"
IN THE DAYS OF THE '15
Close on two hundred years back from the present time there stood far up
the South Tyne, beyond Haltwhistle, on the road--then little better than
a bridle-track--running over the Cumberland border by Brampton, an inn
which in those days was a house of no little importance in that wild and
remote country.
If its old walls could speak, what, for instance, might they not have
told of Jacobite plottings? Beneath its roof was held many a meeting of
the supporters of the King "over the water," James the Eighth; and here,
riding up from Dilston, not seldom came the unfortunate Earl of
Derwentwater, to take part in the Jacobite deliberations. The young lord
and the horse he usually rode were figures familiar and welcome to the
country folk around, and at the inn they were as well known as was the
landlord himself. It was not long after a secret meeting held here in
the earlier half of the year 1715 that the warrants were issued which
led to Derwentwater's flight from Dilston, and precipitated the Rising
that within a few months rolled so many gallant heads in the dust of the
scaffold.
It might perhaps have been better for Lord Derwentwater had he been
less beloved in Northumberland, and had his devoted admirers been unable
to send him notice of the coming of the warrant for his arrest.
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