late Duke of Devonshire.--ED.
[T] In the second volume of Poems published by the author, will be found one, entitled, _Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle, upon the Restoration of Lord Clifford, the Shepherd, to the Estates and Honours of his Ancestors_. To that Poem is annexed an account of this personage [p. 89], chiefly extracted from Burn's and Nicholson's History of Cumberland and Westmoreland. It gives me pleasure to add these further particulars concerning him from Dr. Whitaker, who says, "he retired to the solitude of Barden, where he seems to have enlarged the tower out of a common keeper's lodge, and where he found a retreat equally favourable to taste, to instruction, and to devotion. The narrow limits of his residence shew that he had learned to despise the pomp of greatness, and that a small train of servants could suffice him, who had lived to the age of thirty a servant himself. I think this nobleman resided here almost entirely when in Yorkshire, for all his charters which I have seen are dated at Barden.