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"But what I can't pardon in Honeyman is the way in which he has done poor old Ridley and his wife. I took him there, you know, thinking they would send their bills in once a month: that he was doing a good business: in fact, that I had put 'em into a good thing. And the fellow has told me a score of times that he and the Ridleys were all right.
The Thirlwalls, the Ridleys, the Howards of Naworth, the wild men of Bewcastle; the Armstrongs, Elliots, Scotts, and others across the Border, they were all of them they and their forebears to the earliest times of the stuff that prefers action, however stormy, to inglorious peace and quiet, and the man who "kept up his end" in their neighbourhood could be no weakling.
A cake, a heap of biscuits, a pyramid of jams, six frizzling mutton-chops, and four kinds of hot wine, came bustling up to Mr. Honeyman's room twenty minutes after Clive had entered it, as a token of the Ridleys' affection for him. Clive remarked, with a smile, the Pall Mall Gazette upon a side-table, and in the chimney-glass almost as many cards as in the time of Honeyman's early prosperity.
Sooner may my right hand forget her cunning, and wither outright, as his who once stretched it out against a prophet of God! anathema to a whole tribe of Cranmers, Ridleys, Latimers, and Jewels! perish the names of Bramhall, Ussher, Taylor, Stillingfleet, and Barrow from the face of the earth, ere I should do ought but fall at their feet in love and in worship, whose image was continually before my eyes, and whose musical words were ever in my ears and on my tongue!"
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.
"Hoot awa', lads, hoot awa'; Ha' ye heard how the Ridleys, and Thirlwalls, and a', Ha' set upon Albany Featherstonhaugh, And taken his life at the Dead Man's Haugh? There was Williemoteswick And Hardriding Dick, And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will of the Wa', I canna tell a', I canna tell a', And many a mair that the deil may knaw.
Surtees, the antiquary, wrote the well-known ballad, which, when Surtees gave it him, deceived even Sir Walter Scott into thinking it genuinely ancient. The first verse of the ballad shows with what a verve and swing the lines go. "Hoot awa', lads, hoot awa' Ha' ye heard how the Ridleys, an' Thirlwalls, an' a' Ha' set upon Albany Featherstonehaugh; And taken his life at the Deadmanshaw?
A foray into England brought many a sturdy Scottish reiver riding over the Carter Bar; and Reeds, and Halls, and Ridleys were never averse from a night ride across the English Border when a Michaelmas moon smiled on the enterprise. The Reeds were a strong clan, but in power and in reputation they took only a second place, for the family of the Halls was stronger still.
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
"I don't know how much he owes them: because of course you know the sum he mentions ain't the right one. He never does tell the truth does Charles. But think of the pluck of those good Ridleys never saying a single word to F. B. about the debt! 'We are poor, but we have saved some money and can lie out of it. And we think Mr. Honeyman will pay us, says Mrs. Ridley to me this very evening.
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