kitchen, to remove the old roof of the King’s prison and to make an entirely new roof covered with lead, and to thoroughly point, both within and without, the walls of the castle and tower, and to clean out and enlarge the Castle ditch.  All this to be done out of the issues of the honor as the King has enjoined him by word of mouth, and the expense incurred therein when duly proved will be allowed him in his accounts.  Pickering, 10th August, 1323.”

About the year 1314 there is an item in the accounts of eighty planks bought at Easingwold and carried to the castle and laid in the gangway leading from the chamber of the Countess to the chapel.  The nails for this work cost 5s. 6d.

[Illustration:  The Devil’s or Dyet Tower on the South-East side of Pickering Castle.  This is often called the Rosamund Tower, but the records call it the Dyet Tower.]

Soon after this comes the cost of the new hall in the castle.  “Clearing, digging and levelling the place within the castle where the bakehouse was burnt to build there a hall with a chamber 14s 1-1/2d, building the stone wall of the hall and chamber, getting and carrying 400 cartloads of stone, digging and carrying soil for mortar, buying 27 quarters of lime—­L5 19s 11d; contract for joiners’ work, wages for those employed to saw planks and joists, 152 planks for doors and windows, 80 large spikes, 600 spike nails, 1000 broad headed nails and 20,000 tacks, 22 hinges for the doors, 28 hinges for the windows and 2600 laths with carriage for the same—­L9 0s 1-1/2d; roofing the buildings with thin flags by piece-work, collecting moss for the same [to stop up the crannies] plastering the floor of the upper room and several walls within the chamber, making a chimney piece of plaster of Paris (plastro parisiensi), together with the wages of the chaplain who was present at the building—­L5 1s 10-1/2d.”  A few years later came some more repairs to the castle:  “a carpenter 4 days mending the wind battered roof of the old hall with old shingles 1s, 300 nails for that purpose 9d; a man 10 days roofing with tin the small kitchen, the garderobe at the corner of the kitchen, the cellar, outside the new hall, within the tower and porter’s lodge—­2s 6d.”  Hay and straw for the roofs was brought “from the Marsh to Pickering”; two men were employed to clean out the castle well which had been so blocked up as to become quite dry that year and another charge 1s for a new rope and for repairing the bucket of the well.

In 1326 there is a reference to the King’s patent writ, dated 7th December, by which the Castle was committed by Edward II. “to his beloved cousin Henry, Earl of Lancaster,” and the keeper, John de Kilvington, was “to deliver the Castle and Honour to the Earl together with its military stores, victuals and other things.”

From a small green-covered foolscap volume lent me by Mr Arthur Hill of Thorton-le-dale, I have taken the following description of the “Bounds of the Forest of Pickering, as far as the waters are concerned.”