And each huge trunk that from the side,
Reclines him o'er the darksome tide,
Where Tees, full many a fathom low,
Wears with his rage no common foe;
Nor pebbly bank, nor sand-bed here,
Nor clay-mound checks his fierce career,
Condemned to mine a channelled way
O'er solid sheets of marble grey.

This lordly pile has seen the Balliols fighting with the Scots, of
whom John Balliol became king, the fierce contests between the warlike
prelates of Durham and Barnard's lord, the triumph of the former, who
were deprived of their conquest by Edward I, and then its surrender in
later times to the rebels of Queen Elizabeth.

Another northern border castle is Norham, the possession of the Bishop
of Durham, built during this period. It was a mighty fortress, and
witnessed the gorgeous scene of the arbitration between the rival
claimants to the Scottish throne, the arbiter being King Edward I of
England, who forgot not to assert his own fancied rights to the
overlordship of the northern kingdom. It was, however, besieged by the
Scots, and valiant deeds were wrought before its walls by Sir William
Marmion and Sir Thomas Grey, but the Scots captured it in 1327 and
again in 1513. It is now but a battered ruin. Prudhoe, with its
memories of border wars, and Castle Rising, redolent with the memories
of the last years of the wicked widow of Edward II, belong to this age
of castle-architecture, and also the older portions of Kenilworth.

Pontefract Castle, the last fortress that held out for King Charles in
the Civil War, and in consequence slighted and ruined, can tell of