When his father was living at Whitby he had another narrow escape.  “The next year,” he writes, “being 1608 upon my very birth-day, being the feast of Mary Magdalen, and I just eight years old, by God’s great Providence, I escaped as great, if not greater danger than this; which was, that, at my Father’s house, at Whitby aforesaid, there was a great fierce sow, having two pigs near a quarter old, which were to be reared there, lying close together asleep, near to the kitchen door, I being alone, out of folly and waggery, began to kick one of them; in the interim another rising up, occasioned me to fall upon them all, and made them cry; and the sow hearing, lying close by, came and caught me by the leg, before I could get up, and dragged me half a score yards, under the window of the room now called the larder, and what in respect of the age and the amazement I was in, could not help myself; from the leg she fell to bite me in the groin with much fierceness; when the butler, carrying a glass of beer to my father (then in his chamber) hearing me cry, set down the beer on the hall table, and running out, found the sow passing from my groin to my throat.”

Another famous name connected with this period is that of George Villiers, second Duke of Buckingham.  After the death of Charles II. the royal favourite retired to his seat at Helmsley, his strength being very much impaired by the vicious life he had led at Court.  He seems to have devoted himself to hunting and open-air sports.  Certain stories connected with the Duke and mixed up with the usual superstitions were told to Calvert nearly a hundred years ago.

“Near the Checkers’ Inn at Slapstean,” he says, “there stood until a few years agone the cottage in which there lived many years sen one Isaac Haw, who in his day did hunt the fox with George Villiers, and many a queer story did he use to tell.  Here be one.  There lived on the moor not over an hour’s ride from Kirkby Moorside, one Betty Scaife, who had a daughter Betty, a good like wench.”  George Villiers seeing this girl one day is said to have induced her to become his mistress either by force or with her mother’s consent.  After having a dream she told Villiers to come near her no more, foretelling at the same time the time and death he would die.  He was so affected by this that he is said to have ridden away and never seen her again.

Haw also tells how he once rode on the moor with the spirit of the Duke of Buckingham, being not aware at the time that his Grace was dead.  Villiers made an arrangement that when both were dead and the devil gave them a holiday they would both hunt together on a certain moor.

“There be those whose word has been handed down to us,” continues Calvert, “who sware to having seen these two ahunting of a spirit fox with a spirit pack of a moonlight night.  I know one who hath in memory a song of that day anent these two but it be so despert blasfemous that for the very fear of injuring the chance of my own soul’s salvation I do forbear to give it, but if it be that you wish to copy on’t, one Tom Cale a cobbler living in Eastgate Pickering hath to my knowledge a copy on’t.”