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The narrative, which appeared to have been drawn up, or at least corrected, by the clergyman who attended this unhappy woman, stated the crime for which she suffered to have been "her active part in that atrocious robbery and murder, committed near two years since near Haltwhistle, for which the notorious Frank Levitt was committed for trial at Lancaster assizes.
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.
Willimoteswick was long in the possession of the Ridleys, and it is generally accepted as having been the birthplace of Bishop Ridley, though Unthank Hall, nearer to Haltwhistle, and also a home of that family, disputes the honour.
The town of Haltwhistle is peaceful enough now, but it had a stirring existence in the days when Ridleys, Armstrongs, and Charltons, to say nothing of the men of Liddesdale and Teviotdale, had so strong a partiality for a neighbour's live-stock and so ready a hand with arrow and spear. In the old ballad of "The Fray of Hautwessel," we are told that
Similar evidence is also given in Haltwhistle, Hexham's suburb, across the narrow river.
The day was yet young, and the breeze played gratefully cool on Dicky's brow, as, fearless of pursuit, he rode contentedly along towards home a few hours later. Skirting by Naworth, thence up by Tindale Tarn and down the burn to South Tyne, he had now come to the Fells a little to the south and east of Haltwhistle.
Here is Whitley Castle, where was a small Roman station called Alio, and Kirkhaugh Church, charmingly placed on the bank of the river, which continues its course northward past Slaggyford, Knaresdale, Eals, and Lambley, till it flows past the fine Castle of Featherstone, and the ruins of Bellister, where it turns eastward to Haltwhistle.
When he went into that county for the purpose of exploring the remains of antiquity it contained for the purposes of his great work, he travelled along the line of the Roman Wall as far as Thirlwall castle, near Haltwhistle; but there the limits of civilization and security ended; for such was the wildness of the country and of its lawless inhabitants beyond, that he was obliged to desist from his pilgrimage, and leave the most important and interesting objects of his journey unexplored.
Writing about 1866, the antiquary W. Henderson says that a live ox was burned near Haltwhistle in Northumberland "only twenty years ago" to stop a murrain. "About the year 1850 disease broke out among the cattle of a small farm in the parish of Resoliss, Black Isle, Ross-shire.
Westward from this mile-castle the Wall climbs Burnhead Crag, on which the foundations of a building, similar to the turrets, were exposed a few years ago; then it dips down again to Haltwhistle Burn, which comes from Greenlee Lough, and is called, until it reaches the Wall, the Caw Burn.
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